The Highwayman (14 page)

“It is making a rather large and fallacious assumption that I have a heart to give …
or
a soul.” Dorian Blackwell's smooth voice didn't echo through the washroom as theirs did. He slithered into their midst with a serpentine stealth, striking before Murdoch's words uncovered any of his secrets.

Gasping, Farah sank deep into the bath, thankful the water was now cloudy with soap, though she did draw her knees under her chin and anchor them with her arms, just in case. “Get out!” she insisted in an unsteady voice. “I'm indecent.”

“That makes two of us.”

He'd moved closer. So close, in fact, that Farah knew if she looked behind her, she'd find his mismatched eyes staring down at her from his towering height. Perhaps, despite the opaque water, he could see the flesh that quivered just below the surface. The thought sent bolts of heat and mortification through her.

“Leave,”
Farah ordered, unable to face him for fear she'd lose her nerve.

“Stand up and make me.”

She sank deeper into the water, her rapid breaths creating ripples on the surface.

“Blackwell,” Murdoch cajoled. “If ye'd like to wait in the chambers, I'll have her dress and—”

“That'll be all, Murdoch,” Dorian said.

“But,
sir.
” Murdoch's emphasis on the word was puzzling. “I doona think this is any way to—”

“You're
dismissed
.” Only a man with a death wish would have argued, and Farah couldn't bring herself to blame Murdoch one bit for abandoning her. The click of the washroom door felt like the slide of iron bars, locking Farah in her gilded prison with the most blackhearted criminal. Helpless, trapped, and naked.

If Farah had learned anything from her job, it was that those who took the offensive usually kept the high ground. “What could you possibly want that couldn't wait until I was finished bathing?” she asked impatiently, proud that she kept any apprehension or weakness out of her voice.

Blackwell stepped from behind her, running long fingers along the rim of the tub. Dressed in only shirtsleeves, the dark kilt, and a vest, his lack of coat did nothing to detract from the startling width of his shoulders. He'd taken off his eye patch, she noted, and his blue eye glinted at her in the spring sunlight. “It occurred to me, whilst contemplating the unfortunate turn of our previous conversation, that our next communication might be better served if you are not in a position to run from me.”

Even in the steaming heat of the water, Farah's blood turned to ice in her veins, but she stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “You're sadly mistaken if you assume that I will not run, or fight, if provoked.”

He positioned himself at the foot of the tub, the sunlight casting a blue aura over the thick ebony of his hair as he leaned down to grip each side of the basin. “Then by all means, consider yourself provoked, but do be careful, marble tends to be slick when wet.” His gaze touched the ripples of the water with suggestive interest, and Farah's temperature swung wildly from chilled to overheated. A sheen of moisture bloomed in her hairline and above her lip.

He was calling her bluff,
damn him,
and he seemed infuriatingly unconcerned by the strength of her disdainful glare. She'd never been very good at nasty looks or confrontation, but she had an idea that before she and Dorian Blackwell were through with each other, she'd have a great deal of practice with both. “Well … say your piece, then,” she prompted, hating that her eyes couldn't rest on him for any length of time without being quite overwhelmed.

“I intend to do
exactly
that.” His voice, usually the texture of cold marble, roughened with a husky note that was intriguing and alarming all at once. “I will talk whilst you finish bathing yourself.”

“Impossible!” she huffed, drawing her knees in tighter to her chest.

One dark eyebrow lifted. “Is it?” His fingers skimmed the milky water, sending ripples toward her that lapped against her knees. “I'd be happy to assist if you find yourself unequal to the task.”

Farah remembered what he'd said in the study. That he didn't particularly like physical contact. Though the pads of his fingers idling in her bathwater suggested he may have been lying. Or was he bluffing now? Was she brave enough to test the veracity of his own admission?

“Touch me, and I'll—”

“You'll what?” His voice cooled as did his regard, but he pulled his fingers from the water.

Farah desperately grasped for something to say, but her mind was suddenly blank as a sheaf of paper.

“You'll learn that I do not respond favorably to threats,” he said rather drolly as he wiped his fingers on a hand towel hanging from a rack at the foot of the tub.

“Neither do I,” she countered, and watched his other eyebrow rise to join the first. “I gather that you want something from me, Mr. Blackwell; well, let me inform you that this is
not
the way to go about obtaining someone's cooperation.”

“And yet, I always manage to get what I want from people.”

“I highly doubt very many of those people are self-respecting
women.
”

Blackwell smirked and rubbed his hard jaw, smooth from a morning shave, as some of the ice receded from his eyes. “I'll grant you that,” he said, turning and stepping from the dais toward a plush velvet chair. “But, as you know, my world is ruled by many laws, not the least of which is quid pro quo.” He settled his long frame into the chair, his legs falling open and his hands resting on the arms with the indolence of a royal. “I can give you
everything
you want, Farah Leigh Mackenzie, and all you have to do is wash.” He gave the bar of soap a meaningful glance.

Farah couldn't think of anything she wanted badly enough to warrant such humiliation, but then she remembered what Blackwell had said before. Dougan may have been brutally murdered. Blackwell was seeking vengeance for his death and wanted her help. If there was any truth to those words, Farah needed to hear them to ascertain it.

Bracing herself, she stretched her legs along the bottom of the bath and lifted her hand to reach for the soap. Her neck and jaw seemed an innocent enough place to start washing, as long as she was careful to keep the swell of her breasts below the murky water. “Tell me what it is I want,” she demanded, chagrined to hear that her voice had become husky and low, the words sounding like an altogether different command. A lover's command. But they both knew better.

Blackwell's anomalous eyes glinted as they followed the path of the soap down the column of her neck but, surprisingly, he complied. “Seven years is a long time to spend almost every moment with someone. Over the course of our time together, Mackenzie and I became like brothers. We not only fought, worked, and suffered alongside each other, we shared everything to keep our bond as leaders—as brothers—strong. And to help pass the endless time, I suppose. He shared with me the food you left, though now I doubt he'd done it if he'd known it was you who'd left it. We shared every sordid detail of our pasts, every name, every story, every … secret.”

Farah's head snapped up, the soap pausing halfway down her shoulder. “Secret?”

Blackwell's head dipped in a single, meaningful nod, though his eyes remained locked on the bar of soap. He didn't continue until the soap resumed its glistening path along her flesh.

“In prison, needs, emotions, and fears are only weaknesses to be exploited,” he explained. “Mackenzie's primary fear was for you. It tortured him that he didn't know what had happened to you after his capture. His only consolation was that he'd killed Father MacLean, and thereby knew you were out of danger from him, at least.”

Blackwell turned his head to a slight degree, so his good eye focused on the soap she slid along her other arm. Farah became acutely aware that she was running out of skin, and the anticipatory intensity of Blackwell's stare proved he relished that fact. Her arms could only get so clean, before she had to wash elsewhere.

How absurd this situation had become. The humiliating memories and dank, raw pain of Newgate Prison didn't belong in this sunlit room with the fragrant, moist heat settling around them, turning the atmosphere hazy with steam. To Farah, the effect was something of a dream, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. Blackwell spoke of hard and valid truths, but the way he watched the soap turn her flesh into slick paths of glinting silk evoked the most sinful and debauched renderings her thoughts could devise.

“How fortunate for you that the water obscures so much.” Blackwell shifted in his chair, his knees falling wider and his nostrils flaring.

“Would Dougan Mackenzie forgive this coercion?” she challenged, doing her best to ignore the stirrings of her own body. “If you owe him as much as you claim, would he not wish you to spare my modesty?”

The spark of heat in his eyes died for a moment, before flaring brighter than before. “When we meet in hell, I'll ask his forgiveness.” His mouth pulled into a harder line, his skin tightened over the sharp angles of his cheeks and jaw. His dark eye gleamed triumphant and also dissatisfied, his blue one conflicted and aroused, and both were locked on the soap hovering at her shoulder.

Farah understood what she must do to urge him to keep talking. Lips parting on an anxious breath, she slowly washed the slim expanse of her chest before dipping the soap below the water's surface, running it over her breast.

The immediate reaction of her body was both unexpected and acute. Sensation ripped through her, starting at her nipple as the soap grazed it, and coursing through her limbs before settling between her clenched thighs. Farah forced her eyes not to flutter closed as she savored this new and profound awareness. Instead, she studied Blackwell for any signs that he recognized the effect he'd had on her. That she'd had on
herself
in his presence.

So intent was he on the spot where her hand had disappeared, she doubted he noticed her reaction at all.

“Go on,” she demanded breathlessly, hoping to keep him distracted as she sorted out the insistent pressure now burning through her blood and combating the chill in her bones brought on by the content of their conversation.

True to his word, he complied. The dispassionate tone of his voice again conflicting with the intensity of his bold regard. “Since Dougan would likely spend twenty years in Newgate before the crown revisited his case, he asked me to swear a vow on the debt I owed him of my life.” He trailed off when her breath caught as she washed her other breast.

“Which was?” she prompted.

“That when they released me, I would hunt you down and make certain you were safe and cared for.”

“As you can see, Mr. Blackwell, I'm quite unharmed and well cared for. You may return me to my life with a clear conscience.” Farah laughed a little. “That is, if you even have one.”

“I suppose it does remain to be seen,” he said mildly, though he still hadn't lifted his notice above the slight ripples in the water. “My seven-year sentence was completed almost a month to the day after Dougan's death. And the first thing I did was go looking for you.” He leaned forward then, like a great cat readying for his lethal blow. “Do you know what I found?”

“No.” A slice of dread began to tangle with the heat in Farah's belly, just beneath where the soap hovered in her trembling fingers. “Tell me.”

“I will. As soon as you resume washing.”

“I—I'm finished,” she lied. “I'm clean.”

Flames licked at the ice in his blue eye. “You missed a spot.”

An answering heat bloomed deep inside her. Low in her belly, no, lower—in her womb. Farah wanted to hate him. He held her captive. Manipulated her emotions. Used this wicked compulsion to gratify his own perversions.

And yet …

As the soap slid through sparse curls and into the cleft between her thighs, ribbons of unexpected sensation stirred from her most intimate flesh and unfurled across the expanse of her skin. Her mouth dropped open, but she caught the moan before it escaped.

Their gazes collided, the flames in his eyes darkened as his pupils dilated.

He knew
. Though he could see nothing, he knew exactly where her fingers drifted, and precisely where the soap slicked over already moistened skin.

Despite her mortification, Farah also marveled. She'd been bathing for almost three decades and, while she'd found a tremor of pleasure whilst lingering here, it had never been so achingly insistent, so full of demand and promise.

That demand, those promises, were mirrored in the stare of Dorian Blackwell.

Whatever he read in her eyes caused him to slam his lids shut, giving Farah an unimpeded view of the angry scar across his brow and eyelid. The wound looked deep and angry. It was a wonder he hadn't lost his eye. When he reopened them, she found herself staring at his wounded blue iris with rapt attention. To her disappointment, he'd conjured his signature chill again, though he cleared his throat before speaking.

“I will tell you that I found you had your own share of secrets, and not ones best left to the darkness, like mine, but secrets that would rock the entire British Empire.”

The soap slipped from her fingers, trailing down her womanhood and disappearing into the water. All the warmth and pleasure dissipated, and Farah shook her head in shocked denial. “I don't know what you're talking about.” The frightening speed with which the atmosphere between them heated and cooled was enough to make one consumptive. Hadn't she just been having one of the most intimate moments of her life? And now he wanted to resume talking about the past. Revealing secrets. Tearing open old wounds.

She'd changed her mind. She
did
hate him. She hated how he was shaking his dark head, but in a mock semblance of righteous censure.