The Sinner (25 page)

“I have never seen anything more beautiful than you in your passion, darling.”

The slow caresses on her back, her bottom, her thighs pushed her past control. She heard the notes of wonder and pleading on her own gasping breaths. The waiting became wonderful and unbearable.

His other hand lifted her shoulder. “Kneel.”

She did not understand. He showed her. Hands on one side of his thighs and knees on the other, she propped herself. He reached below to caress her breasts, and the sensation was so intense her whole body shuddered. Her hips squirmed impatiently as his other hand ventured closer, closer.

“Part your knees more.”

She did, half insane with furious need.

The touch made her cry out. She heard the sound on the edges of her awareness. The way he touched her nipples only intensified the sensation. He kept creating more hunger even as he partly relieved it.

He moved the caress to her back and bottom again. His fingers trailed along her cleft to touch her from the rear. Her body arched into it, hips rising and shoulders lowering, demanding more, anxious for relief and completion.

The movement made her arm press his phallus. In her stupor she turned her head and kissed it.

He instantly went completely still.

A wicked sense of power tinged her abandon. She kissed again, right on the tip. “No?”

His fingers twisted into the hair on her head. “Yes.” His voice sounded a little savage.

She rearranged herself a little and kissed again. A different arousal and madness owned her now. She flicked her tongue, very pleased with her own boldness. It was not nearly as scandalous in the doing as in the thinking. She used her mouth more aggressively.

The fingers in her hair tensed and lifted her head up. He claimed her in a furious, ravishing kiss that left her mind and lips numb.

He laid her down and bent her knees high to her chest and entered her deeply, so deeply that she felt him touch her womb. Rising on his arms, he withdrew entirely and entered again, slowly and completely. Her vulva throbbed with the fullness of him and with expectation when he left.

His face remained hard with control and determined passion. The slow, commanding thrusts continued, demanding that her passion rise with his. Her own body was grateful to accept and submit and follow once more.

The end was hardly gentle, but she did not care. Her own passion welcomed his wild intensity and ruthless domination. She loved feeling and seeing his completion. She reveled in the hard, deep thrusts that bound them together in a beautiful madness.

Most of all, however, she loved the way he slept beside her afterward, in an embrace that kept them heart to heart.

“Has my wife gone down yet, Hornby?”

“It is not for me to notice such things, sir.”

“Certainly. However, has she?”

“Since you demand it of me, Mrs. Duclairc left her chambers a while ago.”

Dante turned to leave his as well.

“However, I do not think that you will find her below, sir, if that is the reason for your question.” Hornby walked over to the open window and inhaled deeply. “Such a lovely morning this is. It is mornings such as this that beckon one to a long turn amidst grass and flowers.”

Dante could not muster any annoyance at this indication that Fleur still walked out alone in the mornings. After last night, he would be incapable of anger over anything that she wanted to do.

“I think that I will take a turn in the park, Hornby. Is there any spot in particular that is singularly pleasant in the mornings?”

“I have heard the footman Christopher say that strolling around the reservoir is quite lovely this time of day.”

Dante left the house and walked the few blocks to Stanhope Gate and entered Hyde Park. At this hour no carriages rolled down the lanes and only a few people strolled. Women dotted the green, accompanied by maids or friends. Several older men walked by briskly, taking deliberate exercise. Most of the noise came from the songs of birds.

He strolled slowly, enjoying the quiet and the odd experience of visiting this park merely to enjoy its beauty. He rarely came here except for the reasons most people did, to see and be seen. The park merely served as a stage for the social dramas of the fashionable hour.

He decided that he liked it just as much now. He understood why Fleur walked here most mornings. He looked forward to sharing it with her today.

He approached the reservoir and surveyed the landscape, looking for Fleur. He could see no woman at all, just a man walking away toward the Grosvenor Gate beyond it. He stopped and looked all around.

He turned and swept his gaze over the rest of the park, looking for a figure in a hooded cloak. All of the women he could see were decked out more fashionably.

He must have missed her. She had probably been leaving through one gate as he entered through another.

Deciding to take a turn around the reservoir anyway, he ambled toward it.

He strolled around, looking more to the ground than the park or water, thinking about last night and the last days. His mind turned to Fleur’s school and her Grand Project and the likelihood that either would come to fruition.

He laughed to himself. Farthingstone claimed she was addled. Far from it, although there were many men who would think any woman who dared dream up such a scheme was totally mad.

She was hardly mad. Audacious and smart, but not mad. He was still accommodating himself to just what he had in her.

He passed a section of the reservoir where some reeds had taken root. Out of the corner of his eye he saw their vertical lines and the way the water pooled around them.

Something else caught his eye and pulled him out of his thoughts. He turned and looked at the water. A five count passed before he accepted what he was seeing.

A yell roared through him, both soundless and deafening. Too horrified to think, he laid down on the reservoir wall and reached toward the dark shadows floating just below the surface, fluttering in languid folds.

He grabbed one edge and his heart stopped. He knew what it was. Just knew. Pulling hand over hand, he dragged up the cloth and could feel how a weight held it down in the water. He pulled harder and a body bobbed at the surface.

The roar in his head became a howl. A vicious, savage, terrified yell. He grabbed her body and hauled her up. The sodden cloak fought him. He got her face above water and dragged her to the reservoir’s edge and up on the ground.

Half-blind, his gaze shot around. Small dots moved in the distance, too far away to respond to a call for help. He yelled one anyway as he turned Fleur on her side and began forcing the water out of her.

Time slowed. His blood raced. She looked dead. He turned her stomach-down anyway and pressed her back. Water left her mouth in a steady stream.

Then he saw the blood.

It oozed through her hair, mixing with her damp locks, adding to the wetness. He bent closely even as he continued pressing her back and saw the wound on the back of her head.

For an instant, primitive fury cracked through him. The next moment it was gone, replaced by an icy-cold resolve.

He would kill whoever had done this, even if she lived. If she died, he would kill the man
slowly
.

A sound broke through his horror. The smallest cough shook Fleur’s body. He turned her on her side again and coaxed another out of her. Water spewed out of her mouth as a convulsion racked her.

He laid his palm against her face and felt some warmth beneath the chill. “Come back, darling. Look at me.”

Her lashes fluttered. Her body flexed. Her lids rose. Her eyes appeared sightless for a few dreadful heartbeats, then focused on him.

“Dante.”

“Do not speak. Do not move.” He released the cloak so it fell away from her body. He stripped off his frock coat and tucked it around her. He wanted to weep with relief. Only caring for her kept him composed. The total realization of what he had almost lost began penetrating his shock, terrifying him.

A curricle approached on the closest path. Kneeling, he lifted Fleur in his arms. As he stood, his body reacted to the weight, but he ignored it. He could have carried her a mile if he had to.

He bore her around the reservoir, shouting for the carriage to stop.

“You should calm yourself before you go to her,” Laclere said. They paced together in Fleur’s sitting room while a physician attended her in the bedroom. “She should not see you like this.”

“Like what?”

“With murder in your eyes.”

Dante strolled over to the mantel and examined the porcelain figures it held.

His brother was wrong. He did not need to calm himself. He had never been calmer in his life.

“It will not be murder. Burchard will return soon and tell me where to find him.”

“Calling out a man like Farthingstone is as good as murder. You do not even know for certain that he—”

“I do not need lectures from you, today of all days. I
know
he arranged this. If it were your wife lying in there, you would not be so damnably dispassionate. If you are here to dissuade me, get out.”

Vergil sat in the chair near Fleur’s
secrétaire
. “My apologies. Of course you must deal with the man as you choose.” He paused. “I am not dispassionate, Dante. I have been where you are, when the woman I loved was endangered. I may have challenged a man in the name of a different person and a different honor, but my heart was not so pure.”

Dante folded his arms and looked at the cold hearth. Vergil was speaking of that duel, fought to protect the honor of their dead older brother. It was a topic they had never discussed. Vergil had demanded to stand to that man, but now admitted more had motivated him than his right of precedence or fear that Dante would fail.

It was a generous confession, in ways Vergil probably did not know. It dimmed Dante’s anger at his brother’s attempts to mollify him.

“Farthingstone had a man following her,” he said, to reassure his brother. “He knew that she walked in the park in the mornings. I saw the man once, and Farthingstone told me enough of her movements to indicate this man had trailed her for some time.”

“Do you know why he had her followed?”

“To accumulate evidence that her mind was not right and her judgment impaired.” He shook his head. “Better for her if he had succeeded in killing me instead. When I think how close . . . a few more minutes—”

“Do not think of that. She is safe and that is the important thing.” Vergil got up and came over to the mantel. “However, what is this about succeeding in killing you?”

Before Dante could answer, the door to the corridor opened and Adrian Burchard entered.

“Where is the bastard?” Dante asked.

“Not in London. His manservant said he went down to his house in Essex.”

“It appears that you will have to wait to confront him,” Vergil said.

“I want to know when he returns to London. I want to make sure he is nowhere near Fleur until I can deal with him.”

“I know a good man who will watch the Essex house if you want,” Adrian said. “As soon as Farthingstone sets foot off that property, he will let us know.”

“Do you know another one who will watch Siddel?”

“It can be arranged.”

“Siddel? What has he to do with this?” Vergil demanded. “And what was that business about someone trying to kill you? When did this happen, and why wasn’t I told of it?”

“Ask St. John,” Dante said. The physician had just opened the door to Fleur’s bedroom and beckoned.

Vergil headed for the corridor with an expression that said St. John was in for a severe interrogation.

“I am not ill, Dante.”

“You have had a shock and you will rest.”

Fleur sank back on the pillows and suffered his attention as he tucked the bedclothes around her.

She did not have the heart to argue with him. He had saved her life, after all. Concern had veiled his expression since he entered the bedchamber and banished Charlotte and the physician and taken over her care himself.

He had also kindly not mentioned that he would not have had to save her if she had taken an escort when she walked in the park.

Mostly, however, she did not argue because the experience had left her docile and frightened. The specter of death kept breathing on her neck, as if refusing to leave unsatisfied.

“I will rest if you say I must, but I do not think I will sleep. Could you ask Charlotte to come back?”

“I will stay with you if you don’t want to be alone, Fleur.”

“I would rather not be. Not yet.”

He pulled a chair near the bed and sat in it, propping his boot on the bed’s edge. “I think that we will pass the time in a little game, since you are indisposed and cannot be seduced.”

She laughed. Her heart glowed at this evidence that he remembered those hours in the cottage as well as she did.

“What kind of game?”

“Not that kind. That will have to wait until you have recovered. This is a simple one. I will ask you questions, and you will answer them.”

“If I play this game, do you promise to play the other kind when I am recovered?”

“Certainly.”

“Another new one? I still have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Darling, I am trying to be good even though you look adorable in that bed. Even the bandage becomes you. You could help a little and not tempt me by offering anything I want.”

“My apologies. Ask your first question.”

“Could you recognize the man who passed you as you took a turn around the reservoir?”

“Not with certainty. I was not watching him. I was walking, he approached, we passed, and then . . .” And then she remembered nothing at all until she opened her eyes and saw Dante looking down at her with eyes wild with worry.

She felt the bandage wrapping her head. “I suppose he hit me with something.”

The humor had left Dante’s eyes. Talk of the attack had turned them into sparking, cold crystals.

“Are there more questions?”

“Is there any reason why Farthingstone would want to keep you from building that school?”