Chapter Ten

What was it about her? Endymion had craved kissing her since that first night in the portrait gallery at Gorffwys Ddraig. Every time he vowed to go gently. To woo her with soft, beckoning kisses. One touch of his lips to hers and every good intention fled. Her lips were so full and warm. He sank into their warmth and never wanted to leave.

She smiled against his mouth, the siren. She knew she held him trapped, helpless. The sweet moans she made as she met him kiss-for-kiss sent shivers down his chest and around his groin. Her hands brushed across his chest, brushing his nipples with erotic intention. She explored his upper arms and shoulders until she curled her arms around his back and sank her fingers into his hair, tugging the overlong strands down his neck, then massaging the base of his skull.

Endymion caught her bottom lip between his teeth and sucked slowly before sealing her mouth with his once more. He ran his tongue along the seam of her lips. She opened to him and teased the roof of his mouth before sucking him inside and slowly dancing around his tongue with hers. A force unlike any he’d ever known spilled from her into him and shook him to his core.

“Rhiannon,” he gasped as he broke free to trail his lips along the velvety skin at the side of her neck. She shivered, and a bolt of pride and passion lanced through him. He rolled into a seated position and pulled her across his lap. Her dark eyes widened, pools of mystery set in a face flushed and aglow with a sheen of sweat from their exertions. He paused, one arm across her back and one hand already unbuttoning her gown. She hesitated only to hitch her breath and leaned up to press a kiss to his chin.

He struggled to undo the buttons down the front of her gown. She laughed, a husky, exotic sound that made his fingers stumble all the more. He splayed the bodice of her dress wide and set to work on her stays. They laced up the front, thank God, and he soon had them loosed only to discover the chemise beneath them.

“Did you wear this many damned clothes when we were young?” he complained as he worked to lift her breast from the confines of so many garments.

“There was no need,” she replied. “I had no breasts. The rector’s son said so. You broke his nose.” She stared up at him, suddenly shy in spite of the palm she touched to his cheek.

“I’d break more than his nose if he were here right now.” Perfection. Round and pert and topped with the most enticing dusky rose nipple he’d ever beheld. He ran his thumb over it simply to hear her gasp. His patience snapped and he bent to draw her nipple into his mouth to suckle, all the while torturing the tip with his tongue. Rhiannon fisted the hair at the back of his head to the point of pain as she held him to her. Every moan, every unrestrained cry hardened his cock all the more.

His free hand worked beneath her skirts. He dragged his fingertips along the silk stockings, the only thing shielding the sensitive flesh of her thighs from him. She opened her legs and allowed him passage to the heat his fingers sought. The coarse curls were damp and no match for his seeking hand. He pressed against her engorged flesh, pulsing in time to the rhythm he’d set at her breast. She moved against his palm, her cries growing more impassioned, more incoherent, until her back arched, and she flung her arms wide as she found her release. His heart thundered so, he wondered it did not burst from his chest. Spasms of sharp pains made it impossible to think or breathe.

Rhiannon fought to catch her breath. He rested his forehead against her breast and marveled at the rise and fall of her chest and the pounding of her heart against his skin. He curled his hands behind her back so she would not see how they trembled.

The breeze began to pick up. Dark clouds skittered across the sky. A storm was coming, but nothing compared to the storm at work in his heart and mind. Control, gone. Caution, gone. The strict, emotionless approach he’d always taken to physical relations, gone. His heart, as Rhiannon came to herself and gazed at him with a passion and something much deeper… His heart. Dear God, he did not know.

She attempted to set her clothes to rights. He pushed her hands away and did it for her, slowly and with great care. Whilst he concentrated on the task, he did not have to look at her. He couldn’t. Every sensation, every thought was all so new and raw. She tapped two fingers to his chin and used them to slowly raise his head. He truly had no choice.

Endymion kissed her. He savored her lips, offered with a tenderness as foreign to him as a country he’d never visited, even in his dreams. She moved her lips in lingering caresses to the underside of his chin, the corners of his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his forehead. When she finished, she attempted to rise.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“For attempting to make up for our wedding night, of course,” she said with a saucy grin. She got to her feet, adjusted her clothes, and offered him her hand.

“Attempting? Good God, woman, it was one night. What is it going to take?”

“Seventeen years of nights like that might just do it.”

He collapsed onto his back, arms outstretched, with a groan. She stood over him wearing such an odd, fey-like expression his limbs refused to work, had no desire to do so. Well, save for one particular portion of his anatomy. After what they’d just experienced, if that organ was no longer interested, they could bury him where he lay.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A memory. So much like my Dymi it… It doesn’t matter.” She shrugged and began to gather their picnic things.

He got to his knees and began to help her. “I am your Dymi, Rhee.” His grandfather would brand him a sentimental fool in a world where sentiment destroyed men. More than the strength he gained from eschewing sentiment, he wanted her to understand he would try to find a way back to her.

Thunder rumbled toward them. The wind, heavy with the portends of rain, nearly whipped the blanket from her hands as she sought to fold it. The sky continued to darken. He took the blanket and snatched up the picnic basket, his waistcoat, and coat.

“Run, Your Grace, or you’ll be drenched,” he warned as he took her hand and ran for the phaeton.

“Afraid of a little rain, Your Grace?” She laughed as she ran, and it struck him they’d done this before—run hand-in-hand in the rain. He hoped so.

“No, I’m afraid of my valet. If I ruin one more coat, he will either weep for a week or leave without notice.”

Endymion stowed the basket at the back of the carriage. He wrapped the blanket around Rhiannon. Drops of rain touched her upturned face. He used his thumbs to wipe away the drops. He studied her face.

“Mr. Meeks will kill us both if we don’t return to Gorffwys Ddraig before the storm breaks,” she reminded him.

“How could I have forgotten how beautiful you are?” He meant it. Everything about her defied description, his fierce and tender wife.

“The girl you married was not beautiful.”

“Yes. She was. She has only grown more so since I left.”

She shook her head. “Flattery will not gain you what you want, Your Grace.”

Lightning lit the sky and came to ground on the far side of the lake. The ducks took flight. The horses began to shy. Rhiannon pulled away and started to climb into the phaeton. Endymion clasped her waist and lifted her up to the bench. He climbed up beside her and guided the horses to the road. They traveled in silence for a bit and he wondered what he’d done wrong. More important, what, if anything, had he done right? This courtship business had to be one of the greatest mysteries known to man.

He was the Duke of Pendeen, dammit. He was respected for the speeches he gave and the causes he supported in Parliament. He’d increased the wealth and holdings of the dukedom. He paid his bills in a timely fashion. He did not gamble nor drink to excess. He treated his servants with respect and paid them well. And none of it meant a damned thing to the woman who had been his duchess for seventeen years.

“Do you have a plan for this journey or are we simply going to ride until we reach the sea?” his wife inquired.

Endymion glanced around. The road was familiar. It was not the way they’d come, but he had traveled this road before and more than once. The rain had increased and the wind had grown fierce.

“We need to find a place to wait out the storm,” he said. “The ruins are off the end of this lane, are they not?”

“We should go back to Gorffwys Ddraig,” she insisted tersely. “They will be expecting us.”

Lightning lit the nearly black sky. “They will be expecting us alive.” He spotted the lone remaining tower ahead. “We are nearly there, and it will at least be dry.”

She paled slightly and wrapped the blanket more tightly about her. The way to the ruins was an overgrown cartpath off the lane. Endymion allowed the horses to pick their way in spite of the cold rain and the ferocity of the storm. As the ruins grew closer, he found it difficult to breathe. The tower was intact, as was a large section of the bailey. The drawbridge, permanently down, crossed a moat now drained and dry. No one had lived in the castle since the restoration of Charles II to England’s throne.

The wind had begun to howl and the rain came down in sheets, as it only did in Cornwall. Endymion drove the phaeton beneath a sheltered section of the bailey. He stepped down and secured the horses. Rhiannon sat on the bench like a statue, her eyes round and a bit wild. He came to her side of the phaeton and lifted her down. All the while, he sensed someone or something watching.

“Let us get inside the tower,” he said and took Rhiannon by the hand. “It will be dry and perhaps we will find a fireplace that works.” He led her across the bailey to an old wooden door, only half hanging. He pushed it and it fell back to reveal the narrow, worn steps that led up to the top of the tower. She stopped and refused to move forward.

“Dymi, I am not certain we need to do this.” Rhiannon was afraid. He was not certain he ever remembered her being afraid.

“It will be fine, Rhee. We played here as children. I remember that much.” He tightened his grip on her hand and led her up the stairs, higher and higher until they reached a landing that opened into a sort of great room. The wind blew so hard, portions of the flagstones were soaked. Across the way, a broken door listed to one side and revealed another room away from the glassless windows.

Lightning struck nearby, but did not fade. The room suddenly stood bright as day and every hair on the back of Endymion’s neck stood tall and pricked into his flesh. He turned slowly and took in every inch of the chamber. His eyes fell where the landing touched the top of the stairs. Thunder filled the air in waves, an unending ocean of sound. Beneath it all, he heard his breath, harsh and short. His skin turned cold and his surroundings—sights, sounds, smells, the very room—began to recede like an outgoing tide. Somewhere, he heard Rhiannon calling his name.

His heart began to canter and then gallop in his chest. Voices came from the room behind the broken door. Familiar voices that breached a fog of pain, and fear, and the constant admonishment the past did not matter. Someone grabbed his arm and shook him. The clatter of horses crossing the drawbridge and filling the courtyard had him rushing to the window.

Nothing. The rain stung his face and still he could not find his way back to what was real. Shouting. Footsteps on the stairs. Gunfire. Screaming. And the storm. Above it all, the storm that never seemed to end. He’d hated storms as long as he could remember and suddenly he knew why.

“Hide! Into the oubliette. Hide! Don’t come out until I come for you. I will come for you!”

“No, Dymi! Don’t go out there!” Hands, young boys’ hands clinging to him, dragging him back. He heard and felt his boots sliding across the slick flagstones.

“Dymi! Dymi!”

“Take him, Hector! Take him!” Pushing Achilles into his brother’s arms.

“Run! Down the back stairs! Run and don’t look back!” A girl’s voice. Rhiannon?

“Stop shooting, you fools! The duke wants him alive! Go after the other two. Don’t let them escape. Don’t let them escape!” Men running. The sound of gunfire, farther and farther away into the night.

“Dymi! Dymi!”

“Where are they? Where are my brothers? Stop! Let me go! Let me go!”

“Let him go. Let him go! Stop it! Stop!”

“Dymi, please,” Rhiannon pleaded.

His breath came in searing sobs. He rested his hands on his knees and shook his head over and over again. A gentle hand rubbed his back and murmured his name. The sounds began to form images, flashes in his mind. He remembered. Dear God, his brothers. He remembered.

“We were hiding here,” he gasped. “My brothers and I.”

“Yes,” she said softly, trying to lead him toward the stairs.

“They came. They came and took me.”

“Yes.”

“I told my brothers to run and they went after them.”

“Yes.”

His throat drew so tightly closed it hurt to breathe, let alone speak. But speak he must. He needed to say it all out loud before it slipped away.

“They went after them and they killed them,” his voice broke. “My mother was…dead. I was the only heir my grandfather had left and they came and took me.”

“He offered a great deal of money to the man who delivered you to him. Only you, Dymi.” Rhiannon, her voice in agony, threw her arms around him. “I’m so sorry. We should not have come here. We should not have come.”

Endymion held onto her as if his life depended on it. He feared it might. All these years, bits and pieces of this memory had come to him. He’d dismissed them as wild imaginings, nightmares with no meaning. There was more. It beckoned to him, just out of reach, but he was so tired. His title, the money, the land, all of it had come to him, but at a terrible cost. Why?

“Why?”

“Because he could, Dymi. You were all he had left and the Duke of Pendeen never loses. Never.” She clasped his head between her hands. “We’ll go downstairs. We’ll wait with the horses and then we’ll go home. Please, Dymi. Come away.” Her desperation cut through his sorrow and confusion. She’d been here that night and witnessed it all. He’d heard her voice. She was overwrought, and it was his duty to care for her. He could not help his brothers, but he could help her.

Together they made their way down the stairs. Endymion resisted the urge to look back. What purpose would it serve? But there was a purpose and he would find it. Right now, his purpose was to keep Rhiannon safe. It was enough. It had to be. He led her into the sheltered part of the bailey. The horses nickered in greeting. He found a narrow stone bench built into a niche in the wall. He sank onto it and pulled her onto his lap.

“You were here that night,” he said after they’d sat in silence for a while.

“I brought food, and money, and blankets,” she replied, her hands trembling as she stroked his hair. “You were going to leave for London in the morning.”

“London?” His heart continued to race and his head spun as if wrapped in the menacing clouds just outside their shelter.

“It was the farthest place you knew away from the duke,” her voice shook, and he hurt for the pain he’d forced her to relive.

“He was a ruthless man, Rhee, but I do not think he meant my brothers to die.” In spite of his words, a heavy weight settled in the back of his mind. It did not help that she said not a word in reply. They sat that way, his arms around her and her hands moving over his hair and shoulders until the rain abated. The sky remained grey, but the wind had died and the rain had moved out to sea.

They turned onto the drive to Gorffwys Ddraig before they spoke again. Rhiannon had grown more silent and withdrawn the closer they came to the house. As awful as it had been for him to remember, it had been even worse for her, or so it seemed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he finally had to ask. “About the tower. About what happened there.” Something about her reaction niggled at the back of his mind.

“I hoped you did not remember. And when it seemed you did not, I was relieved. I may be angry at you, Dymi, but I’d hoped you might be spared those memories. Even if it meant you forgot me.”

He lifted her down from the phaeton and guided her around the grooms who rushed under the portico to see to the carriage. Vaughn met them at the door and immediately began to issue orders for hot baths to be drawn and tea to be prepared.

“I fear we look like a pair of drowned rats,” Endymion murmured in Rhiannon’s ear as Vaughn’s orders set a beehive of activity in motion.

“Your flattery skills are lacking, Your Grace,” she warned him.

They both were trying so hard to pretend the past few hours had not happened. To convince themselves they’d not shared such a horrific memory. He was shaken by it. She appeared terrified.

The servant they called Tall William came down the stairs and indicated he needed to speak to the duchess. Rhiannon gave Endymion’s arm a squeeze and stepped away for the footman to attend her. Their conversation lasted but a moment. With a fulminating glare in Endymion’s direction, she started down the corridor toward her study at a quick march, the footman close on her heels.

Vaughn was asking him something. A sudden thought made its way through Endymion’s muddled and weary mind. He only made it halfway down the corridor. His wife stormed toward him, a red leather-bound ledger in her hand. Voil followed after her, more red ledgers in his hands and a panicked expression on his face.

Oh hell!

“You bastard,” Rhiannon cried and flung the ledger into his chest. “It was all a lie. Take your country bride on a romantic picnic whilst your scapegrace henchman plunders my account books. I should have known!” Her face a mask of fury, her voice cut him more deeply than the sharpest blade. He’d hurt her, unforgivably so.

“Scapegrace?” Voil echoed, decidedly unhelpful.

Rhiannon stormed back to him and snatched the remaining ledgers from him.

“Lying!” She shied one at Endymion. He dodged it, just.

“Pompous!” Another, he batted away with his hand.

“Arrogant!” This one glanced off his shoulder and woke him from his stupor of guilt and surprise. He strode to her and stayed the last ledger, covering her drawn back hand with his own.

“I am not the one keeping two sets of books, Your Grace,” he said quietly enough so the crowd of servants gathered behind him in the entrance hall might not hear.

Somewhere behind her, Voil groaned.

She stared up at him. Her body shook. Today, he’d seen her eyes bright with laughter, luminous in the throes of passion, awash with tears on his behalf. Now they were a dark void, unreadable and lifeless, save for flashes of something that struck at his chest like icy rain.

“Go back to London, Your Grace,” she said and slammed the ledger into his chest. “There is nothing for you here.” She walked around him toward the crowd of servants. Endymion caught her wrist.

“Rhiannon, please…”

“No!”

His head snapped back. His chin ached like the very devil.

She turned and walked away, shaking out the dainty hand that had delivered him a more than credible right jab.

Endymion took a step after her. Voil, one arm laden with ledgers, stopped him.

“I wouldn’t do that just now, if I were you, Pendeen. I suspect duke season is about to open in Cornwall and, this time, both our tarrywags are in danger.”