Untouched (21 page)

“Yes.” The drugs thickened her voice. “What time is it?”

He checked the silver pocket watch he’d left on the bedside table. “Twenty past three. Would you like some water?”

She smiled, then flinched as the movement tested her torn lip. “Yes, please.”

He left the bed and filled a glass from the crystal decanter on the chest. “How do you feel?”

“Like a coach and four have run over me,” she said wryly, lifting herself with difficulty and accepting the drink in a

trembling hand. “Twice.”

He managed a smile, although in truth her suffering made him too angry to feel much amusement. “Can I get you

anything?”

“No.” An unsteady breath. “I want you to hold me.”

“I might hurt you,” he said, even while he itched to comply. Not so he could make love to her, although desire charged

the still air. It always would when he was with her. But desire, for once, wasn’t the most urgent thing. Love, tenderness,

care were what mattered now.

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“Matthew, I…I need you.”

How could he deny her? God, he’d die for her if she asked him.

He waited for her to take a few sips then removed the glass. With great care, he slid under the sheets, immediately feeling

her warmth.

How cold his life would be without her. Like darkest winter. Like the grave.

He heaped the pillows behind his head and gently drew her toward him. She didn’t need to tell him she was in pain. It

was clear from the way she gingerly rested her head on his shoulder. She curled against his side and stretched her arm

across his chest.

“That’s better,” she sighed, burrowing one hand beneath his shirt so it lay over his grieving heart. The sweet scent of

Grace washed over him, sunshine, woman, jasmine soap. And a teasing hint of herbal liniment.

She was shaking. For Grace, terror still stalked this quiet room.

Since she’d become Matthew’s lover, he’d existed in a brittle paradise. He’d always known his joy was precarious but

he’d refused to recognize the risks he ran by clinging to his darling. Risks that today had exploded into violence.

“Do you know the worst part of what happened this afternoon?” she asked in a husky voice.

Unfortunately, he did. He’d been bound and beaten often enough. “The sense of utter powerlessness,” he said grimly.

“Yes,” she whispered as if mere acknowledgment eased her. She sounded drowsy. The drugs he’d given her lingered in

her system.

“Sleep, Grace,” he said softly. “I’ll keep you safe.”

The promise emerged from deep within. He’d protect her from Filey, Monks, and his uncle. Whatever the cost.

The cost was likely to be his sanity, if not his life.

For her sake, he must act. For her sake and his own, if he was to have any claim to be a man.

He stared out into the candlelit room while Grace slept. His brief paradise had disintegrated to dust. Cruel truth looked

him straight in the eye.

Grace couldn’t remain on the estate. Even if he managed to keep her out of Filey’s clutches, too many other hazards

lurked.

Matthew had long ago lost the chance for a normal life. But a woman like Grace belonged to the world. She deserved

happiness with a decent man who would love her and care for her and give her children. That man could never be

Matthew Lansdowne. Much as he’d barter his soul to say he was.

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He had to come up with an escape plan for her. Then, once she was free and safe, he’d end his uncle’s reign of evil

forever.

Ten uneasy days passed. Matthew cursed each second that Grace remained on the estate and in danger, even though

anticipating her departure was like bathing in acid.

His determination to spirit her away never wavered. He only had to recall Filey’s hulking body jammed between her bare

legs and the sickening thud of the brute’s fists on her flesh. Each moment she spent as Lord John’s captive, she was at

risk.

Filey slunk about, bruised, limping, sulking, sporting an increasingly filthy bandage on his arm where Wolfram’s teeth

had broken the skin. He seemed cowed, but Matthew didn’t fool himself that the threat had passed.

Grace’s bruises had almost gone and her grazes weren’t severe enough to scar. Little other evidence remained of the

frightened, tearful woman whose injuries he’d tended. The only long-term effects he noted were a new desperation in her

passion and a reluctance to stray far from his side.

With every day, he loved her more. He wouldn’t have thought that possible, but it was true. When he buried himself deep

inside her, he felt they shared blood, breath, souls. So often the wordsI love you surged up to push at the back of his teeth.

So far he’d managed to stifle unwelcome declarations. The memory was too vivid of how she’d recoiled when he’d told

her before.

Grace called him a brave man, but he wasn’t brave enough to risk rejection again.

She wanted him. She trusted him. She seemed to like him. She just didn’t love him.

Which hurt like the very devil.

His eternally fascinating Grace sat opposite him now on the couch. Twilight drew in and they shared the hour before

dinner. Her presence soothed his troubled thoughts, even if nothing could dispel them. He glanced across from his

armchair near the unlit fire and marveled yet again that such a glorious woman should be his.

Because for now she was unequivocally his.

She reclined against the arm of the couch in an unconsciously seductive pose. One elegant hand held a half-full glass. Her

crimson gown was tight enough to make a whore blush. The rich color made her skin look like new milk.

His eyes dipped to where the fiendishly low neckline barely covered her nipples. He licked his lips as if he already tasted

their sweetness.

Soon.

Desire stirred lazily in his veins. Later, when he held her naked in his arms, it would blaze into a conflagration. In this

quiet room, appetite was a gentle fizz in his blood, an alluring whisper of pleasure to come.

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She’d piled her hair high, leaving silky tendrils to tease bare shoulders. How he longed to festoon that slender neck with

cascades of rubies. Rubies, diamonds, pearls, emeralds. Never sapphires. Not even the finest sapphires could rival the

beauty of her eyes.

He had no jewels to offer, only his longing, loving heart. To his aching regret, he knew she’d never covet that poor prize.

She raised her glass and sipped at the rich red liquid the same color as her dress. Such a simple thing to make the breath

hitch in his throat.

She was everything he wanted. The prospect of her leaving pierced his guts like a saber.

He hadn’t told her she must go. Until he had a firm plan, he saw no point in raising hopes of freedom. Of course she’d

leap at the chance of escape. She’d be a fool not to.

A tiny frown contracted her fine dark brows. “What’s wrong, Matthew?”

He forced himself to smile. He strove to hide his disquiet but she knew him so well. “That dress needs rubies.”

She shrugged. “I don’t care about jewels.”

He knew she didn’t. But that didn’t stop him from regretting that he’d never bedeck her with glittering treasure. His mind

conjured a breathtaking image of her draped in nothing except ropes of shining stones.

“What’s that?” she asked, turning toward the window which sat ajar to catch the soft spring air.

“I just…” He wondered how she’d guessed the lascivious images slinking through his head. Then he too heard the

carriage rumbling up the drive to stop in front of the cottage.

Only one man had unlimited entrée to the estate. Lord John’s arrival was unwelcome but no surprise. Monks would have

informed him of events last week. Matthew set his crystal glass down on a side table with an audible clink. Animal

wariness banished his sensual imaginings.

“It’s my uncle.” He rose and moved to stand at Grace’s side like a palace guard protecting his beautiful young queen.

“Your uncle?” she said breathlessly, beginning to stand.

“Courage, love.” The endearment slipped out before he could stop it. He placed one hand on her shoulder, feeling the

fragile network of bone and sinew under the satiny skin. “Don’t let him see you’re afraid.”

“I am afraid,” she whispered, subsiding under the downward pressure. Beneath his fingers, her pulse fluttered like a

trapped bird.

A brawny lackey opened the door to the salon and his uncle swept in with a retinue of three footmen wearing the dark

green Lansdowne livery. He stopped a few feet away from Matthew and the woman poised in rigid silence on the sofa.

“Good evening, Matthew.” He removed his leather gloves and high-crowned hat and handed them to one of the servants

who bowed and left.

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“Uncle,” Matthew said in an expressionless voice.

Lord John glanced around with the supercilious expression familiar from hundreds of previous visits. He waved his cane

at the remaining two footmen. “Build up the fire, close the windows and curtains, then wait outside.”

The servants bustled around the room, turning it into a stuffy greenhouse. When they left, the door’s discreet click echoed

loudly in the vibrating, airless silence.

“I am most displeased with you, nephew,” Lord John said when it became apparent nobody was going to ask what he was

doing here.

The power games were childish, Matthew knew, but they were all he had. Over the years, he’d become adept at unsettling

his uncle. Now he bent his head in an insolent approximation of a bow. “My commiserations, Uncle.”

As expected, his uncle ignored the sarcasm. Instead and with an unmistakable air of ownership, he lowered himself into

the vacated armchair and rested his hands on the huge lump of amber set into the top of his cane. There was a prehistoric

fly trapped in the gold. The spiteful symbolism had never been lost on Matthew.

His uncle’s narrow mouth set in sour lines. “I was in Scotland on the King’s business when I received disturbing reports

that you’d attacked one of your warders.”

“One of my warders attacked this lady,” Matthew returned coldly. Grace’s fading bruises indicated what had happened

eloquently enough.

Her chin tilted with cool pride. Her face was as pale and perfect as a marble effigy on a tomb. She hadn’t risen to curtsy.

His uncle would register the insult although he gave no sign he even noticed her.

Lord John paused. “Whatever the truth, I find myself concerned about developments. The wench has proven a

disappointment. I should have realized that she wouldn’t suit my purposes. I will replace her.”

Aha, battle was engaged, Matthew thought with savage satisfaction. After an unusually brief preliminary skirmish. His

uncle liked to toy with his victims, watch them run hither and yon in a futile bid to escape his fiendish nets. The

abruptness of this attack indicated Lord John was more rattled than he appeared.

Excellent.

Matthew curled his fingers reassuringly upon Grace’s shoulder. The muscles under his hand were tight. She knew what

his uncle meant by the wordreplace.

“On the contrary, Mrs. Paget is all I could wish her to be,” he said smoothly.

His uncle tried and failed to adopt a friendly man-of-the-world tone. “Come, lad. Believe me, she’s a paltry milk-water

chit. You need a woman who knows how to please a man. You have no grounds for comparison when it comes to a fuck.”

Grace gave a tiny start and a shamed wash of pink colored her cheeks. It must pain her intolerably to realize that his uncle

knew to the day when she’d started sharing Matthew’s bed.

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“Mrs. Paget stays,” he said implacably.

These days John Lansdowne was unused to anyone defying him. Anger flashed in the arctic eyes and the thin hands

clenched on the cane. As each year passed, he became more lordly, as though gradually he took on every trapping of the

marquessate except the title. That the title remained forever barred to him was a source of infinite regret, Matthew knew.

“You’ll forget her soon enough when a red-blooded jade warms your sheets. Mrs. Paget threw herself on my mercy last

time I was here and begged me to remove her. My boy, you must see it’s wrong to force a respectable woman to whore

herself.”

“I’m sure the guilt keeps you awake at night,” Matthew said with heavy irony.

“You will never release me, Lord John.” Grace’s words sliced through the atmosphere of building animosity like a crystal

knife. “I know too much. You mean to kill me.”

Lord John’s eyebrows, graying copies of Matthew’s, arched disdainfully. “Madam, you overestimate your significance.”

“I believe not, my lord.” Contempt dripped from each word.

“You’re very bold now you’re my nephew’s harlot,” his uncle said equally coldly. “What of the virtuous widow?”

Grace flinched at the wordharlot but she retained her regal manner. “Better a harlot than a bully and a fraud and a thief,

my lord.”

“Why, you insolent slut!” His uncle surged to his feet and raised his hand.

Before the blow made contact, Matthew lunged forward to stand as a barrier before his uncle. As he moved, Grace