The Highwayman (19 page)

“I'm sure I don't know,” she evaded. “But perhaps one of them could have enticed you to do something other than watch.”

His expression turned serious. “You're the only woman I'd even consider bedding.”

Farah blinked at him, frozen in place, unsure of what to say. Every conceivable interpretation of the intention behind his words caused her heart to jump like a fox-hunt rabbit.

“At any rate, a great deal of the things said about me are utter rubbish.”

“Such as?” she challenged, hating the breathless note in her voice.

“That I've killed more than a thousand men with my bare hands. That I broke out of Newgate by bending the iron bars. That I defeated the Duchess of Cork's husband in a fit of jealous rage. Oh, and my most favorite, that I personally assassinated the infamous crime lord Bloody Rodney Granger with a quill pen.”

Farah searched her memory. “Rodney Granger was assassinated thirty-five years ago.”

“Before I was born,” Blackwell confirmed, lifting a glass of red wine to his lips.

“Why don't you refute these untruths, then?”

He made a nonchalant gesture, the muscles in his throat working over a swallow. “They're more of a help than a hindrance. The more people fear me, the more power I hold.”

“That's terrible.”

He gave her a rakish half-smile. “I know.”

Farah added a bit of the cream-filled cornucopia to her bite of cake. The wine fed a ribbon of recklessness and she stretched her lips wide over her dessert, overflowing her mouth with a m
é
lange of sweet decadence.

Blackwell's unblinking eye honed in on her mouth as it struggled to contain the overload of fluffy whipped cream.

The skin around his lips whitened.

Farah searched for her napkin.
Right,
she'd thrown it at him, because he'd deserved it, and the ill-mannered villain never gave it back to her.

Shrugging, she swiped at the corner of her lips with a finger and lapped at the cream with her tongue.

The wine glass shattered in his grip.

A breath passed before either of them reacted. The wine spread across the gold tablecloth like plum-colored gore. Shards of glass reflected light from the candles in various dishes.

Dorian's eye blazed with a black flame. Not with fury, but with a more complex, darker emotion. His nose flared on deep, uneven breaths, like a stallion that'd raced through the night.

“You're bleeding!” Farah gasped as rivulets of red oozed from his clenched palm and thickened the wine stain with blood. She stood and reached for his hand, searching for a napkin to stanch the flow.

“No.”
Blackwell pushed to his feet so forcefully, his chair tipped and crashed to the ground. He towered over her, yanking the wounded hand behind him, and warning her off with a dangerous glint in his eye.

She gestured toward him. “If you don't get that seen to—”

“Do
not
reach for me,” he growled, both fists still clenched tight, one undoubtedly around a sharp piece of glass. “Is. That. Clear?”

“I just—”

“Never.”

The ice in his command shriveled what little warmth had bloomed between them. Inwardly, Farah shrank from him, though she thrust her chin forward. “You won't have to worry about me making that mistake again,” she retorted.

His upper lip curled in a chilling sneer. “See that you don't.”

“B-Blackwell!” Tallow lunged around the corner of the kitchen, looking very much like a scarecrow in footman's garb, followed by a red-faced Murdoch. “W-we heard a-a-a-a…” At the sight of the shattered wine glass and blood, Tallow's speech seemed to stall out indefinitely.

“We heard a crash, are ye all right?” Murdoch touched Tallow on the arm and Farah wasn't too distressed to note the protective gesture.

“We've concluded our meal.” Dorian made the cold announcement as though a steady stream of blood wasn't dripping from his fist onto the expensive carpet beneath him, and the shattered corpse of his wine glass didn't cause the leftovers to sparkle. “See to Mrs. Mackenzie and make sure all is prepared for tomorrow.” The last of his order was given over his wide shoulder as he turned away.

“Blackwell,” Murdoch began, “let me—” One look from his employer silenced him, and then Blackwell was gone, leaving behind only shadows and blood.

*   *   *

Dorian's jaw ached from clenching it. The tremble in his hands had nothing to do with the hooked needle he used to sew the fleshy pad of muscle that controlled his thumb closed, as he'd stitched more of his own wounds than he could count over the years, but he couldn't seem to calm the shaking.

After he'd removed the piece of wine glass embedded in his muscle, blood had soaked through two makeshift bandages and dyed the water in the basin next to his bed a dark pink before he'd stanched the flow.

The fire in his blood had felt like a betrayal. The force of his need shocked him. Indeed, shock didn't seem like a strong enough term for the pure, hot energy singeing along his skin, but he couldn't conjure another word. Which was odd, because he'd read the dictionary and memorized all of them. And their meanings. And their synonyms, antonyms, variations, and conjugations.

“Fuck,” he swore as he jabbed the needle too deep into the muscle. Luckily, he'd been drinking with his left hand when the arousal had struck him with all the strength of a Viking's cudgel, causing his fist to clench and the flimsy glass to explode. Stitching a wound with your dominant hand always afforded a neater scar.

If only he hadn't so many wounds. Some that no stitch could reach deep enough to repair and so they remained open and bleeding, festering until they poisoned the body with their putrid filth.

Dorian focused on the sharp jab of the needle, the sting of the thread pulling through skin and meat. The pain provided an inadequate distraction from the lust pounding through him. It dulled the persistent ache in his loins, but didn't eliminate it.

Nothing did.

Since the day he'd seen Farah glowing like a silver angel in the dank, gray strong room of Scotland Yard, he'd wanted her. His body, long thought immune to bindings of lust, came alive with stirrings and sensations he'd never before felt.

Dorian had learned too young that love and lust had very little to do with each other. Love was pure, selfless, kind, and consuming. It came naturally to someone like Farah. Lust, on the other hand, was tainted and selfish. It overwhelmed one's humanity and transformed them into a dark creature full of impulse and instinct.

Women used it to manipulate.

Men used it to dominate. To humiliate.

Even now, he could feel the desire to press her beneath him and demonstrate to her his superior strength. To claim that mouth that had so tortured him at dinner as his own. The milk-white cream she licked off her lips and finger had evoked unwanted images of branding her mouth with the creamy evidence of his release while she licked at it with as much relish as she had the dessert.

Farah had been right. He was a villain, a monster, a killer, and a thief. A man without conscience or mercy. His past had twisted his desire into something dark and deviant.

He liked to watch her. To scrutinize her when she had no idea she was being observed. He loved how her expression lit with the unguarded curiosity he knew she'd been born with. The way she reached for things that intrigued her, needing to touch with her hands and not just her gaze. The way she ran her fingers over her discoveries with an almost carnal relish as though, in her own innocent way, she found a sensuous delight from the entire world.

The sight inflamed him beyond his comprehension. Her slim, pale, elegant hands and clever, nimble fingers. Exploring. Discovering.

Stroking.

His cock twitched and flexed, demanding something from him that he could not give. He'd tried in the past to relieve his body's need. But even the feel of his own hand repulsed him.

Desire and disgust roiled in his gut, leaving very little room for the sumptuous dinner he'd shared with Farah, and intensifying the trembling in his limbs.

Tonight would be another eternity.

He could already feel the itching and prickling beneath his skin. The heat would follow. A feverish, pulsating torture. His body and mind locked in a stalemate of desire and hostility. His natural instincts to fuck overcome by memories of thrashing shadows and violent lust. Brutality. Helplessness. Weakness. Screaming. Memories of whispering a beloved name against the cold, fetid ground by his desperate, bleeding lips. He would disassociate from the pain. Imagine the feel of a small hand within his own. Moonbeam curls made of silk. Eyes like pools of liquid silver. A dimpled smile that held the light of the far-reaching cosmos.

One duty had kept him from succumbing to the darkness in that dank, rotting prison.

One vow.

It had given him the strength to lead, the bravery he transformed into ruthlessness, and the desperation he wielded like a blade until it was his
enemies
with their faces in the dirt.

On nights like this, before
she
slumbered beneath his roof, Dorian gave up attempting sleep. If it claimed him, so would the shadows, thrusting into his psyche until he woke sweating and screaming, a blade in his hand. Other nights, flames would lick at him instead of the shadows. Rip at his skin and hold him in their muscle-wrenching grip until he would wake to the wet shame of his release soiling his sheets.

On those mornings, he'd bathe in scalding water, scrubbing until the flames died, until his skin was red and raw and bleeding.

Instead of sleeping, he'd taken to roaming the halls, usually ending up in the library to escape into a book.

Dorian looked at his bed, neatly made and turned down for his comfort. The red linens a constant reminder of the blood he spilled. Of the blood he lost.

He suddenly didn't want to look at it, let alone climb between the covers. He would not be fodder for the terrors of the past tonight.

Finishing his last stitch, Dorian inspected his handiwork. It would heal and scar nicely.

A different scar caught his eye, and he ran a finger across the long-healed wound. He had to make sure she never saw this, for it would expose a secret he could never reveal.

For it could be the destruction of them both.

Dorian wrapped the wound as he walked toward the door. There would be no sleep tonight.

Tonight, he would watch.

 

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

Heavy clouds threatened to drench Farah's wedding day. She'd fought the pull of sleep until very late, and so she hadn't woken until noon, which generally would have distressed her. Instead, she lay beneath the cozy counterpane and watched the storm clouds crawl over each other in their haste to reach the shore, congregated by the wind and clashing like unruly children in a school yard.

Reaching for a glass of water on the bedside table, she paused, noting how the high-backed chair crowded the bed. Had it been pulled that close when she'd turned in? She didn't think so, but then, she'd been rather distracted the night before, puzzling over the events at dinner.

She'd uncovered another crack in Dorian Blackwell's fa
ç
ade, a rather large one. A chink in the armor of ice he encased around his humanity. Regardless of his aversion to touch, and despite the vow that bound them both to this course of action, Blackwell's eyes were drawn to her. His body responded to the sight of her mouth. Her tongue. Watching her eat, enjoy, lick her fingers and her lips, those things inflamed him.

Farah hadn't meant to entice him with her actions over dessert. But she knew she had, she'd seen the heat in his eyes. The alarm. The banked passion.

And his body wasn't the only one affected by whatever this was between them. Something had awakened within her, as well. Something previously missing, or perhaps merely dormant all this time. Lying in wait for the perfect mix of shadow and intrigue to draw it out. Some wicked, playful thing comprised of equal parts curiosity and womanly knowledge. Of timidity and desire.

All she knew was that she came alive beneath Dorian Blackwell's inscrutable gaze. He watched her with an intensity she'd never before seen, and she wanted to fill his insatiable mind with images he'd not likely forget.

The urges frightened her. Elated her. Stole her breath and sped her heart until it kicked against her ribs.

Tonight. Their
wedding
night. Would he be able to go through with it?

Would she?

Murdoch arrived with a gown of pristine cream silk, trimmed at the neck and sleeves with expensive handmade lace and adorned with nothing more than an endless row of pearl buttons that ran from the high neckline to the waist where the skirt flared and fell in simple, elegant layers.

Farah recognized the dress, as it had hung in her own closet back in London where she'd figured, if her marriage had ever come into question, she could produce the simple gown as corroboration to her story.

It wasn't meant to be a wedding dress, she knew, but it had called to her from a shop window on the Strand, and she'd been lost to it the moment her hand had drifted over the pearly silk.

Blackwell had been in her wardrobe. He'd touched her things. A picture of him running his rough hands over her clothes, across her silky delicates, flared in her mind, and she had to focus very carefully on dressing and her conversation with Murdoch, lest he guess the direction her thoughts had taken.

Pinning her hair into a braided bun at the crown of her head, she left a few ringlets to fall against her cheek and neck. There, if she wasn't ready to be married, at least she looked it.

Ben More Castle's chapel was arid with disuse, and Farah announced her presence with a sneeze that disturbed the veil of white lace Murdoch had produced for her.