Suzanne Robinson (25 page)

“But you tried to go back.”

“They told me part of his spine was blown away. I could have saved him before he was hit that second time. Every night after that he would come to me in dreams, screaming, screaming, screaming.” Val began to chuckle. “But I’ve outwitted old Atherton. I don’t sleep anymore. Don’t you think that’s clever of me?”

Val’s chuckles rose into laughter. Alexis sat back on his heels and watched his friend shake with unhappy mirth.
He reached out and slapped Val once, lightly. Val blinked at him.

“You want to have a row, Alexis?”

“You feel guilty because you’re not one of the hundreds that died. It wasn’t your fault. And no one could have saved Atherton. If you had turned back, you both would have been killed.”

“Both?” Val shook his head. “No, I would have saved him.”

“What makes you so sure? Everyone else was dying.”

“But I could have saved him.”

Alexis snatched Val’s arm and hauled him upright. “You could have done what? His horse was gone. You could have carried him back double? All that way? You were already hurt. You would have been killed too.”

Val stared at Alexis as if he were a boy learning a lesson from a tutor. “I would have been killed too.”

“Say it again, louder.”

“I would have been killed too.”

Alexis pulled Val into his bedchamber. He stuffed him into bed, then fished around in a side table for a bottle. After pouring a glass of water, he measured out a few drops from the bottle.

He held the glass out to Val. “Drink this.”

“I don’t want any laudanum. You know I don’t take it.”

“If you don’t drink it willingly, I’ll have to make you.”

Val drank, shoved the glass back at Alexis, and sank into the pillow in a huff.

Alexis stood over him. “Tell me again.”

“Go to hell. Oh, very well. I would have been killed too.”

“And?”

“And there was nothing I could have done, damn you.”

“And?”

“Bastard. All right! I have nothing to blame myself for.”

“Good.” Alexis headed for the door.

“It’s all his fault.”

Alexis groaned. “Once you get hold of an idea, you cling to it like one of those Australian koala bears hugs its tree. Good night, Valentine.”

“Night, tyrant.”

Alexis was back in his own room quickly. Shedding his clothes, he reached for his dressing gown, then paused as he caught sight of his own hand against the crimson satin. It was shaking. The last few minutes had brought back unwanted nightmares. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep for a while. Dragging the gown after him, he went to the glass doors that led to his balcony. He opened them and stepped out. The night was unusually warm and still.

Looking out, he could see one or two lights in other parts of the castle. The pennants on the Watch Tower hung limp from their staffs. Taking in a deep breath, Alexis wondered if he should have taken some laudanum himself. He hated the stuff more than Val did. It reminded him of the Crimea, and of the time after Father and Thalia died when Fulke gave it to him.

No, he wasn’t having any laudanum. He shook out his dressing gown and was about to put his hand through an armhole, when he glanced to his right. Across the distance of three apartments lay Fulke’s rooms. A figure in white was standing on the balcony. Hannah.

She was in darkness. Alexis lowered his arm. The dressing gown slithered in folds of material around his legs. He could feel her eyes on him. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just kept watching him. He turned so that all she could see was his profile, then put on the garment, slowly. The silk was cold against his bare skin. He tied the sash at his waist and stepped back inside his room without looking at the woman. He didn’t have to. He was sure she was still there, a silent white hawk watching its prey.

As he walked to his bed, Hannah faded from his
thoughts. To his dismay, he found himself thinking of Kate. Kate, Kate, Katie Ann. The name chimed in his brain and brought forth the memory of her body. An hour passed, and another, and still he lay awake. She was nearby. She was sleeping in his house, and he couldn’t rest. He’d thought that having her would be like slaking his thirst after a death ride. But having her was like taking opium. He wanted more.

He watched the clock on the mantel, but he could barely make out its black hands by moonlight. They seemed frozen in place, yet the clock ticked. With each tick, his arousal grew. He could feel himself swelling in rhythm with the sound.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
He bit the inside of his cheek. The pain didn’t help.

“Bloody everlasting hell.”

Alexis threw back the covers. Pulling on his robe again, he slipped out of his room. Soon he was facing Kate’s door. He opened it silently. Instead of darkness, he was met by the glow of a single candle. Kate sat in the middle of her bed turning the pages of a book. As he watched, she sighed and stopped thumbing the pages.

“Kate.”

She jumped and stared at him openmouthed. Drawing the book to her breast, she hugged it. Alexis drew near the bed, all the while expecting her to curse him and throw him out. He stood beside her watching the candlelight turn her hair to fire, then he whispered to her.

“Katie Ann.”

She squeezed the book tighter to her chest and looked up at him with frightened eyes. Holding her gaze with his, he grasped the book and pulled it out of her hands. He dropped her shield to the floor, then placed his hand on her cheek and felt her shiver. A niggling doubt assailed him. She was so inexperienced, and he wasn’t giving her any choice. Not really. He’d set about her seduction deliberately,
and then found out that, all along, he hadn’t been as clever as he’d thought. He had trapped himself.

Kate turned her face to his palm and kissed it. Alexis drew in his breath, and all compunction fled. He’d found a treasure, and he wasn’t about to give it up. Not yet.

He placed one knee on the bed, then the other. Kneeling before her, he pulled at the belt to his dressing gown. He opened it while bearing her down beneath him to the mattress. She was wearing something diaphanous, and it was in his way. He braced himself on one arm while pulling the hem of her nightgown up to her waist. All the while, Kate said nothing. She kept staring at him as though she couldn’t look away. When he lowered his hips to rest on hers, she finally closed her eyes. At the same time she opened her legs to accommodate him, and he buried his face in her neck.

“I can’t sleep for thinking of you,” he said. He sucked at the flesh of her throat. “I want you so much the pain is killing me. I shouldn’t press you so soon, but I can’t bear the pain. Help me.”

She brought his face up so that she could kiss him. Catching his lower lip between her teeth, she nipped it gently. “I think you’ve decided to help yourself.”

He licked his way down to the material that covered her breast. Suddenly, he hated that cloth. His hand swept up her body, twisted in the fabric, and tore it.

“You’re right,” he said. “I will help myself.”

He fastened his mouth over her breast and sucked. Her hands linked at the back of his head and pressed him to her flesh. He drew on her nipple, and she arched into him. His hand slid down to her hip, then between their bodies to lie at the juncture of her thighs. He pressed down.

“Open,” he said. “Open to me. Wider. Wider.” He slid a finger inside her. His groin ached, and he was beginning to twitch. He thought of the clock. His finger began to
imitate its beat as he thrust it in and out. She was straining against his hand, driving him mad. Her hands squeezed his buttocks, and she tried to pull him into place.

“No, not yet.”

He eased down until his lips were pressed against the moist nest where his hand played. Again Kate tried to lift him back between her legs. To stop her, he kissed the most sensitive part of her body.

“No,” he said. “Spread your legs wider.” He urged her thighs apart with his hands and kissed her again. He flicked his tongue over her, and he felt her try to close her legs. “Relax. That’s it. Feel what I’m doing to you. This is what I want.”

When he had her so aroused that she was bucking in response to his caress, he laughed. “At least I can get you to obey me in this.”

He should have kept his mouth shut, for Kate surged up, reached for him, and caught his penis in her hand. He almost yelped at the feel of her squeezing his overripe flesh. She stroked him once, and it was enough to make him throw her back to the mattress and cover her with his body. His dressing gown was still hanging from his shoulders. He could feel her nails dig into his back through the silk.

“The gown,” he said between gritted teeth.

She ripped the garment from him as he spread her legs. He sank deep into her, then pulled out until he was almost free. She took a deep breath that caused her muscles to contract. Alexis broke. He thrust back in and began pumping, over and over. Incredibly, he heard her demand.

“Faster.”

“Damn you,” he said.

He writhed and circled his hips in revenge, then pierced her deeply. She bit her lip and shivered beneath him to her climax.

He rammed into her. “Yell for me, Katie Ann. Scream. I want to hear you scream.”

He got a long, furious moan, then another, then Kate reared up to meet a demanding thrust and screamed. Alexis let himself go at the sound. He pumped and ground his way to a release that shattered him like glass hurled against steel. He collapsed on top of her while he struggled to regain some awareness of reality.

That awareness was long in coming. His self-control lay scattered, as did his will. He buried his face in Kate’s hair and admitted something to himself. He had wanted conquest, and he’d gotten it. Only the battle was so raw, so filled with ultimate pleasures. And it was Kate that made it so. He had seduced women before and felt nothing but momentary satisfaction. It was Katie Ann herself, this little savage who tortured him, who spun him on his head, who transformed him from a civilized man to a barbarian.

He sighed and lifted his upper body so he could see her face. She was running her hands up and down his back. Oblivious to his turmoil, she smiled at him and kissed his nose.

“I wanted you to come to me tonight,” she said. “I wanted it so badly, but I was afraid to ask. I’m glad you succumbed to temptation.”

“By the time I reached your door, I think I would have killed to have you.”

Stunned by his own words, Alexis cursed. He shouldn’t have admitted his need. And now she was smiling at him as though he’d given her diamonds. Dear Lord, she was moving her hips again. “Kate, no. You’re new to this. Dammit, stop.”

He squeezed his eyes shut as she wrapped her arms and legs around his body and rotated her hips. He felt her muscles suck at him, and his protests died. Burying his hands in her hair, he moved back and forth inside her and succumbed to his own incomprehensible madness.

• • •

Kate was supposed to go with Hannah, the countess, and the Dinkle trio to rub the noses of the poor in her wealth. Hannah called it Christian charity. Kate suggested that providing training in a skill would be more constructive. Hannah didn’t like that idea. It would involve organization, mixing in the affairs of businessmen. A Lady was above such worldly matters, and, at the same time, too light-minded to comprehend them.

Kate wasn’t in the mood for charity. She wanted to find a secluded hiding place and think about Alexis and how he’d made her feel in the Ghost Tower the day before, and in her own bedchamber last night. After sending a note to Hannah with an excuse, Kate put on a stuffy riding habit with a trailing skirt—not split—and rode into the woods near Castle Richfield.

She left her horse to graze in a clearing a few yards from her goal. On a previous excursion she’d found the ruins of Thyme Hall. Buried in the forest, the house had been built by one of Alexis’s ancestors for his mistress. Cromwell’s men had burned it during the Civil War. Though only a moss and ivy-covered shell, the house had been built originally in red brick. Crumbling lumps of the stuff lay scattered around, and she trod on several while picking her way over to the structure. There was a stretch of grass beneath one wall where she liked to sit and read.

Since she’d decided to try to become a Lady for Alexis, most of her enjoyable reading had to be done in secluded places like Thyme Hall. This time, instead of burying her nose in the book she’d brought along, she propped her back against the wall and gazed out at the tangle of brush and wildflowers that threatened the ruins.

She was feeling guilty about not feeling guilty about making love with Alexis de Granville. Her old trouble was
back again. Society had rules, and she didn’t agree with them. They were illogical. If Alexis could have sex, she didn’t see why she couldn’t as well. Another source of irritation was that all the proper, moral people she knew said women loved home and family and didn’t enjoy the physical side of a relationship. Thank the Lord she’d met Patience when she did.

Patience had set her right. It was mighty low of everyone to keep a girl ignorant of such an important fact as a woman’s ability to experience pleasure. Not that Patience found pleasure with her customers, but she had assured Kate that a man could give a woman as much excitement as a woman gave a man. Ever since Alexis had first kissed her, Kate had suspected that Patience had been telling the truth. Now she was certain.

She fished in the pocket of her riding habit for the small book she’d brought with her. She opened it, but didn’t read. There was only one answer to her dilemma, she decided. She would have to make Alexis love her. They were already engaged, and her efforts at decorum and propriety had brought his approval. She would make him love her so he wouldn’t want to end the arrangement. If she showed her love by making herself into a Lady and by making love to him until he dropped with exhaustion, he would end up giving himself to her permanently.

A quiver of excitement shot through her. She was sure Alexis loved her a little already, though he hadn’t realized it yet. She didn’t see how he could have done those things to her yesterday and not feel some love. It wouldn’t be logical. And last night he had been magnificent, and as wild as she.