By train, Allen’s End was only two-odd hours from London. Olivia remembered how this revelation had once amazed her. She had spent most her life watching her mother wait, pale and frustrated, for Bertram’s rare appearances—and when he’d arrived, how he had grumbled, what a fuss he had made, over the pains of the journey! Olivia had imagined Bertram like the Marco Polo of her picture books, and Allen’s End, the end of an English Silk Route, reached only after braving innumerable perils.
Even once she was older, she’d imagined that there must be more to the journey than the maps suggested. To a girl of fourteen or fifteen, after all, Allen’s End did feel like the end of the world—a place that time had abandoned, with London as distant as China.
But on a dreary evening seven years ago, she had boarded the train at half-past six. And at a quarter before nine that night, the conductor had announced Charing Cross. Olivia had been nursing enough determination and grief to carry her all the way to China, so her prompt arrival had left her vaguely disappointed.
Now she was making the journey in reverse, in a first-class compartment that Marwick had booked completely—for privacy, he’d said. That announcement had amply distracted her. She’d envisioned all manner of reasons he might require privacy for the journey, most of them torrid. Could one be ravished on a train? How would the mechanics work?
She’d rather looked forward to finding out. It had been somewhat anticlimactic to wake alone in the flat this morning, with no more evidence than a smudge of blood—hardly respectable even for a nosebleed—to prove what had happened last night. And in the morning light, after a solid, dreamless rest, she’d felt so much better, so much more herself, that all the mad events of yesterday—the ambush at the park; the hours in prison; Marwick’s rescue, and the strange, feverish hours that had followed; the feel of his skin against hers, and that shocking, complete possession—all of it seemed fantastical, half remembered, like a fading dream.
Only the small smudge of blood said otherwise.
When Marwick had finally appeared, she had expected . . . something, she wasn’t sure what, to have changed between them. But there’d barely been time to exchange greetings. He’d entered like a storm cloud, a valise in hand, which he’d opened to reveal a dress that she’d been forced, last week, to abandon, it having been in the possession of his laundress at the time of her flight.
“Change,” he’d said. “We have tickets for half past nine.” And any chance for revelations (to say nothing of shyness, or another go at debauchery) had been lost in the haste with which he’d hustled her into the coach, out through Charing Cross station, and onto the train.
Now Marwick sat across from her, making a silent perusal of the stack of newspapers he’d purchased on the platform, which somehow had kept him thoroughly absorbed for the last two hours, though she knew that in the normal course, it did not take him half that time to read every paper that London had to offer. He was deliberately ignoring her. Why? In her confusion, she could not quite find her bearings.
She stared at his hands.
Those same hands, long-fingered, rings gleaming (three of them now; they were, as she’d predicted, accumulating), were the same hands that had touched her last night. Those full lips (now pressed in a grim line, though a moment ago they had looked quite relaxed) had wandered over her body and spoken hushed, fervent words against her skin. I would spend a thousand years here, he’d said.
The memory made her breasts feel odd and tight, too full for her stays to contain. She took a deep breath.
He looked up. “What?”
She gave him a guileless smile. “What do you mean, what?”
He looked pointedly back to his newspaper.
With a sigh, she looked out the window. The morning was gray and wet, and the constant drizzle made it look as though the marshy bogs were boiling. She felt his eyes on her. But when she glanced back, he was absorbed in the news.
She shifted in her seat, making the springs creak.
His eyes still on his reading, he slid a newspaper across the table toward her.
She had already tried to read one, but she had not been able to focus. Now, dutifully, she scanned the headlines again, wondering at how little interest they stirred. It was not her way to look on tidings of national crises, of unrest in Afghanistan, of Russian threats and famine in Egypt, with the indifference of some vapid miss.
She frowned. Had he done something to her last night? She did not believe that a woman’s virtue lay in her physical integrity. But had he corrupted her somehow at the mental level? For all she could concentrate on was him.
He was slumped in his seat, the newspaper hitched at an angle that obscured his face. Frowning, she studied what she could see of him. His jacket fell open to show his flat belly beneath a pin-striped waistcoat. His trousers clung to his lean hips and the length of his muscled thighs, which had felt hard to the touch, and flexed so powerfully . . .
His thumb was stroking over the newsprint. This slow, idle stroke riveted her. He had been inside her.
And now he would not even look at her! Suddenly, she could not bear his aloofness. “Was I such a disappointment to you, then?”
His thumb stilled. “What?”
“Last night? Was I such a disappointment?”
The newspaper lowered, revealing his widened eyes. “What?”
Perhaps his mind had been corrupted, too. “Your vocabulary seems much diminished this morning.”
He folded down the newspaper to reveal his whole face. He must have shaved while at his house this morning. His jaw looked clean and sharp against his tightly knotted tie. Her fingers itched to feel the temporary smoothness of his skin. “You’re making no sense,” he said levelly.
“You’re behaving oddly all around. I believe I’m the one who should properly feel shy. I am the woman, after all.”
His jaw squared. He laid down the newspaper. “Don’t be ludicrous.”
That retort seemed somewhat more forceful than merited. She felt a glimmer of mischief. “You’re not feeling shy, are you?”
To her amazement—and, yes, her delight—the color rose in his face. “Shy, by God—”
“You’re avoiding my eyes,” she said. “You could not have hustled me out of that flat more quickly this morning. And now you’re refusing to have a conversation. Are you afraid that you disappointed me? For I assure you, it wouldn’t have been possible. I wasn’t expecting much—”
He made a choking sound.
“Oh, dear.” She reached for her discarded cup of tea, brought an hour ago by the obsequious conductor. “Would you like some of this? And don’t misunderstand me; it was quite nice. Last night, I mean.”
He pushed the cup away. “I don’t want any damned—” Teeth snapping together, he stared at her. “Are you needling me deliberately?”
“No.” Perhaps. “Only I’m simply wondering—”
He raked a hand through his hair, knocking off his top hat. “You are the most brazen, shameless . . .”
She stiffened. Shameless, was she? “Forgive me; am I meant to pretend it didn’t happen? Or simply that I didn’t like it?”
He froze, hand planted in his hair. Something else came into his face then, narrowing his eyes and lending him a predatory air; his nostrils flared, and a slight smile worked its way onto his mouth.
“No,” he said. “No need to pretend. I could feel how much you liked it.”
She felt overwarm, suddenly. “Well, then . . .”
“But it has not changed anything else.” He straightened and took up the newspaper again, staring at it—though not, she would wager, seeing a single word. “We will work together to undo Bertram. But that is all you may expect from me. You understand that, of course.”
It should not have stung. But some stupid, girlish, hopeless part of her was stung by his coldness—a very large part of her, in fact. Almost all of her.
Which in turn made her feel numb with horror.
What had she expected? That he would bemoan his own dishonor, and propose marriage? He never meant to marry again. And, even if he did mean to marry, what could he offer her? A dukedom, very well. She made a sour face at herself. But what she wanted was safety. A place to belong. Not a husband who would wake up one morning desiring to reclaim his old life, only to discover that he’d married a bastard who fit nowhere in the world to which he wished to return.
She wanted nothing from him. “I wouldn’t dare expect more,” she said coolly. “A man of your lofty position? Of your marvelous accomplishments? Why, I should count myself fortunate to have enjoyed your attentions for an hour.”
He looked up at her, frowning. “That is not what I meant.”
“Oh? Pray tell, what did you mean?”
He sat back, eyeing her. “I am not . . .” The quick pull of his mouth suggested frustration. “I am not in the market for a mistress.”
She made fists beneath the table. “How convenient, as I am far too accomplished for that position. Anyway, mistresses are made through repeated provisions of their services. And last night was a fluke.”
“Was it,” he said flatly.
“Indeed. It was a very difficult day. I was hardly myself. Having recovered my senses, I have lost interest in such business.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then perhaps I will arouse your interest again.”
A thrill pierced her. She resented it extremely. “But now the novelty is gone.”
Bracing his weight on one elbow, he leaned across the table. “We haven’t even begun, Olivia.”
There was a dark promise in his voice. It seemed to melt straight through her. She leaned in, scowling, until their noses nearly brushed. “Indeed? Then I must take lessons some other time, then. From someone else.”
“The hell you will.” His hand closed over her upper arm; he hauled her forward into a kiss—openmouthed, tongues tangling. Her eyes fluttered closed. All right, perhaps once more—
The bang of a door made her spring backward. “Station approaching,” the conductor said sourly, and the disapproval in his voice—he must have seen them kissing—was, Olivia thought, the perfect welcome home.
This morning, asleep in the dawn light, Olivia Holladay had looked no older than sixteen, and Alastair had risen from the bed on a revolted realization. He had ruined her. This girl who had managed to make her way in the world without falling prey to the thousand dangers that beset a woman . . . he had ruined this girl, and he had no intention of saving her.
So what? he had asked himself on his walk to the townhouse. This was, after all, part of being a villain. Villainy was not simply the red raging glory of inflicting well-deserved pain; it was also the curdling knowledge of having inflicted injustice. A villain simply did not care. Only the victims did.
But this victim did not appear to know she’d been sinned against. Indeed, she seemed made of some new substance, impossibly and unnaturally resilient, cooked up in a chemist’s basement against all laws of nature. On his return to the flat, she had greeted him far too cheerfully for a ruined woman. She had met his eyes without a blush, and now she’d harassed him for failing to do the same. Nothing he had done to her last night had eroded that uncanny self-possession that she had no right to possess. A bastard, a servant, a girl who changed names as easily as a hat.
He could not come to terms with her. Even now, as the train groaned to a stop, she sat glaring a challenge at him. How did she do it? He understood the source of his own assurance: his power was his armor. When he’d first walked back into his club, he’d felt its deadly potential as distinctly as the stiletto he’d carried in his jacket. But she, who had nothing, walked through the world with her chin held as high as his, and nothing seemed to shame her. How was it possible?
He knew why he wanted her. Just as an engineer coveted strange new devices, he wanted to strip her, disassemble her, study her parts, and make her secrets his own.
But hadn’t he done that last night? Yet he felt no closer to understanding her. All he seemed to have gained was a deeper awareness of his own damnable fascination.
That fascination unnerved him. It exerted a compulsion toward her that felt far too much like all the things he’d done away with: obligation, duty, ideals . . .
She was a bastard and a liar. He owed her nothing.
And so, yes, he sat in silence, making no effort to put her at ease. But she didn’t require it anyway. What did she need from him? His coin, perhaps. Not much else.
He put that coin to use when they disembarked at the station. A fly would have sufficed for the half-hour’s trip into the village, but the only vehicle on rent was an ancient brougham, the interior of which smelled musty, reminiscent of Newgate. As they turned onto the road, he discovered that the springs, too, needed replacement; the coach rattled and bounced like a seesaw.
He forbade himself to watch her. But of course he did. As the coach passed over the first bridge, an ancient stone arch that seemed comically overstated for the trickle it traversed, he was watching closely enough to see her composure briefly falter. Her lips tightened. She went pale.
What was she looking at? He saw only a windmill on the distant grassy rise, and closer to hand, as they reached the other side of the bridge, a crumbling stone church, pockmarked by centuries of salted winds. The wheels found a rumbling purchase on cobblestone, and the whole coach began to vibrate.
“It’s not far now,” she said, lifting her voice. “Just around the second turn, past the apothecary.”
The village was predictably, tediously picturesque, a medley of Tudor-era shops and whitewashed cottages tucked behind picket fences where, in spring, roses would bloom. Nobody seemed to be out.
She was doing a good job now of staring impassively at the sights. It was the very blankness of her expression that gave her away. When was her face so deadpan, unless by dint of effort? “Is it as you remember?” he asked.
“Of course.” She spoke without inflection. “A place like this never changes.”
“You don’t like returning here.”
She shrugged.
He felt a strange lick of anger. She was forever needling him, provoking him, asking him what she had no right to know. Did you love your wife? Will you not return to public life? But she never offered him her own secrets. She required him to pry them out, to make guesses, stabs in the dark. “You grew up here,” he said. “Did you leave no friends behind?”
That earned him a strange look. “The daughter of the fallen woman?” She offered him a slight smile. “This corner of the world takes virtue very seriously. Stop here,” she added, sitting forward. “This is the house.”
The atmosphere in the little, holly-decked parlor felt strongly familiar to Alastair. As introductions were made and tea served, he tried to identify it.
Their hostess, Mrs. Hotchkiss, was the widow of the man who had leased this house to Olivia’s mother. She was slim, nervous, elegantly graying; she kept forgetting how to address Alastair, cycling rapidly between “Your Grace” and “Your Lordship.”
Her friend Mrs. Dale, whose visit they had interrupted, made no attempt to contribute. Her attention was all for a button on her cuff, which she picked at skeptically, as though testing the skill of a seamstress she was hoping to find reason to sack. She marked each of Mrs. Hotchkiss’s blundering addresses with a loud, pointed sniff.
Mrs. Hotchkiss was reeling off the fates and fortunes of various villagers whom Olivia presumably must have known. Country folk in these parts were apparently prone to early deaths, financial misfortunes, and accidents involving ladders, horses, and wells. Just as Alastair’s patience began to wear thin, Mrs. Hotchkiss said, “But gracious me! How I ramble—I haven’t asked about you, Miss Holladay.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Dale said in a voice as dry as month-old porridge. “It is a matter of curiosity, no doubt.”
“It’s clear you’ve done very well for yourself in London,” Mrs. Hotchkiss went on brightly. “Such company you keep now!” Here she turned on Alastair a marveling look.
“Quite interesting,” Mrs. Dale said.
Olivia faced her in a sudden, forceful manner. “Is it, Mrs. Dale? Pray tell, what precisely interests you so?”
Mrs. Dale’s mouth crimped. “I couldn’t say. I’m certain I lack the knowledge required to speculate. One does wonder, of course, what happened to your face. But perhaps that is common in your circles.”
Olivia touched her bruised cheek. For his part, Alastair finally located the cause of his déjà vu. The profusion of doilies, the women’s narrow, outmoded skirts, the framed prints of the Queen, the ticking of multiple clocks, and the pretty fragrance of wilting Christmas wreaths had all briefly disguised it. But the last time he’d found himself in an atmosphere so charged with tension, he’d been on the floor of the Commons, faced with a last-minute betrayal before a very tight vote.
“I fell,” Olivia said calmly. “I was distracted by an evil sight—not in London.” She then shifted in her seat, turning her back on the woman. “Yes,” she said to Mrs. Hotchkiss, “London has treated me very well, ma’am. Thank you for asking.”
“And what is it you do there?” Mrs. Hotchkiss asked.
Olivia’s expression remained studiously neutral. “I trained as a typist. Since then—”
“And was that what led you into His Grace’s company?” Mrs. Dale glanced toward him. Her eyes were dark, shining, without depth. “Or was it, perhaps, some family connection?”
Mrs. Hotchkiss made some abrupt gesture—distress, quickly controlled. Ah. Alastair understood now: Mrs. Dale thought he was unaware of Olivia’s bastardy. Accordingly, she was angling the conversation toward that subject.
He broadcast mild puzzlement. “No, indeed. Miss Holladay served as secretary to my aunt, in fact.”
“And now you play her escort.” Mrs. Dale gave him a thin, skeptical smile. “How unusually decent.”
She clearly imagined their relationship to be the opposite of decent. In the middle ages, she would have been the first to light a faggot when it came time to burn the witch. Charming.
Alastair shrugged. “It was my aunt’s last request that I see Miss Holladay settled.”
Mrs. Dale lifted one thin, dark brow. “I am surprised she required help. She was always so very clever at her business. It must have slipped Mrs. Hotchkiss’s mind,” she added to Olivia directly, “to mention that I am a grandmother. It was a very happy day when my son wed Miss Crocker. She is everything one could wish for in a daughter.”
Ah. He gathered that at one point, Mrs. Dale’s son had glanced Olivia’s way instead.
“A grandmother!” Olivia said warmly. “But I should have thought you a great-grandmother at the least!”
Mrs. Dale’s mouth tightened.
“Well, but then you must have some purpose in coming here,” said Mrs. Hotchkiss hastily. “That is—if His Grace is helping you to settle matters, Miss Holladay.”
This was his cue. He rose. “Perhaps, Mrs. Dale, you might walk with me. I should like to hear about the history of Allen’s End.”
Mrs. Dale did not rise. “For Mrs. Hotchkiss’s sake, I must remain while she speaks with Miss Holladay.”
That statement held a dozen possible inferences, all of them profoundly insulting to Olivia—and by extension, to any man who had seen fit to give her the care of his fictional aunt.
Very evenly, holding her reptilian eyes, he said, “You will walk with me, Mrs. Dale.”
The lizard had another moment’s mutiny in her. Then, folding her lips, she rose. “Very well. Miss Holladay . . .” She looked down her nose at Olivia. “I assure you, His Grace will find Allen’s End much changed, much elevated, since your departure.”
She stalked out in a crunch of old-fashioned taffeta. He lingered a moment, not caring to offer her his arm as she made her way to the road.
“I am sorry for that,” Mrs. Hotchkiss said softly—not to him, but to Olivia, who shrugged.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I expected no better.”
Outside, the temperature had plummeted, and gray clouds were gathering, pressing low toward the earth. Alastair spotted Mrs. Dale hurrying off down the lane, her skirts twitching briskly. How remarkable. In his experience, there was never a shortage of country matrons who wished to boast that they had strolled with a duke.
He stood by the gate, rubbing his hands together against the chill. Nearby, the horses stirred, causing the coachman to murmur some soothing remark. To the right lay a panoramic view of curving fields and grazing sheep. To the left, down the winding road they had traveled, stood a stretch of shops and cottages. It was a scene from some painting of a pastoral idyll, but he was gathering it had been far from paradise for Olivia.
He heard the door open. Only a single set of footsteps tapped down the stones. Olivia looked composed but pale. “Nothing,” she said. She crossed her arms against a sharp breeze. “She’s been living here for two years. There’s not a nook, she says, that she hasn’t looked into.”
Her dispirited tone disturbed him. In the gray light, her skin looked bloodless, her bruise livid. How had he not thought to ask after her cheek this morning? “Are you in pain?” he asked.
She touched her face. “It’s only a bruise,” she said, and then laughed. “Or a brand of infamy, depending on whom you ask. I should have bought a pair of horns to wear, too!” She glanced around suddenly. “Where did she go?”
“Hustled off before we could even have our walk.”
“You sound very sorry about it.” A cynical smile came onto her lips. “She’s gone to spread the news, no doubt. Shall we walk? Let them have a look at the jezebel?”
He hesitated, frowning. Why on earth would she want to linger in this cesspool? “If there’s nothing of use here—”
“But I’ve had an idea.” She started down the road toward the shops. He snapped to the coachman, signaling him to follow, and fell into step beside her. As they passed the next house, he saw a curtain twitch in the front window, as though someone indeed had been alerted to watch for them.
“ ‘The truth is hidden at home,’ ” Olivia said. “But this was never her home, was it?” Her profile looked serene; she did not seem to notice they were being spied upon—not only from the house to their left, but from the house on the other side of the lane, where, in the front window, Alastair could make out a shadowy form blending into the darker drapery. “She never meant Allen’s End. She meant Shepwich!”
“It’s possible.” But he said it absently, for uneasiness was prickling over him. The overcast sky, paired with the empty road scoured by brackish wind, lent this place a forsaken quality. How it had produced a woman like Olivia, he could not begin to guess.
Up ahead on the wooden boardwalk, a small group of matrons emerged from a shop to huddle together in conversation. He picked out the paisley shawl of Mrs. Dale.
Olivia’s steps seemed to quicken. She took a firm grip on his arm, hugging it to her—an embrace far more comprehensive than propriety allowed. He looked down into her pale face, not deceived by her pleasant smile. “These fools aren’t worth your time,” he said.
The wind pulled loose a strand of her brick-red hair, fluttering it gently against her cheek. “True,” she said. “But I am taller than them now. And I have a duke on my arm. Let them see it.”
Another truth struck him, distasteful, bitter. “I’m worse than a bruise,” he said. “You know what they will assume.”
“And they’ll be right, won’t they?” She said it lightly. “But I’ll wager I can outstare them, and that will satisfy me greatly.”
Mrs. Dale broke away from the group, hurrying off down the road, while the other women turned as one to watch their approach.
Anger was building in him. “Stop this,” he bit out. “Why would you willingly make yourself a spectacle?”
“You yourself said it, didn’t you? I’m brazen. Shameless.”
He sucked in a breath. “I never meant—”
“Didn’t you?” Their boots thudded hollowly on the wooden steps that led up onto the promenade. “Be at ease, though. You have nothing to fear. I’m certain they will bow and scrape very nicely to you. Even if you weren’t a duke, the man is never blamed for it.”
He groped for words. But the only reply was very simple. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I spoke recklessly, earlier. Without thinking.”
“Of course.” She jerked her chin toward a bakery, where someone was drawing down the shades. “The baker, Mr. Porter, was very kind to Mama—but not his wife. She turned away from my mother in the street.”
“Fools,” he said.
“Virtuous churchgoers, in fact. It was Mrs. Porter, along with Mrs. Dale, who conspired to have Mama expelled from the congregation. She had no proof of her christening—that was how they got her.”
Christ. That was unspeakably petty and cruel—and also the quickest, most effective way to isolate someone in a community as small as this. He turned his hand in hers, tightening his grip.
But she snorted and pulled free. “I was glad of it. The vicar gave the most tedious sermons!”
He forced Olivia to a stop twenty paces from the cluster of staring women. He remembered his own words to her in the coach: Did you leave no friends behind?
Once upon a time, he had never been so carelessly cruel.
“I was lonely, too,” he said. “As a boy. My parents were judged, mocked, ostracized. That should not have been my burden to bear. And this is not yours.”
Something naked and vulnerable came into her face then, which he never wanted to see again. It was in his power, surely, to make certain she never looked so. Otherwise, what was the use of power?
“Not everyone was so awful,” she said softly. “The vicar told her it didn’t matter. But she never went back to church. In fact, she rarely went out at all after that.”
Something clicked inside him. He took a sharp breath. “She wouldn’t leave the house.”
Gently she said, “You thought you were the first to discover that solution?”
He felt stunned, as though he’d been slammed into a wall. “But you never hid.” Was that bitterness in his voice? Or mere, raw wonder?
“They were never worth hiding from.” She looked over his shoulder. “And there is the milliner,” she said. “Bertram had to bring hats from London. Mr. Ardell would not sell to her. His wife forbade it.”
“I’ll buy you every damned hat in the place.”
She wrinkled her nose and locked eyes, over his shoulder, with the women at the end of the boardwalk. “I shouldn’t want any,” she said, loud and distinct. “They’re all quite dreadful.”
He turned to join her in staring. Two of the women were near to Mrs. Hotchkiss’s age, but the third was young enough to be Olivia’s peer, though her expression looked so sour that it aged her. “It is unfortunate,” he said, “how these little towns tend to collect all the rubbish.”
The elder two women whirled away and thudded down the stairs to the road. After a moment, the sour-faced girl snatched up her skirts and followed.
“Oh,” Olivia whispered. “That did feel pleasant.”
The coach had drawn up beside them, the horses stamping. “You’ve run the gauntlet, then,” he said. “Let’s leave this pit.”
Olivia allowed him to help her into the coach. But when the door closed, she said immediately, “It was no gauntlet. A gauntlet hurts those who run it. But I never cared for their good opinion.”
“Of course not.”
“Really. I didn’t.” She gave him a strange little smile. “Don’t imagine I wanted them to apologize for the past. I only wanted to walk in my mother’s footsteps for a minute—now that I’m fully qualified to do so. But as it turns out, I can’t. For she always did care what they thought. And when I was young, I decided that nobody would ever be able to ruin me but myself. Only today I know that I’ve kept that vow. Their stares made no difference to me.”
He gauged her in silence. She meant it. This was not a show, a brave face.
“But I do wish,” she added, “you would not call me shameless. For I do value your opinion.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though perhaps I shouldn’t.”
“It was not an insult.” God help him if he ever used it as an insult again. “I invite you to be as shameless as you like.”
She tilted her head, giving him a look of smiling puzzlement. “Indeed? But I did seem to scandalize you on the train. And I should not like to trample your tender sensibilities—”
He took her by the waist and pulled her across the carriage onto his lap.
She was soft, startled, laughing, a wriggling hot bundle in his arms. “Oh, dear,” she said, and whooped as she lost her balance; he steadied her by the waist, and she looped her arms around his neck with a broad smile. “You seem to prefer me brazen,” she said.
He put his face in her hair, dragging her into his lungs, hard, deep breaths full of her. Let her settle in his lungs. Let her penetrate every pore. She smelled like roses, but he knew now that it could not be a trick of perfume; the soap at the flat had been castor and lye. This scent was not the essence of flower water, but the essence of her, some alchemical design of her strange nature. Her miraculous nature. Rose-scented mettle, indifferent to convention.
She spoke again, less steadily: “I think I prefer me brazen, too.”
He had no reply. He was lost in the feel of her hair. He rubbed against it like a cat, letting it brush over his eyelids, his cheeks. He did not simply admire her. He coveted her, and his rapacity was not merely lustful. He had wanted once to steal her hope, but if he could have walked an hour in her skin, he would have done so, just to feel how such mettle might be worn so elegantly, encased in such soft, fragrant flesh.
He took her ear between his teeth and licked the rim, making her gasp. One could say this was only lust, of course. He meant to take her here, to push himself into her body and make her moan. But lust was only an itch, mechanically satisfied. Lust was like hunger, and a man’s appetite was as easily sated by plain bread as by foie gras.
This was not simply lust. It was not only his body that needed her. It was not only her body that he needed.
He tilted her in his arms, leaning her back, her head supported in his hand, to drag his mouth down her jaw. He tasted her throat, salt, cream, and felt her shiver. Her body moved at his bidding; he lifted her, turned her again so she sat against the seat. He cupped her breast, stroked it, and made her shudder again. Feeling her body answer to his seemed to unhinge something inside him, a floodgate, some crucial safeguard that kept him in check. A tide of need, raw and pulsing, blotted out his brain.
He let her feel his teeth—the scrape of them against her neck, and then the flick of his tongue. She whimpered. He would seduce her body, snare it, if he could not capture her mind, lure her to confess all its parts to him, to reveal her secrets willingly. He slid off the bench and coaxed her to lie down across it; she let him lower her, her body pliant, her wide eyes the shade of wild skies on the moors. Wildness could be tamed.
He sank to his knees on the rattling, cold floor and came over her, lowering his mouth to hers, sealing her mouth with his lips. Speak only to me. He felt cunning and calculating and ambitious and—suddenly—fiercely jealous of moments when she had spoken to others, all the words she had given away, the wit she had squandered on those who did not properly appreciate it, even the courage she had shown those village harpies, who were blind and would misrecognize it as depravity.
Her closed mouth suddenly seemed to deprive him of his right. He opened it with his lips. He kissed her tongue, her teeth, her inner cheeks; every inch of her mouth would be his now. He slid his palm down to the neckline of her gown, finding beneath it the smooth rise of her breast, the pebbling peak of her nipple, which he rasped lightly with his nail until she moaned.
“In a . . . carriage . . .” She sounded dreamily amazed. He was not sure, in truth, how it could be done. But a half hour remained before they reached the station. He would invent a way. Like a scientist, he would devise a way to take her apart. He would own her by the end. No one else would get the chance.
He inched down the bodice of her dress bit by bit, taking great care, because he would not allow her to be disgraced in public by a rip or tear; no one would look at her again as those women had (though she had never been touched by their scorn; it existed in a different universe from the one she assembled, by the force of her unyielding will). He coaxed her breasts from the obnoxious pressure of her stays, which, because God was kind, were leather, and spared him the challenges of lacing and whalebone. And then he took her nipple in his mouth while he watched her face.
Her mouth fell open. She tried to cover her eyes with the back of her hand. He pulled her hand away and held it down, in a firm grip, beside her: she would not deny him the sight of her reaction to him.
Her groan was animal. Animal, yes, vivid and vigorous and free. She had the coloring of a fox, her hair a wild pelt, red and copper and russet and orange, sunlight and fire trapped and refracted. He suckled her as he lifted her skirts, and felt up her long, smooth limbs. When she tried to sit up, to assist him, he forced her back down with another, deeper kiss. He did not require assistance. Be still, he did not say, because he did not want her cooperation; it was her submission he craved, and it was his challenge to earn it. Give yourself to me.
Her knees, once bared to the light, proved to be plump and curving, dimpled, an invitation to his mouth. He had not lingered over them that night in the library, a sin for which he had been suitably punished by her later betrayal—her deceit, in the heated retrospect of this moment, seemed almost too mild for the guilt of his omission, in ignoring her knees. When he nibbled at the inside of her thigh, she squeaked; and then, as the coach slowed, she clamped her legs shut. “Wait!” she gasped.
But the changing rhythm of the wheels showed that they had slowed only so the driver could transition onto the smoother course of the highway. Alastair licked the seam of her joined thighs, and then, when they proved stubborn, he ran his hand up to her quim, his thumb pressing firmly through the thin lawn, and said, “Give me this.”
Her legs fell apart.
He felt for the split in her drawers, and then probed softly, delicately, through her tender, damp folds, the gentleness of his touch a deceit of its own, masking the savage feeling growing in him, feeding like a ravening beast on the noises she made. He lifted her skirts and found her with his mouth again, God above, it seemed he had waited centuries to relive this possession—and he licked and sucked until she whispered, “Please,” and then licked into her until she said it again.
God, what he would not do to hear her beg! He made her say it once more; he made her choke it out, and felt her nails turn into his back, and still it was not enough. How to prolong it? He eased off when he felt her hips buck; he breathed lightly on her until her body retreated from climax, and then he laid his mouth on her and devoured her again. She was gasping, but was it enough? Villains tied women to train tracks; had she proved mute, had she resisted, he would have tied her to the train tracks until she cried for mercy, and then he would have fucked her on the rails, against a tree, on the grass, until she knew how to cry out for him, until she had learned her lesson fully. There was no goodness in him. But in the smell of her, in her groan, he saw a good use for his evil. He saw a way to accept it, to use it, if it would make her moan.
He sat up and lifted her on top of him; she bobbled, clutching his shoulders, breathless, flushed, her lips damp, open; he had a glimpse of her tongue and leaned forward to suck it into his mouth as he unfastened his trousers.
Her hand closed around him. He gasped. It was the first sound, perhaps, he had made. She guided him, her hips moving awkwardly; he grasped her waist and readjusted her, and then—ah, her quim opened for him, inch by inch as he pushed inside her. He felt her grow wetter yet, and hotter, as she closed around him. Her forehead fell to his shoulder; he cupped her skull, stay there, she was safe there, pinned, and with his other hand he directed her hips, showing her the way of it, until she moved against him as he moved into her.
Always. The word beat into his brain. He would stay in her always, her weight a grounding burden, what kept him in place as he kept her in place, his arm around her. He would take her body again and again, and God help anyone who tried to come between them, for their bodies belonged together, his in hers, she pinioned, penetrated, his. This alone he knew. Her hot wet depths posed a challenge that only his body would answer; he would teach her how to be greedy, he would use her and let the world go to hell. She would have no room to think of anything else; he would fill her so completely that thoughts would find no room to penetrate.
He reached between them, rubbing her, stroking, and she lifted her head and cried out. He gripped her, held her still, and forced her to take the pleasure, to follow it. She contracted around him, pulsing spasms gripping his cock, and he felt his own climax rush over him, the hot seed that would plant him inside her, make her truly his own, himself a part of her forever—
No.
He thrust her away from him, onto the bench. He would not betray her so. He put his head into the wall, and worked himself—two strokes was all it took. He spilled onto the ground.
When he turned back, breath ragged, he found her disheveled, skirts around her thighs, hair mussed, pins strewn across her lap. They stared at each other. He felt unable to hide what must be in his face. He did not know what to do. She deserved more; she deserved better. He could not offer her any of what she deserved.
He did not move, though the urge to gather her to him, to kiss her face and throat, was fiercely powerful: to deliver a final imprint, to warn her that she must not forget what he had just shown her. Her body was his. But what could he offer in return?
He did not move. For ownership was a lifetime’s proposition. No other measure of time made sense to him. And that was absurd. And he had nothing to offer. He did not trust himself enough to offer what he might.
“Well,” she said shakily, and licked her lips.
The sight stabbed through him, a sweet, hot pain. He could think of nothing to say. Words did not make sense with her. All the words that might frame her—bastard; liar; housekeeper; thief—were wrong. But there were no words to replace them. And no words that made sense, when linked to him. Not wife. Not mistress. And not stranger. Never again.