The Love Affair of an English Lord (18 page)

“What are you waiting for?” she whispered as the last contraction ebbed from her body.

He leaned down to kiss her pouting mouth again. “Do you really want to give yourself to a man like me?” he asked softly.

“Only to a man like you,” she said without hesitation.

He closed his eyes. “You honor me, Chloe.”

“I don't want to honor you, you scoundrel. I want you to . . . to finish what you started. Dominic, for God's sake, have a little mercy. I have
never
felt like this before.”

“My God, I hope not.” The thought was intolerable to him. If he had met her before his life had fallen apart, he had no doubt he would be approaching her brothers for her hand. “Chloe,” he said, the intensity of his expression easing, “you're the best thing that has ever happened to me. I'm afraid the same does not hold true in reverse.”

“You're wrong,” she whispered. “And you aren't going to change my mind.”

“God help me,” he said in a low voice. “I don't intend to.”

She watched his face as he rose up onto his knees and pushed her pale legs apart, exposing the wet crevice of her womanhood. He drew a sharp breath. He was so hard he feared he might explode before he even entered her.

He made a hoarse sound of pleasure deep in his throat as he positioned his shaft against the entrance of her drenched sheath. She felt like bliss, but she was tight inside, and he was afraid he would tear her, so fierce was his need.

“I'll try not to hurt you,” he said, and lowered his head to kiss her.

He felt her tense at the powerful thrust that drove him into the depths of her body. He could feel him stretching her, forcing himself past her maidenhead, but it was too late to stop. His mind emptied. His kiss muffled the soft gasp she gave. When she began to relax a little, he whispered against her mouth, “Wrap your arms around me. It doesn't always hurt. It won't last.”

“It doesn't hurt you, does it?”

“God, no. It's heaven.”

He withdrew from her only to sink back inside with a slow forceful thrust. He felt her quiver, but she didn't tighten against the invasion, and then he was oblivious to everything except his own need, his urgent quest for relief. She moved slightly, meeting his movements.

“Chloe,” he said, his arms straining to hold his weight, “you feel so good.”

“So . . . do you”

That was all it took to push him over the edge. Those three erotic words. His body stiffened; he slammed into her one final time, a climax wrung from the depths of his shuddering body. He felt as if he would flood her, as if he would come forever. When it was over, he sank down beside her and wrapped her in his arms, gripping her so tightly he suspected he was hurting her. She said nothing. If she felt like him, it probably took all her energy to breathe.

He didn't know what to say. He might have ravished her body, but in the end she had conquered his heart.

Chloe finally broke the silence, lifting her head from his shoulder. Her hair was damp around her face. Her blue eyes pierced him, and he wanted her all over again. He was already hard.

“When will I see you again?”

“I don't know. Not soon enough for me.”

She attempted to sit up, tousled, sexy, her temper flaring. “How am I supposed to know if you are in trouble or even alive?”

“It might be better if you don't.”

“Dominic.”
She pushed his arm away. He saw the pulse beating at the base of her throat. She was breathtaking, his, her body flushed with his taking. “I think you're right. You are dead, you fiend. You don't have one decent feeling left inside you, and what we just did doesn't count.”

“I tried to warn you.” His heart was thundering in his chest, in his ears, in his temples. “I should never have come here tonight, Chloe. I had no desire to cause you so much distress.”

“It's a little late for that, isn't it?” she whispered in a wry voice. “You should have fallen into someone else's window.” She pulled the coverlet up to her chin as if suddenly conscious of her nudity, of how far they had gone. It hadn't been enough for him. He wanted to take her in every way a man could take a woman.

“I wish this could be different,” he said. “We'll just have to do our best.”

“What a mess,” she whispered.

“Chloe.” She was angry and upset, and he couldn't blame her. His life was in shambles. He was a threat to everything she was.

“Don't worry about me, Dominic,” she said tartly. “My trunk and undergarments are always at your disposal. You can wear my petticoats whenever you please.”

Her wounded indignation struck him as both unfair and well deserved at once. There wasn't time to soothe her feelings as much as he might like to, or to convince her of what she meant to him. He took one last look at her before he slid off the bed. He couldn't be sure, but he thought there might be tears in her eyes. God help him if she started to cry. He'd weaken, and be back in bed with her until the morning.

“Don't get out of bed, Chloe.”

“Not even to push you out the window?”

He bent to kiss her. At least her humor had returned, although it might have been flattering to remember her heartbroken and naked on the bed where they'd made love. “Try to go to sleep,” he said gently.

“Go to—”

He escaped into the closet, pausing to pat Ares on the head before he braced himself for his exit. The dog barely moved except to follow his movements with liquid brown eyes that seemed to accuse him. “Jesus,” he said, “even my own damned dog has turned against me.”

He climbed onto the windowsill, felt the night breeze on his warm face and throat. If Chloe had any sense, she would bar this window behind him so that he would not be able to return until he could offer her a proper future. Or chop down the tree that gave him access to her room. He couldn't stay away from her.

He hooked his leg across the sill and around the nearest branch. As perverse as it seemed, his sexual encounter with her had energized him, restored his vitality. He was boiling with frustration for more of her, but his spirits felt better than they had since his stabbing. The inner strength he needed to confront his opponent was back in spades. He could channel all his physical needs now into revenge. How he handled his heart was an entirely different matter.

Chapter 15

Chloe should have known that when she fell in love, she would fall hard and with all the impulsive passion of her Boscastle heart. Naturally she would choose the worst man in the world for her. Naturally the course of their love would not run smoothly. She sat for a full thirty seconds, lamenting her fate, stunned by his departure, by what had happened between them.

Then she sprang off the bed and pulled on her yellow dinner dress to go after him. She wasn't the type to lament for long. She felt abandoned, afraid for him and herself. She couldn't believe they had come together in a blaze of sexual intimacy, and then he had climbed out the window, leaving her to smolder in her bed like a live coal. She could not let him go without—something more. More of him. More of his tormenting, the trouble he brought. A reassurance that he would return, or that nothing would happen to him while they were apart.

On a more practical note, she noticed that he had forgotten to take the telescope he had stolen from her on his first visit to her room. She picked it up from the floor on her way to the door.

Her heart racing, she slipped into the hall and stole downstairs through the darkened house, then outside into the night. The damp grass pricked her bare feet as she threaded her way around the muddy duck pond to the garden. Dominic had just landed on the ground when she reached him, rising from a crouch.

“God in heaven!” he exclaimed when he saw her. “Are you trying to ruin us both?”

She held out her hand to him. “You forgot the telescope.”

Frowning at her with concern, he took the instrument and tucked it into his waistband. “Thank you.”

“You cannot continue like this, Dominic. Living in a—a wall is not normal.”

“I realize that.” He ran his hand through his black hair in exasperation. “Do
you
realize what you are doing to me? Every time I see you I'm tempted to throw down my cards for the chance to regain my life.”

“But you can't,” she said quietly.

“Not if I mean to bring Edgar and those he worked with to justice. I can't trust the authorities to do it for me. I have no idea how many friends he might have, or whom he might hurt next. He doesn't exactly play by the rules.”

She would not argue the point again. He was as stubborn-headed, hell-bent, and honor-bound as any of her brothers. “At least you can make some sort of arrangement to let me know you are well.”

He gripped her by the shoulders. The moonlight did not soften the uncompromising angles of his face. His ordeal had left its mark in an attractive austerity. “I'm in no position to be promising you letters, Chloe. I told you once there is only one man I trust. His name is Adrian Ruxley, Viscount Wolverton. He's the man who helped me stage my own funeral. Should something happen to me, you may go to him, but
not
until I've done what I need to do.”

“If he's a trusted friend, perhaps I can persuade him to talk some sense into you.”

“Don't get more deeply involved in my problems than you already are. Go back to being the high-spirited lady you were when I first met you. When this is all over, I shall give you anything you want.”

“I haven't been high-spirited for a long time, Dominic.”

He released her with a sudden curse, his gaze focusing on the back of the house. “Someone's coming out here,” he said. “Don't give me away.”

“What—”

“Don't say anything.”

Chloe whirled around, instantly recognizing her aunt's petite figure charging down the garden path. “What do I do?” she whispered to Dominic's retreating figure.

“Use your wits, Chloe,” he said unhelpfully, before ducking behind the tree.

“Do you not see him?” her aunt shouted. “Right there, you dunderhead! Behind that tree.”

“Who are you calling a dunderhead?” Chloe demanded.

“You!”

“I don't see anybody.” Which was partially true. Dominic had disappeared behind the tall row of trees that flanked the entry gate, his lean figure blending into the long shadows.

To her astonishment, Aunt Gwendolyn reached around and grabbed Chloe's arm to yank her in the direction of Dominic's shadow. “There!
There.
Now do you see?”

What a dilemma. Chloe had no idea what to do. If she admitted she could see Dominic, then his secret would unravel. If she pretended he wasn't there, her aunt would have good cause to call her a dunderhead.

“I'll get the parson,” Aunt Gwendolyn said in excitement, her silver-streaked curls disheveled. “Come with me. No. On second thought, stay here. Guard him.”

“Guard whom?”

“The ghost!”

“What ghost?”

“The ghost right in front of your face.”

“How can I guard him if I can't see him?” Chloe asked.

At that moment Dominic stepped forward, dramatically, his cloaked figure overshadowed by the gatehouse. “Madam,” he addressed Aunt Gwendolyn, “she cannot hear or see me. Do not waste precious breath.”

Aunt Gwendolyn glanced at Chloe from the corner of her eye, murmuring, “Incredible.”

Dominic inclined his head in a grave nod. “Quite.”

“Why, you poor tragic man—er, ghost,” the older woman said anxiously. “Are you having difficulty on your passage to the other side?”

“The other side of what?”

“Oh, dear,” Aunt Gwendolyn said nervously. “It never occurred to me that he might be trying to go up when he's meant to go down.” She cleared her throat. “Lord Stratfield, I must warn you that I am a married woman.”

Dominic looked blank. For an awful moment Chloe thought he would burst into laughter. “Married?”

“Married as in faithful to my husband. I cannot consort with you, my lord.”

“Consort with me?”

“I know of your reputation for seducing women in the parish,” Aunt Gwendolyn said in a tremulous voice. “Tempt me not.”

“To do what?” he asked, in genuine confusion.

“It was not my daughter at all, was it?” Aunt Gwendolyn said with a gasp of understanding. “It was
me
you sought.”

Dominic was edging back into the shadows. Chloe could only be grateful that because of their evening out, the gate had not yet been locked. He would be able to escape before her aunt grabbed him, too, and found out he was no apparition.

“I must leave you now, madam,” he said with a melodramatic wave of his cloak.

“Leave me?” Aunt Gwendolyn cried. “But I do not know why you came or what help you desire from me.”

“Well, I . . .” Chloe enjoyed the look of uncertainty on his handsome face. “I have to go. I have tarried too long as it is.”

Aunt Gwendolyn put her hand to her mouth. “Then does this mean—my lord, please tell me, does our meeting mean you have been successfully laid?”

“Ah, madam,” he said as he squeezed out of the gate. He shot a wry glance in Chloe's direction. “Alas, that is too personal a question to answer.”

He vanished into the trees.

Aunt Gwendolyn stood shaking her head in disbelief. “He's gone. Our ghost is gone.”

And Chloe could not have been more relieved. Of course since she had not “seen” him, she had to pretend continued bewilderment. “Are you sure, Aunt Gwendolyn?” she whispered, staring up at the sky as if somehow Dominic's spirit had taken flight.

Her aunt followed the direction of her gaze and frowned. “I don't think he has floated up to heaven, my dear,” she said in irritation.

Chloe glanced down questioningly at the ground. “Then—”

The woman sighed. “Apparently he has not disappeared down there either, although one might understandably conclude that Hades would be his most likely abode.”

Chloe paused. “Where do you suppose he went?”

“It would seem, Chloe, that the afterlife is more complicated than the human mind can comprehend. Where did he go?” Aunt Gwendolyn waved her hands back and forth in the air. “He went neither here nor there. Into the unknown ethers.”

“What unknown ethers?” Chloe could not resist asking.

“If I could answer that, then they would not be unknown, would they?”

“I suppose not.”

“Bah. I shouldn't expect one of your tender experience to understand the mysteries of life.” She gazed hard at Chloe. “Under the circumstances, perhaps it is best if we do not reveal this encounter to anyone else. We must
not
tell anyone that we saw him.”

“But I didn't see anything,” Chloe said.

“Exactly. And if he is to come to me again, then he must feel he can trust me.”

Chloe glanced into the woods where Dominic was presumably hiding. “Do you
want
to see him again? It seems rather a frightening thing to befriend a ghost.”

“My dear, if that is the sacrifice I must make to protect you, Pamela, and the other ladies of the parish, so be it.”

“It shall be our secret,” Chloe said stoutly.

“Very well.” Aunt Gwendolyn cast a sharp glance around the quiet garden. “I must admit I am puzzled by one thing, Chloe.”

Chloe's heart began to race again. Had she really thought to escape so easily? “What would that be?”

“What were
you
doing in the garden at this hour, Chloe? What brought you down here, if not his lordship's ghost?”