Something jarred Noah awake.
He opened his eyes, the room still dark, though through the windows the sky had lost the depth of black velvet and had been tinted with the faintest wash of grey. Dawn was not far off. Beside him he could feel Elise’s warmth where she was curled against him.
He listened hard, and he heard it then, a faint creak. And he knew then why he had woken.
Very slowly, feigning a sleepy stretch, Noah turned, burying his face against Elise’s shoulder, his mouth near her ear. “Elise,” he whispered.
She came awake almost instantly.
“There is someone in the house,” he whispered.
Her breathing remained slow and even, but against his body her muscles tensed. She nodded and rolled away from him, but was back in a second. She leaned forward, brushing a kiss to his lips, covering the movements of her hand as she brought it to his under the sheets and pressed something hard into his palm. His fingers closed around it, and with a start Noah realized it was his hunting knife. She must have retrieved it from the floor next to the bed.
Through the open door, another creak reached his ears, then an indistinct scrape. He would have known that sound anywhere. It was the sound of a blade being drawn. With slow movements Noah drew his own from under the sheets and positioned his body so that he was between Elise and the doorway, as if shifting in sleep. They were cornered in this bedroom, and his only advantage would be surprise.
“I want you to get on the floor when I tell you to, understood?” Noah whispered, his head still against her neck.
Elise hesitated.
“You have no weapon.”
“It’s under the bed,” she murmured.
“What?”
“My rifle. It’s under the bed. It’s loaded.”
Noah closed his eyes. Of course it was.
There was another creak, followed by silence, and the faint smell of an unwashed body and wet wool reached his nose. In the corner of his eye, a shadow moved in the doorway, followed by a faint catch of breath. There was at least one intruder. In the suffocating silence came a grunt, the sound of fabric flapping damply as an arm was waved in some sort of gesture.
Noah watched from beneath lowered lashes as another figure separated from the one at the door, moving into the room and now faintly outlined in front of the bedroom window. The second man made a motion at the still form of Elise and then made a crude gesture at his crotch.
An icy calm settled through Noah’s body then, one he had not felt in a very long time. It bled through his veins, slowed his heart, focused his thoughts, and heightened his senses. In the blink of an eye, he was fifteen years old again, on a dark London street, fighting for his life, facing those determined to take whatever meager coin or possessions Noah had on him or die trying.
Noah had lived that day, and many others just like it in the years that followed. Just as he would live now.
If these men were smart, they would try to kill him first. One always removed the biggest threat as quickly as possible. Not only did it improve one’s chances at survival, it often broke the confidence of the others. He knew this from experience. Experience he had not wanted or asked for but had gotten all the same. Ironic that he had thought it something best forgotten. Because at this moment he was drawing on every ounce of it.
If they thought to rape Elise, they would need to kill him first. Because God help him, he would carve them apart piece by piece if they so much as laid a hand on her while he was still breathing.
The smell of the intruders became stronger. They were farther in the room, closer to the bed now, and he could hear a faint hiss of breath. Beneath him Elise pressed her fingers against his arm, just once.
And then the air around him moved and all hell broke loose.
Noah reared up and struck out as the man closest to the bed lunged down toward him, a short dagger clutched in both hands and raised over his head. Noah’s left forearm blocked the assassin’s stroke while his hunting knife caught the killer at his exposed throat. Blood spurted heavily and the man dropped the dagger, the blade clanging off the wooden floor. His hands clawed at his ruined neck, and Noah shoved him back, away from the bed.
Elise had vanished from sight, and Noah desperately hoped that she was safe where she was, somewhat protected. But he had no time to make sure because he was already on his feet, turning to face the second man, who still waited at the foot of the bed.
The stench of death now filled the room, the coppery tones of blood mixed with the darker musk of fear. The shock of the demise of his partner made the second man hesitate, enough to cost him any advantage. With a snarl Noah was on him, his mind evaluating the threat of the long dagger the man wielded. Good for stabbing, useless for slashing. They’d meant to kill them silently. They’d meant to use stealth while Elise and Noah slept, a brutal, quick attack that would have delivered a slow death, their life’s blood leaking out onto the white sheets, pooling on the floor. These men had come to kill and then slip away. They had not come prepared for a fight.
The remaining assassin struck out with his dagger, and Noah dodged back easily, hearing the man grunt with the effort. He adjusted his grip on his knife, circling slowly, cold fury making every movement deliberate and sure.
They’d have killed Elise, after they had raped her, of that he had no doubt. She might be strong and tough and resilient but she would not have been able to overpower two men on her own. Because this wasn’t a space where a rifle would be an advantage. This was an arena for the type of fighting he had learned to excel at. The type of fighting that had no rules and no conscience and where the winner got nothing except a reprieve from death.
“Drop your weapon,” Noah said evenly, “and I might let you live.”
“No.” The killer was breathing hard and backing up.
“Pity. Though I promise to make your death quick,” Noah told him, adjusting his grip on the hilt of his knife. “Which is more than you deserve.” He cocked his head, crouching slightly, simply waiting for his opportunity.
The killer wheezed and groped behind him for the door frame, his dagger wavering in the grey dark. Noah could see the whites of the man’s eyes, see the wild cast to his movements. He had suddenly realized that this was not a fight he would win and was retreating, though Noah had no intention of letting him go.
Noah lunged then, his knife slashing across the assassin’s abdomen. The man grunted and staggered back, but Noah’s hand shot out and he caught a fistful of the man’s coat. The man flailed and twisted, and yanked his arms out of the coat in utter desperation. With a sudden jerk, the killer turned faster than Noah would have thought possible, throwing a nearby chair between them, and dove through the door, slamming it behind him. Cursing, Noah kicked the chair aside and wrenched open the door, but the assassin had already retreated down the hall and was gone from view. Noah followed, but was forced to measure his movements to avoid a potential ambush.
Halfway down the hall, he became aware of a presence by his side.
“Get back in the room,” Noah hissed.
“He’s running,” Elise said, ignoring him. Her voice was cold and remote, and Noah wasn’t even sure she was talking to him.
He tried to angle himself in front of her but she was low to the ground, moving soundlessly and swiftly. She was dressed in a shirt and nothing else, her rifle in her hand, and she looked like a specter gliding through his house. It was enough to send a jolt of shock through his fury. They reached the kitchen and Noah paused, the door out to the gardens swinging, still moving on its hinges. With no hesitation Elise skirted the room and slipped through the door, Noah now hard on her heels.
On the other side of the roses, a white shirt billowed in the grey light as the assassin fled across the pastures. The man stumbled, his arms windmilling before he righted himself and kept running. Elise was still ahead of Noah, and as they cleared the rose garden, she pulled up. He heard her exhale, saw her bring the rifle to her shoulder.
“Don’t kill him,” Noah said coldly. “Dead men don’t talk.”
She didn’t look at him, but nodded almost imperceptibly. Her hands readjusted, and her finger caressed the trigger.
She fired.
In the distance the man fell, his momentum carrying him forward so that he somersaulted in the grass. Birds rose from the trees in startled surprise, careening out of sight toward the river. The killer flopped on his side and then pushed himself to his knees, crawling unevenly toward the trees.
Elise lowered her gun, the smell of powder sharp in the air.
Noah released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and crossed the remaining steps toward Elise. Elise turned to him, her face pale against the darkness of her hair.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his eyes and his hands examining her body. He was afraid to touch her and afraid not to, all at once.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not hurt.”
He enfolded her in his arms, crushing her to him, his face buried against her hair where it tumbled across her shoulders. His hand rested on her back, and he could feel her heart pounding. The barrel of the Baker was caught between them, and it was pressing uncomfortably against his ribs. It didn’t matter. He needed this contact, needed to know that she was whole. And still his.
After a minute Elise struggled to pull back, and he released his grip on her. Dark smears of blood now stained her shirt where she had been pressed against him. Her own fingers skipped over his chest, his ribs, his lower abdomen, searching for injury in the grey light.
“It’s not my blood.”
Her fingers stilled, and she looked up at him and simply nodded. It was nothing less than what he’d expected. Because, like him, she had been here before.
“Thank you,” she said.
He bent to kiss her, a hard, possessive kiss that was born of the madness and danger of the last few minutes. He did not ask her what she was thanking him for, just as he did not try to minimize his actions in that bedroom. He had done what was necessary to protect her, and he would do it again—
His mind cleared, his thoughts snapping into focus.
The icy calm that had gripped him earlier still pulsed through his veins, though it was different now. In the cells of Bedlam and on the dangerous streets of London, that same cold composure had saved his life more times than he cared to remember, but it had always been accompanied by an underlying sense of desperation. The knowledge that each situation pitted him against death. A perpetual state of kill or be killed, and one never knew where or when the next threat would come.
This was different. He was different. Standing out here, in a Nottingham rose garden, he was not a desperate youth any longer, powerless to prevent the next threat of violence that would inevitably come, directed at himself or Elise, or even Abigail. Or anyone else who might be under his protection.
The power to control the future, should he accept it, was his for the taking.
* * *
Noah had dragged the assassin back and bound the man’s feet and hands. He’d left the man lying on the packed earth in the middle of the rose garden before he’d disappeared into the house and collected the body of the first killer. Without a word Noah had slung the dead assassin over his shoulder and set off across the pasture, vanishing into the trees that lined the river. When he returned he’d been empty-handed, his face set into hard, unforgiving lines.
He’d left Elise to watch the killer who yet lived, though even had the man not been bound, he wouldn’t have been going anywhere fast. She’d hit the assassin in the back of the thigh—not her best shot, but it had done the job. The bullet was buried deep within the muscle, and his woolen breeches were soaked with blood. He’d need to find a surgeon within the next few hours. Ugly things happened to deep wounds like that if they were not attended to promptly.
Now Noah prowled across the garden and back. He’d donned his breeches but not his shirt, and his chest and arms were streaked with blood and sweat. Muscles and sinew flexed and rippled as he moved, slowly and with cold purpose. His hair hung over his forehead, damp curls plastered to his skin, and beneath his brow his eyes blazed with a chilling, feral fury. His hand was still wrapped around the hilt of his hunting knife, and the blade gleamed with a wash of crimson, a macabre color in the early rays of dawn.
Elise watched, silent. This was a Noah she’d never seen. It had startled her at first, this transformation. This was a street fighter, a man pushed to his limits who had pushed back and done so with a lethal efficiency. He fought hard, he fought smart, and in the end he had fought for her and beside her. There had been no hesitation. There had been no second-guessing. He’d been powerful and magnificent, dangerous and utterly ruthless. And it stole her breath and left her weak-kneed. And wholly aroused.
Noah stopped near the feet of the assassin. A man who made death his trade could recognize it when it stared him in the face, and he struggled before collapsing back into the dirt.
“How much did Francis Ellery pay you to kill me?” Noah asked in a bored, detached tone.
The man set his mouth into a hard line. “I’m not going to say nothing,” he muttered.
“Yes, well, that is certainly true.” Noah crouched down and gestured to the man’s leg with the tip of his knife. “You’ll be dead in two hours. Maybe three. And any chance you might have had to say something and save yourself will be long gone.”
The thin-faced assassin glared at Noah through reddened eyes.
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it was Ellery paid you, it wasn’t enough to cover your life.”
“Fifty pounds,” the man blurted. “He paid us fifty pounds.”
“Fifty pounds?” Noah repeated.
“Twenty-five up front, twenty-five when it was done.”
Noah examined the tip of his blade. “Bloody hell, but have I been away from London so long that dukes are worth so little?” His face was set in hard lines, and his words were sharp. And deliberate. And sure.
Elise felt something soar within her.
“A duke?” The man’s head fell back on the ground, and he groaned. “He never said you were a duke.”
“Ah well, I’m sure that little detail slipped his mind in his clumsy rush to claim the ducal throne. I know I probably don’t look the part at the moment, but then I hadn’t expected your colleague to bleed quite so much in his attempt to kill me. A very unpleasant business, the assassination of a duke. Really, you ought to have demanded more money.”
The man at his feet swore.
“And then there is, of course, the issue I have with your intentions toward the lady.”
The assassin’s eyes cut toward Elise where she was leaning on the Baker, still dressed only in her shirt. “That ain’t no lady—” he managed to sneer, before the tip of Noah’s knife twisted into the fabric of his trousers near his groin.
“Careful,” Noah said.
“She shot me!”
“And I might ask her to do it again.” Noah considered him, his knife twisting just an inch. “Or not. I should think you owe her an apology.”
“What?” The killer looked at Noah as though he’d lost his mind.
“You were planning on raping her, then killing her, I believe. Or perhaps the other way around? Either way, I take exception to it. Apologize.”
“You’re crazy,” the assassin wheezed.
“So I’ve been told.” Noah smiled an empty smile. His knife slid along the fall of the man’s breeches, the buttons sliding to the earth as the threads were neatly sliced.
“I’m sorry,” the killer gasped in Elise’s direction.
Noah pushed himself to his feet. “I thought so. Don’t go anywhere,” he said, his voice glacial. “If you behave, I might remember to take you out towards town when we leave and deposit you in the vicinity of a proper surgeon.” He glanced at Elise before looking back. “Everyone knows the forests can be dangerous. Poachers and the like. Bad luck to be mistaken for a side of venison, though a sight more believable than explaining how you got shot while trying to kill a duke.”
The assassin cursed again.
Noah turned to Elise. “Come with me.” His eyes were hot and hard, and an electrified thrill went straight up her spine and her skin pebbled with gooseflesh.
He caught her hand in his and led her into the house through the open kitchen door, slamming it behind him with his foot. Noah turned, spinning her around and pressing her back against its solid surface. “You’re shaking,” he said. He took the rifle from her hand and set it aside, along with his knife.
“Yes.” She hadn’t known until he said it. She’d been aware only of the arousal that was clawing its way through her, a desperate need that had left her wet and wanting and unsteady.
“You’re safe, Elise.”
“I know that,” she breathed, looking up at him, drowning in the heat and the power that blazed from his every pore. “That’s not why I’m shaking.”
* * *
He went still before his mouth was on hers, his fingers yanking at the bottom of her shirt, shoving it up over her hips, his hands on the smooth skin of her ribs and her lower back. He had known it was coming, this storm. It had been building in him, emotions dammed inside that demanded a physical release. A release that would validate the realization that they were still alive when death had come so very near. It heightened his senses, set fire to his blood, and made every touch almost unbearable in its sharp ecstasy.
Elise was wrenching the buttons of his breeches, pulling at the fall until it fell open. His cock sprang free from where it had been straining against the fabric, and she took his length in her hand, closing her fingers around him, and white-hot pleasure roared through him. He groaned, a guttural sound that was torn from somewhere deep within.
“I need you,” he said hoarsely, and it was the only warning she had before he bent, his hands cupping her ass, and he hauled her up against him.
Elise wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, inching herself up until he could feel the length of him slide through the slick heat of her sex. He pushed them harder against the door, pinning her back and shoulders and moving one hand between them, guiding the head of his cock to her entrance. Her head fell back against the door, her eyes glittering, a feverish color staining her cheekbones. Without a second’s hesitation, he thrust himself deep.
She whimpered and tightened her legs, a vise of trembling muscle wrapped around his waist. Her entire body was straining now, and her hips jerked, hard, fast movements that lacked control as she sought release. He didn’t want control. He wanted her, all of her as she was, uninhibited and unreserved. Alive.
He tightened his hands on her backside, and he moved then, deliberately driving into her wet heat, hearing the tiny, broken sounds of pleasure she made with each thrust. The friction of their bodies was relentless, the pleasure vicious and hot. It was too much and not enough at the same time. She bore down on him, and just like that, he felt her inner muscles convulse around him and she cried out, her fingers clamping into the muscles of his shoulders, her face buried in the hollow of his throat.
His vision dimmed, the roar of release streaking through his very bones, an inferno of fire and flame. Then the waves of pleasure came, one after the other, with such savage intensity that it left him gasping for air. He thrust hard, once, twice, before he pulled himself all the way out and spilled himself at the cleft of her buttocks. He was shaking and spent, and if Elise hadn’t been wrapped so tightly around him and braced against the door, he might have simply slid to the ground.
He held them there, each of them breathing hard. Presently Elise unfolded her legs and slid along his body to find her own feet, her arms still wrapped around his neck.
“I was afraid,” he said, realizing the truth as he spoke it. “Not for me. For you. Afraid I might have lost you.” His forehead was against hers, their sweat mingling.
“I’m right here,” she whispered, her breathing not yet settled.
“I know.”
Elise lifted her head, and her eyes searched his. “What happens now, Your Grace?”
She had called him by his title before and he had always rejected the address, resisted the truth. But then he hadn’t been ready. Perhaps then he had lacked the understanding or the faith in himself to do what needed to be done. No longer.
“Collect the sheets in the bedroom and burn them. See what you can do about the floor. I’ll leave her a note, but I don’t want Mrs. Pritchard thinking I killed you when she gets back. Or alternatively, that you killed me.”
There was a heady power in those words, a beginning of…something that had been missing for far too long.
“Very good, Your Grace,” Elise replied, her mouth curving into a slow smile.
“I’ll need to send word to the neighbors and arrange to have the Carter boys look after the farm for a while.” Noah was thinking out loud. He glanced down at his bloodstained chest and then at Elise’s wildly tumbled hair and her soiled shirt. “How long until you can be ready to depart?”
“Not long, Your Grace.” There was approval shining from her eyes. Approval and something else that made him catch his breath.
“Good.” The Duke of Ashland met her eyes. “We’re going to London.”