Nicholas: The Lords of Satyr (9 page)

A
s previously arranged, Nick rode ahead toward his estate in Tuscany on horseback. That left Jane to follow him for three bone-jarring days, alone in a luxurious private coach.

A trio of armed coachmen accompanied her, riding at the fore and aft of the carriage emblazoned with the Satyr family crest. They negotiated her meals and lodging along the journey and guarded the door of her assigned chamber each night as though defending England’s crown jewels.

The roads between Tivoli and his home near Florence proved adequate. The mud from winter rains had largely dried, and the terrible dust of summer hadn’t yet kicked up. However, by afternoon each day the shaking of the carriage caused her eyes to blur too much for reading, so she adjusted the blinds to watch the passing view.

As they traveled northward, the landscape gave way to a mixture of hills and plains dotted with squat, angular buildings of peach, bone, and ochre brick. Fleecy clouds hung in the cerulean sky above occasional farmyards, Romanesque churches, and cylindrical stone granaries.

On the last day of her trip, she suppered at an inn in Florence and then traveled on another hour. The sun had crimsoned low on the horizon by the time her husband’s home came into view. She was shocked to see that it was a castle!

Perched on the side of a slope covered with fruit trees, it dominated the surrounding landscape, announcing its splendor to the entire countryside for a distance of many miles. An impenetrable stone wall that was likely a remnant of earlier fortifications stretched from either side of it, preventing entrance to the grounds beyond by any means save the front gates. The wall encircled a vast forest crowned with hillsides patchworked with ribbed rows of what she assumed to be grapevines.

Ahead, the castle loomed closer—majestic, impregnable, and out of scale with its surroundings. The broad sweep of grassland before it was parted like hair on a human head by a single curving road that took her conveyance ever higher.

Too soon, the carriage passed through the castle gates. Jitters bubbled inside her. She’d hoped for some time to become acquainted with her husband and his home upon her arrival. But as the carriage wheels clattered over the drawbridge, it was late. Time to retire.

In the courtyard, one of the footmen assisted her from the carriage, and she stood on the pavement a moment feeling at a loss. To her surprise there were no servants about. Nick opened the massive front doors himself and greeted her as the footmen saw to her trunks.

Her new husband was well turned out in his customary colors of black and white and appeared more relaxed and congenial here than he had in their previous meetings. She, on the other hand, was dusty, travel stained, and tense.

“Welcome to Castello di Blackstone,” Nick told her in velvet tones, drawing her up the steps and into the foyer. “Have you dined?”

“Si.” She’d had little dinner, but she knew she couldn’t eat.

Inside the castle, she glanced around curiously and saw he possessed all the trappings of a wealthy gentleman. Above the grand entrance, the Satyr coat of arms bore a carved sash emblazoned with the words
GUARDIANS OF THE GATE
. Colorful tapestries depicting scenes of revelry and feasting draped the surrounding walls, which rose to a coffered oak ceiling with ornamental details highlighted in gold.

A wizened servant dressed in formal attire suddenly appeared, his steps echoing across the herringboned Italian marble floor.

“Have the footmen deliver her trunks upstairs,” Nick instructed. “And the coachmen should see to the horses before retiring.”

The servant nodded, never glancing at Jane, and then scurried outside with an idiosyncratic sort of prancing gait. A word to the footmen sent her trunks to a side entrance, and from there she presumed they would make their way to her new quarters.

“Where are all the other servants?” Jane asked when she and Nick stood alone.

“It’s late,” Nick told her. “All have gone, save for a single maid who awaits you in your chamber.”

He had dismissed the servants? Why? What did he plan to do to her that he wanted no servants about?

“Come.” He turned and led her toward the staircase. Together they scaled polished travertine steps, with columned balusters. Gilt-framed paintings lined the way, and from within them the hooded gazes of his ancestors weighed her.

At the head of the stairs, they moved down the long hallway, their footsteps silenced by the nap of a Persian carpet. She watched the floral pattern pass under her skirt, thinking that the next time she tread this expanse, she would no longer be a virgin. It was a peculiar concept.

Ninety-four, ninety-five…She counted ninety-six steps from the base of the stair until they arrived at her bedchamber door. Of course, his steps covered more ground. She would count them next time and take an average.

You’re being ridiculous, she told herself.

“A bath awaits. I will come to you shortly,” her new husband informed her. With an abbreviated bow, he left her standing outside what she assumed to be her bedchamber door.

Shortly? The word ricocheted in her brain, spurring her into a flurry of activity. She darted inside the room he’d indicated and closed the door behind her.

She hated it when people employed such imprecise terms, especially about important matters. Her mother’s “shortly” had often meant an hour. But for all she knew, his could mean but a moment. He mustn’t catch her unprepared.

Her room was beautiful, with a high vaulted ceiling colored pale olive. A wreath of roses was painted in the center, from which hung a fluted glass chandelier.

A maidservant came shyly forward and introduced herself in halting English as Martine. At the knock on the door, she went to open it, and Jane’s trunks were trotted in.

Once the footmen had departed, the laborious process of removing her female garments commenced. First her dress and then her corset, until she at last stood clad only in her chemisette. The maid reached for it, but Jane drew back.

“I require privacy for bathing,” she murmured.

The maid looked surprised but merely curtseyed in assent. She carried a bucket of steaming water from the fireplace and added it to water already in the tub to reheat it.

“I shall unpack your trunks?” she inquired.

“Si,” Jane told her, forcing a smile.

Slipping behind the painted screen, she disrobed and bathed hastily, not wanting Nick to return before she finished.

She peeked around the screen and saw that Martine was sorting through her belongings, hanging clothing in the armoire and settling bottles and brushes on the dressing table. She seemed in an unusual hurry to complete her duties and be gone.

The maid’s nervousness communicated itself to Jane, and her hands shook as she dried herself and took the nightgown Martine had tactfully draped over the screen. Only after the wisp of silk slid over her head to fall in folds at her bare feet did she emerge into the room.

While Martine was bent over the trunks, Jane presented her back to the mirror. Her quick inspection relieved her when she saw that the gown did in fact cover her shoulder blades. She’d specifically requested of her aunt’s dressmaker that this be the case, but there hadn’t been time to try it on to ascertain whether the drape was as ordered.

The maid came to stand behind her. “E bella,” she enthused as she took down and brushed out Jane’s hair.

“Grazie,” said Jane. To her embarrassment, she couldn’t control the tremor in her voice. The maid shot her a sympathetic smile. Jane looked away from the pity that shaded her eyes, and her gaze fell on her reflection in the mirror.

She sucked in a shocked breath. While she’d been concerned only with the proportions of the back of the gown, her aunt had engineered the rest of it into a design that seemed far too provocative.

Under other circumstances, she might have luxuriated in the slide of the cool, fine fabric across her skin. Enjoyed the faintly scratchy texture of the lace insets of the low, rounded bodice that barely concealed the tips of her breasts. She might have appreciated the design in its entirety, except for the fact that she knew a man—a veritable stranger—was going to view her in it.

When her maid determined she was sufficiently perfumed and primped for her husband’s impending visit, she gave her an encouraging smile and departed.

Jane’s reflection showed she was now properly prepared to become a wife, at least on the surface. On the inside, it was a different matter.

Again she checked her back in the mirror, shifting this way and that to determine what movement might reveal.

Satisfied that the gown covered her secrets well enough, she moved to the window and pulled the drape aside. She breathed deep of the calming, verdant odors of eucalyptus and pine cooling down after the warmth of the day. From somewhere in the distance came the notes of a wind pipe being played.

A row of cypresses speared skyward on the horizon, inked silhouettes against a blue-black sky. The moon was a thin sliver that shed little light on the grounds. Somewhere out there lay a shadowy forest filled with ancient plants.

Did it contain the curative she sought? She planned to find out. And soon.

Emma’s future, and her own, depended upon it.

Nick entered her bedchamber moments later wearing a fulllength brocade robe loosely belted at the waist. His gaze fell on the empty bed, and then he spied Jane at the window.

Her gown rustled as she turned, stirring his senses. He inhaled her essence, now familiar to him, and felt the rightness of her seep through his marrow.

An instinctive, wholly masculine desire to give her his childseed came over him. But he resigned himself. No child would come until he took her in a Calling, weeks from now.

Fortunately he was a patient man.

The nightgown she wore sat uneasily on her, he saw. She probably believed it too revealing. His gaze narrowed on the rosy points that puckered the lace at her breasts. Her shadowy triangle was faintly visible through the folds of silk at the apex of her thighs.

She shifted, and an effervescent trail of rosewater and Faerie glamour teased at him.

Sudden heat surged to his groin. His arousal thickened and throbbed, readying.

The speculative way he was staring at her, as though she were a bone and he a hound, did nothing to set Jane at ease. She crossed her arms in an X, inadvertently plumping the swell of her bosom more enticingly above the low neckline.

For some reason, Nick winced and shifted his stance. “Is the chamber to your liking?” he inquired.

Her eyes surveyed the room. “It’s beautiful. Larger than I expected, as is your home.”

A strained moment passed between them.

“Perhaps you would find yourself more comfortable if you were to lie down,” he suggested with soft amusement.

Of course! How thickheaded of her. He wanted to get on with the coupling, and that was best achieved lying down. Even she knew that much.

“All right,” she acquiesced.

She moved to the bed and shifted the coverlet aside. Then she lay on her back, positioning her legs straight and her arms flat on either side of her. Her gaze sought the underside of the canopy’s tented pinnacle, from which swags of buttery yellow swooped outward to four tall bedposts. The pulse of her heart thudded heavily in her ears.

Nick shrugged from his robe and draped it over the railing at the foot of her bed.

The impact of his casual nakedness was shocking. She stared. How could she not? He was extraordinary.

Unclothed, his broad shoulders appeared even more strongly molded. Dark hair lightly dusted his forearms and well-muscled legs and shadowed a powerfully built chest. The pelt tapered lower, spearing toward his groin. There, where the thicket grew dense, was that part of him that Izabel had explained would come into her when it was fully ready.

A nervous flutter tickled in her chest at the size of it. How much more ready would it become?

Unaware of her misgivings, he joined her on the bed, sitting close so his hip warmed her calf. He faced her in a relaxed fashion, with one leg crooked on the bed and the other braced on the floor. She tried not to look at that part of him that concerned her most, the rigidly engorged shaft that lounged on his thigh like an overfed snake.

His palm startled her, slipping under her hem to settle on the slender ankle closest to him.

“Did you choose your gown?” he asked. Her eyes flew to his and were captured by pale blue.

She shook her head no, the action mussing her golden hair on the pillow. “My aunt.”

He nodded as though she’d confirmed what he’d been thinking. The gown’s gossamer fabric followed the movement of his hand as it eased upward along her leg.

There was no shame in this. Allowing it was her payment to him. In return, he would welcome Emma and her into his home.

She concentrated on keeping herself from melding, praying his touch on her would not be prolonged.

The nightgown slid above her knee.

What if this joining somehow intensified her own strangeness? He would be here, a witness to it.

The silk slid higher still. Her breathing constricted.

He seemed suddenly to become aware she was trembling. His hand paused, resting heavily on the bunched silk he’d drawn to shape the bone of her hip. His brows furrowed as his gaze raked hers.

“You knew this would be part of it,” he said evenly.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Is this virginal fears then?”

She nodded jerkily, embarrassed by his plain speaking. When he hesitated, she made an uncertain gesture. “Please, just…”

One side of his beautiful mouth slanted upward. “Get on with it?” He toyed with the soft fabric and then appeared to reach a decision. Flipping the hem high, he bared her naked to the waist.

She flinched when he grasped her knees and lifted them wide, exposing her most private flesh to his view.

A long moment passed as he surveyed her, his newly acquired property.

Carefully she kept her eyes averted, and it somehow helped distance her from what was happening. From thoughts of whatever was going to happen. She longed to close her legs. To cover her nudity and roll away from him. To go—where? She had no other home now.