The Charmer (16 page)

It started with the heat. It
spiraled inside him and he could feel it coming off her in waves. Then came the
trickle of tingles, a teasing, sweet torture. It lasted but a moment until
Susanna stiffened in his arms and only her thighs and hips moved, jerking involuntarily.

"Orlando!" she cried,
arching into him.

There was no hope for him after
that. The flood came and he rushed to pull himself out of her, to spurt his
seed on the floor, but she pressed her feet into his arse, holding him there.

"No need," she gasped.

He stayed and exploded into her. His
body shuddered violently and he pressed his face into her shoulder as every
last drop was milked from him.

They stayed like that for several
furious heartbeats until their breathing calmed, and then he rolled off her.

It was over. They should part. He
should return to the mattress on the parlor floor. But he didn't want to go and
she didn't tell him to leave. Indeed, she rested her cheek on his chest. Her
fingers stroked his arm.

"Lie with me," she
said. "So that when I wake I don't have to fetch you."

He laughed softly and she snuggled
beside him, her head resting on the pillow of his arm, one leg over his. The
curves of her body fit neatly into his side. He kissed the top of her head and
drifted off to sleep.

Sometime later, he awoke. She was
watching him. The fire had died down again and the candle had gone out but despite
the dark, he could see her eyes glistening. He wondered if it had anything to
do with what she'd said earlier when he'd tried not to spurt his seed into her.

The note of sadness had been
small, but he'd heard it, despite his preoccupation. She'd been married twice,
and yet there were no children. It was likely she was barren, and that pained
her.

He touched her cheek and she
turned her face into his palm, kissing it. That simple gesture set his heart
racing again and his cock hardened.

"Susanna," he said,
levelly, "I want you."

She looked at him. Her eyes
seemed full but there was a firm, determined set to her mouth. "I want you
too."

They made love again, slower,
taking their time, exploring each other. He found she liked to be licked, everywhere,
and she discovered that his nipples were as sensitive as hers.

Afterward, she lay with her hand
on his chest, her fingers teasing the hairs there. "Whatever happens
next," she said, "I want you to know I'm glad we had this night
together." She stopped twirling and spread her fingers out, over his
heart.

He kissed her forehead. He wanted
to say something, reassure her that he agreed.

But he couldn't.

He wasn't glad or satisfied or
reassured. Making love to her was supposed to ease the longing that dragged at
his limbs.

But it hadn't. It had only made
it worse.

He closed his eyes and willed himself
to be still, his mind to be silent. But it didn't obey and wandered down paths
he did not want it to tread. Could not allow it to tread.

She yawned, oblivious to his
turmoil. "Orlando, where did you go this afternoon? And don't tell me you
went for a walk."

The question came from nowhere
and slapped him out of his melancholy. He was so grateful he decided to answer
her directly. "I went to Sutton Hall to find out more about Mr. Monk. I
want to make sure he's not our intruder before we allow him to work here."

"That's very good of
you." She yawned again. "And did you find out anything useful?"

"No. It might have been him,
or it might not. Considering he's the only stranger to the area aside from me,
I'd wager it was Monk though."

"Not necessarily." She
shifted so that her head rested on her own pillow, but her leg remained draped
over him and her hand still rested on his chest, over his heart. "I forgot
to tell you earlier. Two more strangers arrived in Sutton Grange today."

"Two strangers? What did
they look like?"

"Like a pampered gentleman
and his fat servant." Her eyes fluttered closed and she smothered another
yawn. "But it couldn't have been them here that night. They only arrived
today."

He stared up at the bed's canopy
and listened to the silence of the night as Susanna drifted off to sleep.
Eventually he slept too, but only lightly. The
whoo whoo
of an owl woke
him some time before dawn. He sat up, careful not to wake Susanna, blissfully
asleep with a small smile on her lips and her tousled hair covering half her
face. He gently brushed it back and his cock stirred at the sight. Her lips
curved into a pout and the hard edge of her jaw had softened as sleep relieved
her of the day's burdens. His hand hovered at her cheek but he decided against
touching her. Outside, another
whoo whoo
sounded.

He dressed quickly and silently
went downstairs to meet Hughe and Cole.

CHAPTER 8

There was no owl of course. It
was Cole, using the call the Guild members had perfected for their nocturnal
meetings. Orlando found Cole and Hughe at the edge of the woods. Or rather,
they found him. Dressed in black, they were almost impossible to differentiate
from the trees.

"Finally!" Hughe
stepped away from the trunk of a massive oak to reveal himself, while Cole did
the same on the other side. "You took your time."

"I was busy," Orlando
said.

"Sure you were."
Hughe's voice held a smirk in it.

"You're always
busy
,"
Cole, the third member of their band, said. He gripped Orlando's arm in
greeting. "Nice to see you enjoying your work." He wasn't fat like
Susanna described him, just broad across the shoulders. He must have removed
the padding strapped to his stomach for his disguise to make the journey to
Stoneleigh's wood. Orlando couldn't see or hear horses, so they must have
walked.

"Come to check up on me?"
Orlando asked, flipping the hood off his head. He'd worn it to hide his blond hair
as he crossed the open grounds of Stoneleigh. It would have acted like a beacon
if the moon came out.

Hughe removed his hood too. Cole
didn't have one.

"I needed to escape
London," Hughe said. "The dowager countess has arrived for the
winter." Orlando didn't need to see his friend's face to know he'd screwed
it up in distaste. The dowager countess was Hughe's mother, and her favorite
pastime was parading potential wives in front of her son. There were many and
they were all silly or grasping, so Hughe said. Orlando supposed that was the price
of being one of the richest earls in the kingdom. Better to be a nobody and
free than a nobleman and hobbled to a wife, estate, and duty. He could think of
nothing duller.

He glanced over his shoulder
toward Stoneleigh. At that moment the moon came out from behind a cloud and illuminated
the vine-covered walls, the steeply pitched roof and windows. He thought he saw
a light in Susanna's bedchamber, but he couldn't be sure. Hopefully she was still
sleeping and wouldn't realize he'd left her until the morning. Perhaps by then
he would know what to say.

"It's going to be a bleak
winter for you in that case," he said, turning back to Hughe.

"Aye. And a long one. I
think I'll have urgent business in other parts for most of it."

"You won't get far. The
roads are poor enough already. Another month or two and they'll be
unusable."

"I only need to get as far
as the nearest inn," Hughe said.

"And the nearest warm
bed," Cole said.

Hughe and Orlando laughed. Cole
did not. He never laughed. Their dark, serious friend had a bleak, black streak
through him that ran deep and cold. Orlando had not been able to find out why,
although he suspected Hughe knew. Bloody Hughe knew everything.

"How goes the investigation
into Lady Lynden?" Hughe asked. "We saw her yesterday in the
village."

"She saw you too,"
Orlando said. "She thought your hat was ridiculous by the way." She'd
said no such thing, but Orlando knew the sort of hat Hughe usually wore when he
was playing the part of the fop and they were always elaborate and impractical.

"That was my best hat."

"She's very beautiful,"
Cole said, unexpectedly. He never noticed beautiful things, not even women. Or
if he did, he never commented. For him to say Susanna was a beauty meant he'd
certainly noticed.

"So?" Orlando snapped.

"So I was expecting a
murderess to look more...bitter. Shrew-ish."

Orlando's head began to pound
inside his skull. "Perhaps she's not a murderess then," he heard
himself say.

"If she isn't," Hughe
said lightly, "I wonder if she'd agree to become the next Lady Oxley. I
wouldn't mind that slender body wrapped around my—" He slammed back into a
tree trunk and his muttered
oomph
echoed through the woods.

Orlando shook out his hand. It
hurt, but it felt bloody good shutting Hughe up. It wasn't often he caught him
unawares like that.

"I win," Cole said.

Hughe rubbed his jaw and grunted.
"That wasn't a wager I wanted to lose."

It took a moment for their words
to sink in. It was like a hive of bees had taken up residence in Orlando's head,
and their buzzing was making it hard to think. "What are you talking
about?"

"We had a wager after the
innkeeper pointed out Lady Lynden to us in the village," Cole said.
"I told Hughe you'll go the same way as Rafe."

Rafe? What did their friend have
to do with any of this? Then it fell into place. Rafe had left the Assassin's
Guild and fallen in love barely two months ago. According to Hughe, the only
one who'd seen him since, Rafe was besotted. The thought of ruthless Rafe
Fletcher falling in love had made Orlando laugh when he'd first heard it.
Now...now it bothered him. No, it
angered
him. Their friend had
abandoned them for a pretty face and someone to keep his house. It was true
that he'd left the Guild before he fell in love, but he would have come back
when he was ready. Now he couldn't. He was tied to that life and that woman forever.
Orlando hoped for the wife's sake that boredom didn't do to Rafe what it did to
him.

"You're fools," he said.
"Both of you. Rafe might be happy to lose his freedom, but I'm not."
He glanced at Stoneleigh, but the moon had been swallowed up by the clouds
again and it was shrouded in darkness. "Settling down isn't for the likes
of me," he said, quieter.

"That's what I said."
Hughe opened his jaw wide as if to see that it still worked. "It would take
more than a pretty face to tempt you."

"He just hit you for
insulting her!" Cole said. "What more proof do you need?"

"He's a champion of the
female species, that's all. Doesn't mean he's developed a foolish attachment to
one of them. Does it, Holt?"

The edge in Hughe's voice wasn't
lost on Orlando. He could feel both men watching him, trying to gauge his
feelings on the matter despite the darkness. "Indeed."

Hughe grunted and rifled through a
pack nestled against the base of a nearby tree. He pulled out something and put
it to his lips. A flask. He handed it to Orlando and he too sipped. Aqua vitae
burned his throat and blazed a path down to his stomach. He hadn't realized how
cold he was. Frost clung to the air like an icy blanket and stung his nose and
ears. He drank again and handed the flask to Cole.

"So what say you,
Orlando?" Hughe asked. "Is she a murderess?"

Tingling warmth spread through Orlando's
limbs and dissolved some of his tension. "It's unlikely," he said.
"There are no rumors in the village, and everyone seems to like her."

Hughe's hesitation was small, but
it was there. "You know as well as I that that means nothing at all."

"You've always trusted me,
Hughe. Always."

"You have good instincts,
both of you do. I wouldn't have hired you otherwise." He didn't need to
add 'but' for Orlando to hear it.

"I don't think she's capable
of murdering anyone. I have no proof, but I
will
get it."

Hughe returned the stopper to the
flask and took his time putting it back in the pack. Somewhere in the distance,
a real owl called. "You'd better."

"And if I don't?"

"You know what. If we can't
prove guilt or innocence with any assurance, we leave her alone, but that won't
mean someone else won't be hired instead. And if guilt
is
proven, we'll
dispense justice accordingly. If you can't do it, Cole will."

Orlando had no doubt about that.
Cole never flicked an eyelash when he undertook his job, no matter who or what
the circumstances.
He'd
killed women before.

"What if she did kill her
husbands but had good reason?" Orlando asked. "You can't go ahead
with it then."

"We'll cross that bridge
when we come to it," Hughe said.

"No," Cole said and his
deep, rumbling voice commanded they listen. "If they were deserving, then
we leave her be."

Hughe stood very still. It wasn't
often his men defied him. Only one man had dared, and he was buried in a grave
somewhere in London after Rafe was forced to eliminate him upon Hughe's order.

"I'm not killing anyone who had
no choice," Cole went on.

"She's not like the
others," Orlando said quickly, sensing an opportunity to press his case.
The murderers they'd been hired to kill in the past were all cruel, vicious madmen
who needed to be stopped. Their crimes were heinous, their victims often
innocents, and their positions powerful so that the authorities could be bribed.
Moreover, there was never any doubt as to their guilt. Most even gloated to
their assassin's face before their throats were slit.