The Clergyman's Daughter (23 page)

The warmth of his palm cupping the sensitized skin of her cheek unnerved her, making speech difficult. “No, Graham,” she said huskily, looking away. “The man had…nothing to…to do with it.”

“Are you sure? Don’t defend him if he hurt you.” Lightly his fingers played across her face, ruffling her inky lashes, and the pad of his broad thumb caressed her lower lip. The small, seductive movement made Jessica flush with strange heat, and to still his hand she captured it with her own, the one that was bandaged.

When Raeburn saw the gauze dressing around her wrist, he stiffened. “Oh, God,” he groaned, “who am I to accuse anyone else of harming you? A whip….” He winced as he inspected the wound, the droplets of blood that had seeped through the crude wrapping. “Are you all right, Jess?” he asked jerkily. “I’ll help you redo this if you like. I know it must hurt like hell.”

Not as much as my heart,
Jessica thought miserably, shaking her head, and something of her agony showed in her expressive features.

Raeburn gritted his teeth and said remorsefully, “Forgive me, Jess, I beg you. I did not mean…you know I would never….” His voice died away as he bent his fair head to kiss the bandage.

At the touch of his lips against her arm, she trembled violently. “Yes, Graham, I know,” she reassured; “it was an accident. You were…incensed.”

He thought she shivered from pain, and he recoiled, almost colliding with the door. He relaxed his considerable weight back against it and stared down at her, regarding her inscrutably. “What an enigma you are, Jess,” he noted, his bass voice heavy with wistful irony; “often I think how much you seem to have changed in the past two years, how different from the girl in the shabby dress whom I met by the roadside—and then, sometimes, I wonder if you’ve altered at all. You were beautiful, naive, gauche, incredibly defensive. Now….” His gray eyes surveyed her comprehensively, pausing at the swell of her breasts beneath the loose covering of her torn night robe, and he drawled, “You’re still beautiful, of course, more so than ever—although you do seem to retain a penchant for shabby garments—and you appear remarkably self-assured for someone of your age. Unfortunately, that polish of sophistication looks to have been acquired at the cost of your very appealing naïveté, your…innocence.”

Jessica refused to be drawn in by the unmistakable query in Raeburn’s words. She parried, “That’s funny, Graham. I always thought my…innocence…was the virtue that appealed least to you.”

Wryly he acknowledged the adroitness of her response, peering absently at the shadowed ceiling and sighing. “Did I call you ‘defensive,’ my dear? Now you defend everyone but yourself. Why, Jess?”

She gazed at him hungrily and remembered all the times she had wronged him, her love, her greatest ally. “You told me yourself that “I had changed,” she answered quietly. “Perhaps I no longer consider myself worthy of defense.”

Raeburn jerked his head around to look at her once more. His eyes flashed as he grated, “What are you saying, Jess? Are you telling me that my suspicions are correct, after all, that the tender and virtuous dedication you have shown to your daughter, to everyone in the household is a sham? That since Andrew’s death you have become some kind of—of whore?”

Jessica stared, her heart in her throat. His gentleness since coming to her room had disarmed her, and now she, was dazed by the force of his attack.
Whore,
she echoed despairingly; one word that spelled out the utter hopelessness of her love, Jessica had managed to save Claire from the consequences of her naive folly, but in doing so she had convinced Raeburn that she herself was a slut, guilty of all the vile crimes he had ever charged her with—and she could not defend herself without condemning the girl, sacrificing the one person at Renard Chase who had shown her friendship and affection….
Do they know you are my brother’s whore?
What a fool she was! She could not blame this predicament on Claire. From the first day he came galloping into her life, that blunt, pithy monosyllable had capsulized Raeburn’s opinion of her, and there was nothing she could do to change it, ever. It was, as she had told him, what he in fact wanted to believe. To a man of his upbringing there were only two kinds of women: ladies, like Daphne Templeton, and whores. And since Jessica could never fit the accepted mold of a lady….

Oh, what was the use? Hadn’t she learned that lesson long ago from Andrew? Why did she worry about O’Shea or Mason or the cartoons; why was she fearful of losing Raeburn’s favorable regard, when the truth was that she had never had it in the first place? She wanted Graham Foxe desperately, so what purpose could be served by denying herself his passion, the false and seductive simulation of his love, when there was no chance this side of the grave that she would ever earn love itself?

Thinking, Just this once I shall have what I want, she touched him.

She slid her white hands across the broad expanse of his chest, slipping them under the dangling lapels of his shirt and twining her slender fingers into the mat of crisp dark blond curls that covered his skin. She could feel his heart pound under her fingertips. Standing on tiptoe she half closed her eyes and leaned closer, pressing his massive body back against the door with her own slight weight. She felt him shift his legs farther apart to balance himself. With her lips she began to explore the sensitive hollows at the base of his throat. The scent and taste of him drugged her, making her dizzy.

“Jess,” he said hoarsely, grasping her shoulders in his hands and pushing her just far enough away so that he could see her face. Her lashes fluttered upward, allowing him a glimpse of emerald eyes that were already clouding with desire, and in her cheeks a rosy tint budded and blossomed. He repeated thickly, “Jess, what are you doing?”

“Don’t talk,” she murmured, smiling whimsically as she broke free of his grip and nuzzled her face against his chest.

Except for the tolerant and intuitive Paphian who had initiated him into the mysteries of manhood on his seventeenth birthday—an enthusiastically received gift from several of his fellow underclassmen at Oxford—Raeburn had never encountered a woman who assumed the dominant role in their love play, his character and physique so naturally making him the aggressor, and now as Jessica kissed and caressed him, he did not know how to react. He felt flattered, aroused…bewildered. Far more accurately than she could have known, Jessica had analyzed Raeburn’s feelings about women, and now he was baffled by one who seemed to fit into no known category; he was not sure that such passion was…suitable…but oh, God…. A wave of desire, almost shocking in its intensity, pulsed through him. He felt sweat break out on his brow; coherent thought was becoming increasingly difficult. From deep in his throat he groaned, “I don’t understand you, Jess. I don’t…understand….”

Near faint with desire, she reluctantly raised her head. “I am yours, Graham,” she said breathlessly, knowing at last that it was true. No matter how she fought him, since that first day two years before, Raeburn had been the one influence, the one reality in her life; what she had experienced with Andrew had been but a pale presage of that which was to come…. She lay against him, sure her knees were about to buckle. Even through the layers of her robe and gown she was achingly aware of his insistent need. “From the beginning,” she murmured simply, as if explaining something to a child, “there has been only…you.”

Gasping at the sensations aroused by her slim white hands, he stared down at her, the top of her head gleaming ruddily in the firelight. He was not sure what madness drove her, and he knew he had to give her one final opportunity to retreat. He touched her hair, and she craned her neck to look up at him. “Jess,” he asked deeply, “are you certain?” Her answering smile was subtle and full of her newfound knowledge. With a strangled sound, he scooped her up into his arms and strode across the sitting room to the inner chamber and the friendly darkness of her waiting bed.

“Light the candle,” she whispered as he set her on her feet beside the bed, and when he looked surprised, she stretched on tiptoe and brushed her lips lightly across his. “Please, Graham,” she said; “I want to be able to see you.”

Before he could put his arms around her to deepen the kiss, she stepped back and began to untie the sash of her robe. His fingers itched to perform that simple task for her, but she retreated farther. Puzzled by her mood, he nodded curtly and disappeared into the sitting room to fetch a spill of twisted paper from the basket beside the fireplace, and when he carried the light back into the bedroom, her robe and gown were piled in a heap on the rug, and Jessica lay naked between the creamy linen sheets, waiting for him.

He shrugged out of his shirt and sat down on the edge of the bed beside her to pull off his boots. When they had joined the other clothes on the floor, he swiveled around so that he faced her, and she made no demur when he slowly drew the sheets away from the upper portion of her body. His eyes glowed with the radiance of heating steel as they skimmed over her. Even in the warm candlelight her skin was very white, little darker than the bandage on her wrist, and its pallor was emphasized by the blackness of the long, shining tress that lay over her shoulder and curled softly between her full breasts. He gazed cravingly at her, the rounded firmness that belied the extreme slenderness of her waist. She shivered slightly, and he saw that the rosy-brown nipples, larger than he had expected, were already hard and swollen, whether from the chilly air or her arousal, he could not tell. He lowered the sheets further, revealing the sleek but narrow curve of her hips and thighs. Her belly was flat, but around the navel he noticed faint silvery stretch marks that disappeared into the blue-black triangle of hair that covered the soft mound of her desire.

Jessica, who had welcomed his inspection up till this point, suddenly felt self-conscious about those lingering reminders of her pregnancy, and instinctively she tried to shield them from his view with her hands. At that furtive and very feminine gesture, Raeburn smiled. Capturing her fingertips in his own, he pushed her hands gently aside and bent to trace the stretch marks with his lips.

Jessica jerked convulsively. “Graham?” she murmured uncertainly, stretching out beseeching hands to him.

“Christ, but you’re lovely,” he rasped when he raised his head. “More lovely than I could possibly have imagined….”

Satisfied with his words, she relaxed. Her mouth curved upward to match his. “I’m cold too,” she urged softly. She ran her nails experimentally along the powerful muscles of the thighs that strained his tight breeches. “Please come to bed.”

Quickly Raeburn divested himself of the last barrier to their union, giving Jessica a fleeting but heart-stopping glimpse of hard muscular perfection before he slipped beneath the bedclothes with her; then there was only the tilting of the mattress and the slide of flesh on flesh, petal smooth and hair-roughened, cool and radiantly hot. He was so large, his massive body filling her welcoming arms in a way that was familiar yet tantalizingly new, and when his great weight pressed her down seductively into the sheets, she closed her eyes with a sigh and groaned,
“
Oh
,
Graham, I had forgotten—” Then her words were crushed back into her throat as his mouth closed forcefully over hers.

She could not get enough of him. Her need was too great, and every kiss, every stroke of greedy fingers frantically searching out the insistent secrets of his flesh served only to inflame her further. She began to writhe beneath him, trying to shift him into the final embrace. When he resisted, she stared wildly at him with glazed green eyes pleading mutely.

“Be patient, my darling,” he whispered with a shiver of sheer masculine triumph; “we have all night.” His mouth moved with deliberate slowness down the slender curve of her throat, scorching ever lower as he savored her taste and scent. Her own bewildering hunger had defeated her, and even shaking with desire, he was once more the one in control. When he brushed aside the long strands of ebony hair that veiled her body and his lips closed over her breast, she moaned and arched against him, weaving her fingers into the silvery brightness of his hair. “Sweet, so sweet,” he murmured when his tongue tasted the hardness of her nipples. He could smell the scent of milk underlying the musky fragrance of her skin. With indulgent affection he recalled how shy she had been in the carriage during the journey back to Renard Chase, how she had blushed when he watched her feed her baby….

Baby! The word resounded in Raeburn’s skull, making him shudder. His hand stroked the flatness of her belly once more, and before him flashed a vision of Jessica’s body stretched with child, his child…. He tried to put the thought away from him, but the image seemed to brand itself into his brain, engorging him with its heat. He felt himself tremble, and he was suddenly certain that he would be unable to maintain the control necessary to protect her from the consequences of their union.

Then he knew with equal certainty that he had no intention of withdrawing; that no matter what she had been or what circumstance had forced her to do, she was his now, his woman, countess of his heart, and if necessary he would bind her elusive spirit to him in the most primitive and elemental way of all….

By the time his fingers found the inviting secret of her desire, she was burning with a strange new heat, as if the sun that had beamed so relentlessly that long-ago summer day had somehow become centered deep in her loins. Under his questing hands she moaned with a delight that was almost pain, and clutching at Raeburn in her arms, she tried once more to guide him to her, thinking she would die if he did not take her now, now…. But at last he was ready, and as she sobbed his name hoarsely, with one swift movement he lifted her beneath him and plunged deep into the welcoming darkness of her body.

Her need was too great for coyness. She stared up wildly at him with eyes made blind by the sun storm of sensation raging through her, and as he watched and felt and heard her instant response he too was dragged gasping into the feverish tempest.