The Marquess (26 page)

She didn’t seek physical beauty. She didn’t know
what she sought other than Blanche’s safety. She wanted to cower into the
pillows as Effingham kneeled on the bed’s edge, but she wouldn’t
let him see fear. That’s what he expected to see. Reaching beyond
herself, thinking only of him, Dillian held out her arms and welcomed him to
her embrace.

She avoided looking as his manhood stiffened. That part of
him still frightened her. But the caress of his fingers on her breast as he lay
down beside her thrilled her beyond any joy she had ever experienced. She
arched upward for more, and he rewarded her with a slightly one-sided smile.
She clung to the bleak look of pain and desire in his eyes, searching for
something more, something too deeply hidden for him to reveal.

“You may despise military men, madam, but you’re
as brave as any soldier,” he praised her gruffly. “And too trusting
by far. Come here. I’ll not wait any longer.”

He frightened her with those words, but Dillian came into
the strength of his bare arms as ordered, not knowing the meaning of retreat.
Effingham lay beside her and kissed her mouth while caressing her breast. Then,
when she relaxed, he bent and took her nipple between his lips.

Dillian nearly arched from his arms as the electricity of
that touch shot through her. The marquess growled his approval of this success
and moved on to the other breast, caressing the first one with agile fingers
until Dillian thought she would melt into a puddle of hot wax. The scent of
snuffed candles drifted through the room, mixing with the musky smell of his
skin and their combined ardor. The worn sheet rubbed against her back as he
pressed her down, but she only noticed the strength of the arms and legs
pinning her against the mattress.

The marquess’s lean elegance disguised his sheer
physical power. Dillian couldn’t move unless he let her. She raised her
arms to the hard curve of his shoulders, and he pressed more kisses to her
mouth in return, but they both knew these gentle caresses merely prolonged the
inevitable.

The heat of desire throbbed through them in every place
flesh touched flesh. When he inserted his knees between her thighs, she
stiffened, but he caught her hands between his and bent to kiss her nipples
once more. This time, her legs parted of their own accord, to ease the stabbing
ache of desire between her thighs.

He held her wrists, covering her mouth with his until she
writhed with the depth of his kiss. Her powerlessness made her tense, but then
he lifted himself to seduce her breasts once again, and she relaxed, giving
herself up to the pleasure. That’s when he impaled her.

Dillian screamed but Gavin’s mouth drowned her cries.
He filled her so completely she thought she should surely burst, but he held
himself still until her torn tissues adjusted to the invasion. All her stomach
muscles pulled taut, protesting his blunt intrusion. He kissed her again, and
the warm familiarity of those kisses slowly reassured. When he did no more,
Dillian looked up into the whitened scars of his face to see him watching her.

“You’ll regret this one day,” he said
somberly, giving recognition to what she had just surrendered. But then he caressed
her, and Dillian closed her eyes and let sensation overwhelm thought.

He brought her breasts to peaks of excitement, then moved
inside her, until the moisture lubricating them made his thrusts more than bearable.
Dillian clung to his muscular upper arms, raised her hips, and felt him shudder
with need. This time, he thrust so deeply she thought herself torn asunder.
Then he jerked completely from her, and spilled his seed into the sheets.

She felt strangely bereft as he jerked and trembled atop
her. She should be grateful that he had taken this precaution, but she felt
empty and abandoned, useless somehow. Bereft. And soiled.

She wanted to turn away but couldn’t. Effingham held
her too firmly pinioned with his weight. She became more aware than ever of the
bronzed torso looming over her, of the thin lines of scars that marked his
otherwise magnificent chest, of the heavy weight pressing her deep into the
mattress.

She felt the heat emanating from him, noted the trail of
dark hairs between his flat male nipples down to his navel and beyond. It was
difficult to believe that the Dillian Whitnell she knew lay in a naked
man’s bed, thoroughly ruined, except she could feel the stickiness of her
own blood if she needed proof. She fought back tears of shame. She never looked
back and never cried.

He rolled aside but held her down with one strong arm across
her breasts. His fingers played with the peaks until she felt that restless
stirring within her womb again.

“I thought you had at least some experience,” he
muttered roughly.

“I’ve been mauled before,” she answered
without thinking of the coldness of this reply. The coldness wasn’t for
him, but for the other men who had made her feel as if she were no more than a
horse to be petted or whipped as the mood took them. And perhaps it was a
little bit for him, for the dissatisfaction she felt right now.

“I didn’t maul you,” he reminded her. “The
first time just isn’t pleasant. The necessity for caution didn’t
help. I’ll show you how to fit yourself with sponges soaked in vinegar
next time. If this is the life you mean to take up, then you should know how to
protect yourself.”

She felt humiliated, abased, reduced to a whore off the
streets. “There will be no other after you,” she ground out through
clenched teeth. “Let us keep this to the immediate. Must I use the
vinegar now?”

Dillian knew he stared at her, but she couldn’t look
at him again. The place between her legs ached abominably. How many more times
must she repeat this performance before he grew bored with it?

“I think you’re sulking because it wasn’t
as good for you as it was for me.”

She heard laughter in his voice, and she wanted to punch
him, but she refused to acknowledge his existence. The fact that he lay naked and
half on top of her made that pretense a trifle difficult.

His hand strayed between her legs, caressing her gently
there. Dillian couldn’t help the involuntary reaction of her hips as they
rose eagerly at his touch.

“After twenty-five years of abstinence, you must be
more starved for this than I am,” he murmured against her ear, just
before he captured her mouth and kissed her again.

Dillian tried resisting. She didn’t think she could
take it again this night. Perhaps tomorrow, after she’d recovered. Not
now. Not while she felt sticky and humiliated beyond redemption. But he
wouldn’t let her pull away. He coaxed his tongue between her teeth,
filled her mouth with his breath until she needed him to breathe again.

His skillful fingers caressed her in places she scarcely
dared touch herself. Her nipples hardened into tiny nubs beneath his lavish
caresses. His mouth upon them caused multiple explosions in her blood. And his
hand came back time and again to pluck and stroke sensitive tissues until she
ached with the need for him inside her.

“My lord, please,” she whispered, ashamed at her
begging.

“Gavin,” he ordered. “My name is Gavin.
Call me by it.”

Since his finger had slipped inside her to make her quake
with the desire for more, she could scarcely argue. “Gavin,” she
whispered urgently.

“Very good.” He applied his finger more
provocatively until she writhed and cried out and finally exploded into rolling
spasms that left her totally drained and as boneless as a newborn.

“That’s what I’ll do to you when I come
into you next time,” he murmured against her ear.

Next time. He would do this again and again until she had no
mind of her own, until he claimed her body and soul. Dillian could see it
coming, but already he had sapped her will until she could offer no protest.
She merely curled against his strong chest and let him hold her. His hand
stroked her buttocks, and she felt his arousal. She ought to leap from the bed
and run for safety. She merely fitted herself against him and smiled at his
groan.

* * * *

“Anglesey and Dismouth are thick as thieves,”
Michael explained, appearing the next morning without explanation of his
absence. “The earl is the older. He’s guiding His Grace through the
labyrinth of Parliament. Dismouth has his tentacles in every pie in town. He
wants a place in the cabinet, and he’s cultivated friends in high places.
Even the Regent puts on his best behavior in the earl’s presence, for
fear he will get his allowance cut otherwise.”

Dillian plucked idly at a loose thread in Blanche’s
bedcover. “What has this to do with anything?” she inquired
irritably. She hadn’t had much sleep. Her body felt a stranger to her.
And she couldn’t bear looking at the lean man lounging against the far
wall.

The marquess behaved as if they scarcely knew each other
when he’d explored her more intimately than her own mother ever had. She
resented his offhandedness, even though she understood the necessity for it. He
left her feeling hollow inside.

Michael gave her an impatient look. “Pay attention.
Dismouth has access to all the military high commands. Wellington is at his
beck and call, and all the ambassadors who worked on the Treaty of Paris report
to him. If there is anything in your father’s papers, anything at all
that might be of interest to him, Dismouth will know it.”

Dillian glanced toward Blanche, who absentmindedly stirred
at her cold cup of tea. Not finding any help in that quarter, she shrugged and
asked the obvious, “If he already knows of it, why should he want them?”

“That is what we must find out,” Michael
answered with satisfaction.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler if Miss Whitnell just
collected the journals and turned them over to a solicitor?” The marquess
didn’t stir from his corner, but his energy still permeated the room.
Even Michael turned around to glare at him.

“Don’t be such a blockhead, your noble lordship,”
O’Toole responded with some irritation. “If there’s something
of value in those papers, it belongs to the lady. And if there’s
something treasonous in those journals, all concerned are dead and buried and
there is no need for tarnishing either lady’s name with it now.”

“Then, I shall just go to London, persuade Neville and
the solicitor to hand over the books, and bring everything back here,”
Dillian declared, tired of this whole game. She wanted it over. She saw no
sense in any of it.

“And how do you mean to persuade the duke to anything?”
the marquess asked with a trace of menace.

Blanche and Michael stared at him, but Dillian just glared. “I’ll
hold him at gunpoint. Is that what you want to hear?”

“I want to hear the end of this so I might get back to
business.”

The marquess spoke matter-of-factly, without the harshness
of his words. Dillian still felt them like a blow to the belly. She sank back
into the pillows on the bed and let the others carry on the discussion. She
wanted just exactly what he wanted: this to be over so she could go on with her
life as planned.

“If it’s actually the papers they’re after
and not Lady Blanche, then it’s possible they contain evidence of someone
else’s treason,” O’Toole continued, spinning his list of
possibilities, “someone willing to pay a very high price to conceal it.
Burning down a house full of people is the act of a desperate man. If this man
believes the papers still available, he’ll stop at nothing to get his
hands on them. We must be in a position to act quickly, if so.”

Dillian idly contemplated burning down Blanche’s
London town house and the solicitor’s office, but she wasn’t quite
so desperate as that. She plucked at another thread and waited for the
irreverent O’Toole to continue.

She wondered why the marquess didn’t knock the
irritating footman flying, but she’d already decided O’Toole held
something over the marquess that kept him from retaliating. She wondered what
it was.

“How do you plan on obtaining the papers in the first
place?” the marquess asked. “Let’s deal with the problems one
at a time.”

O’Toole shrugged expressively. “I took a look in
the vault yesterday. The papers aren’t there.”

The room erupted in voices, all but Dillian’s. A
dizzying sensation spun her head back against the pillow. She didn’t
question the footman’s larcenous declaration. A man who could make coins
disappear could undoubtedly open vaults without a combination.

Her father’s papers were gone. The hollow at the pit
of her belly ached as she met the marquess’s eyes.

He didn’t believe a word of her story. His gaze told
her he would make her pay for every minute of this confusion. She could see it
in the way his glance insultingly swept from her eyes to her breasts to the place
where his body had entered hers.

When Michael announced, “His lordship and Miss
Whitnell must go to London,” the lounging figure in the corner erupted
like a cannonball from its barrel.

“The hell I will!” he yelled at the room at
large, before slamming from the chamber without a backward glance.

Michael calmly looked at Dillian. “He’s a
marquess. He’s the only one who can move about in Dismouth’s
society. He has to go. You’ll have to persuade him.”

Dillian thought he looked right through her and knew every
sinful thing she had done. The knowledge pierced her to the quick, and she slid
from the bed and out of the room without examining her motives or intentions.
She just wanted out from under O’Toole’s knowing gaze.

No matter that none of this made an ounce of sense any
longer. Whores lived in London. Why shouldn’t she?

God certainly had a strange sense of justice.

“I’ll not make a bloody ass of myself flitting
around ballrooms and salons and pretending I’m a damned aristocrat!”
the marquess yelled loud enough to rattle the filthy chandelier of the salon,
even though he and Michael were alone in the room and stood only yards apart.