CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You see? I was right. You would do well not to question it in the future.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to Lady Berne upon receiving confirmation of Lord Dunston’s longstanding association with the Home Office.
“A bloody mess is what it was,” Dunston complained. “Literally. There was blood everywhere. Took some explaining, I don’t mind telling you. Dashed nuisance.”
The earl’s relaxed posture as he lounged on a blue sofa in Clyde-Lacey House’s drawing room was a bit casual for the level of tension in the room. Colin could not bring himself to care.
Harrison, on the other hand, appeared quite perturbed, standing rigid with his hands firmly clasped behind his back. “You should be horsewhipped—”
“Now, now, Blackmore. I was only doing—”
“And then dragged by a horse—”
“—what I had to do—”
“—until every bit of skin is flayed from your—”
“—to ensure a villainous madman—”
“—miserable, lying carcass.”
“—was stopped.”
Harrison glared at his friend—a relationship about which Colin had serious doubts—and said in a soft, deadly tone, “You placed my brother in untenable danger.”
“Well, yes, but only for the best of reasons.”
“When you could have helped him pay his debt, perhaps avoiding Syder’s notice, you did nothing.”
Dunston tilted his head and scratched his chin, looking only slightly abashed. “Matters were … delicate at that stage. To have aided the fair young Lacey might have exposed my position.”
“So you allowed him to be chased from one end of England to the other.”
“I gave him sound advice,” Dunston retorted indignantly.
Harrison glowered. “What advice? When?”
“When we were all at Blackmore. July, wasn’t it? I told him to ask you for the blunt. Which he did.”
“He did not ask. I offered it to him.”
Dunston threw up his hands in a wide, shrugging gesture. “There you have it. I knew very well you would not permit him to continue gallivanting across hill and dale without stepping in.”
Atherbourne, seated in a large chair near the fire, cleared his throat as if preparing to speak. Standing with his elbow propped on the mantel, Colin gave him a sharp look and shook his head.
“Your presumptions nearly got him killed,” gritted Harrison. “They caused Jane to be abducted. And now, Colin’s wife has been injured.”
Leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees, Dunston met Harrison’s eyes directly. “Listen to me,” he said, displaying the steel Colin had seen only a few times in their long acquaintance. “Nothing was done without necessity. Nothing. Syder consistently underestimated your brother, thought him useless and impulsive. That is what made Colin so effective. Syder assumed the young, feckless Lacey would charge off to rescue his truelove without a proper force behind him. Before that, he assumed Colin could not escape a slaughterhouse in Whitechapel.”
Colin frowned. “Er—I did not escape, precisely.”
“And before that, he assumed Colin would give him my name after a few measly hours of—what’s that you say?” Dunston looked askance at Colin. “No escape. Did Syder release you?” His laugh underlined how absurd he considered the notion. “Surely not.”
Scratching his head, Colin said, “His man Benning did. Said he was paid off by some mysterious ‘nob.’ I always assumed it was you.” Clearly, it had not been Dunston. That left only one other possibility. Colin shook his head. He still could not believe it. Chatham was simply not the sort.
“However it occurred,” said Atherbourne, “I think we can all agree the world is better off now that Syder is dead.”
“Mmm,” Dunston concurred, lounging back into his affable self. “Though, he did leave a ward behind. Haven’t been able to locate her. Kept her well hidden, apparently. Aside from her, I doubt anyone will miss the offal.” He sighed. Then adopted a grin with a sinister edge. “One last thing he did not expect? That Lacey here would be the one who put paid to that particular debt. A bit messy but well done, old chap. Arrogance was one of Syder’s lesser faults. You used it to great advantage.”
Turning back to stare down at the fire, Colin rubbed the two pieces of paper he held between his thumb and fingers. One was a note Syder had sent. It had arrived minutes after Colin and Harrison had bolted out the door of Clyde-Lacey House, intent on saving Sarah. It said only: Located the loveliest Devonshire treasure this morning. Could not resist. Awaiting your reply. Then, it gave Foote’s Sloane Street address and was signed simply “S.”
It was a reminder. Of how he had failed her. No matter what Dunston or anyone else said, he would live with that knowledge forever.
The second item was a letter from the headmaster of a school in Bath. It described a position that was ideally suited for Sarah. She had sent Thomas back into Miss Thurgood’s house to retrieve it.
Just in case she decided to leave him. There could be no other reason.
Obviously, she did not trust him to provide for her, to care for her as she deserved. She had not believed in him before he had let her be attacked. He could not imagine she would believe in him now.
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” said a gentle voice from the doorway. It was Eleanor, looking weary but pleased, her eyes crinkling in a smile. “Lord Colin, Sarah would like to speak with you. She has asked if you will come to her.”
He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Nodding, he crossed the expanse of the drawing room, pausing at the door when Eleanor touched his sleeve.
“Before you go,” she said quietly, “I must tell you, she has missed you dreadfully these last few days. I know I am not your mother, but would you permit me to give you some small bit of advice?”
He nodded.
“When Mr. Battersby was first … afflicted, I wondered if it was my fault. Had I unwittingly poisoned him with my cooking? Or perhaps I had not managed his sleep habits closely enough, or allowed him to work too much.” She chuckled sadly. “It is natural to blame oneself, I suppose, when we bind ourselves together so tightly that we become part of each other. What I am saying is that sometimes the best thing you can do for the one you love is simply that—to love them. Completely. Without fear of what may come. Without recrimination for what has come before. Love her and let her love you in return.” Sarah’s mother sniffed, dabbed her eye with her knuckle, and patted his elbow. “That is my advice. Do with it what you will.”
Again, he nodded, unable to reply. Then, he left the drawing room and traveled the corridor to their bedchamber. He paused as he reached the door, glancing again down at the papers in his hand.
Love her. He did. Of course he did. Who could not fall madly in love with his sweet, honeyed Sarah? Loving her was not the problem. Failing her was.
The knob, cool under his hand, turned. She was not there. He frowned, striding into the room, heading for the bed. Where the deuce had she gone?
“Colin,” came a longed-for voice from his right.
His heart began beating again, pounding as his eyes devoured her. She sat on the divan beneath the window, a blanket across her lap, a letter in her hand. Her wild honey hair was down, pulled over her shoulder and tied with a white ribbon that matched her lace-trimmed dressing gown. He met her eyes, glowing gold as though she were happy to see him. The dark circles beneath had been greatly diminished, and she had regained a hint of bloom in her cheeks.
“Close the door, husband. I wish to speak with you.” She certainly sounded like his Sarah, her voice smoothed of its prior roughness, her tone firm and authoritative. His little governess.
Hiding a grin, he complied then moved to sit on the side of the bed, facing her but keeping a careful distance. “Feeling better, I take it.” He did not. Inside, he felt as shaky as a newborn colt.
“Why have you stayed away?” Her question was quiet, as though she’d been hurt by his absence.
“You needed rest. Time to heal.”
“My healing occurs whether you are in the room or not, Colin.”
Dropping his gaze to his hands, he nodded and released a sigh. “In truth, I have come to your door often, intending to enter. I suppose I did not wish to disturb you.”
“Our door.”
He met her eyes. “Pardon?”
“This bedchamber is our bedchamber.” She pointed to the bed upon which he sat. “That is our bed. It is where you belong.”
He froze, a bit stunned by her sudden, fiery spark. “You are angry.”
“You are bloody well right.”
Aside from the shock of hearing her utter a vulgarity, he reeled from the implication—that she had wanted him beside her. “I—Sarah, I did not mean to—”
“I needed you,” she accused, her voice choking a bit. “I longed to have your arms around me, and you …” Her little pointed chin trembled ominously. A sheen of moisture filled her eyes. “You weren’t there.”
Shoving himself from the bed, he tossed the papers aside and fell to his knees in front of her. His hands settled on her legs, reached for her hands, lowered his head to kiss the slender, callused fingers he adored. “Forgive me, sweet. Please don’t cry. I only meant to give you the time and distance you deserve.”
“Distance?” she said, sniffing. “If anything, I require proximity. Gargantuan amounts of proximity.”
He gazed up at her, carefully brushed away a tear with his thumb. She captured his hand and held it against her cheek. He smiled, trembling before his wife. “I am sorry, Sarah. I shall remedy the problem immediately.” Feeling the delicacy of her fine bones and soft skin beneath his palm, he asked, “Are you eating enough? I will tell Digby to—”
“Colin,” she gritted, “do not start haranguing me again about food. I realize you only married me out of pity, but it is growing quite tiresome to have you treat me as some starving orphan whom you must fatten up forthwith.”
“Pity?”
“I shall eat when I am hungry. Furthermore, you are my husband, whether you like it or not—”
The world had tipped sideways, a ship rolling on a sudden, steep wave. “I do not pity you.”
“—and you will be my husband until the end, so you may resign yourself to a state of proximity for the foreseeable future.”
“I did not marry you because I pity you, Sarah.”
Her eyes welled again, her brow crumpling. “Naturally, you would say that. Your kindness is one of the reasons I love you. But you needn’t lie to spare my feelings. We are married. That cannot be undone.”
Was it brighter in the room, of a sudden? He thought it must be, for she glowed in his vision, her pixie face wreathed in light.
She loved him. She had said it, hadn’t she? Perhaps he had misheard.
“Say it again,” he rasped, fearing to blink and risk missing a sign that she had simply been rambling.
“What?”
“That … that you love me. Say it again.”
Her brow crinkled with confusion. “Of course I love you, you daft man. Why else would I have agreed to become your wife?”
Her last word was mumbled against his lips, for he could no longer resist kissing her. His wife. He took her face in his hands and kissed her until they were both breathless, until the light he had seen earlier pierced his heart and expanded outward, bursting throughout his body in a sparkling, radiant plume.
Moving to sit beside her on the divan, he gathered her delicate softness into his arms and pulled his mouth away from hers only so he could kiss every inch of her face.
“Colin,” she panted, her hands clinging to his upper arms. “Wh-what is … This is positively splendid, and I emphatically do not wish you to stop. But I don’t understand.”
“You love me.” He laughed and kissed her wondrous, upturned nose. “You love me.”
“Yes.” She began smiling, the slow emergence of it resembling a sunrise. “I love you. This is a surprise?”
“I did not know. I thought you were only doing what you’ve often been forced to do—choosing the likeliest path to survival.”
Her eyes softened, clung to his. “In a sense, that is true. For, I cannot live without you.”
Shaking his head, he laid a tender kiss on her honeyed lips. “I will spend every day of my life earning your trust, my sweet. Of that you can be certain. You shall have no reason whatever to seek employment in Bath. I will build a life for us in which you will never want for another blessed thing—food, gowns, servants. We’ll have one entire wing devoted to bolts of fabric.”
Her eyes grew shadowed.
“And I shall protect you with my very life, Sarah.” He traced her bandage with a feather-light touch. “Never again will you be placed in harm’s way. I vow it.”
She had paled considerably, her eyes dropping between them. She nodded in acknowledgment of his promise, but her reaction was the opposite of what he had intended.
“You are distressed. What did I say that disturbed you, sweet?”
“Nothing, I … thank you, Colin. I realize you see me as a duty. I do trust you to provide for me.” Those careful, subdued words cracked his chest wide open. Then, she lifted her eyes to his. She was wounded, bleeding. Not her neck, this time, but her heart. “And I do not mean to sound ungrateful. But what I need most is your love. That is the only thing necessary to my survival. The only thing I do not have.”
By the time she was finished, a tear was falling. “You have it, Sarah,” he whispered, unable to comprehend how she could possibly doubt it. “My love is yours. My body. My life. I belong to you, sweet. I have from the moment you pulled this battered, worthless scoundrel from the mud and declared him yours.”
*~*~*
Sarah expected she would forever remember this moment—the moment when her life tipped on its axis. When she knew.
He loved her. He did.
“You love me,” she babbled, grabbing his hair rather vigorously with both hands and forcing his face to come within an inch of hers. “You really do.”
Eyes the color of summer at sea glowed and burned. For her.
“Er—easy, sweet.” He reached up to loosen her fingers. “And yes, I love you. It’s like a sickness, really. Haven’t been able to shake it since Keddlescombe.”
She clutched at him—climbed him—until she straddled his hips and held his face at the mercy of her lips. “Colin, my love.” Kiss. “I love you so very much.” Nibble. “And would like to thank you.” Another kiss. “For loving me back.” A little suckle at his perfect chin. “By making love to you now.”
He chuckled, the sound rumbling from his chest through her rapidly hardening nipples, which pressed against him insistently. “Two points, sweet. First, you may make love to me whenever and however you like for whatever reasons you deem worthwhile. I am at your service. However, I would like to remind you of what I told you at your cottage, the night your father went wandering.”
She pulled back long enough to frown. “Which part?”
He kissed her sweetly, letting his tongue linger and stroke until she was grinding herself against him insistently. “Do not thank a man for giving you what was yours at the start.”
Beaming at him with all the love she had kept contained, she laughed with the joy of it. Then, she dove back into his mouth. Felt his lean, strong hands and muscled arms move along her back and in her hair and across her shoulders.
“Are you certain you are well enough?” he panted, his eyes once again blue fire, his hands gathering up the cloth of her dressing gown with impatient jerks.
“Yes. I need you.” She did. She was clawing at him. Desperate for him. She ripped and tore at his cravat, at his shirt and waistcoat. It was not fast enough. Her need rose inside her, aching and begging. In her belly, in her breasts. But especially inside. Deep in her core, the emptiness wept for want of him.
Hard tension in his face relaxed just a bit. “Thank God.” His hands gripped her hips then slid down onto the bared skin of her thighs. “Lock your legs around me.” After several breaths, she managed it, crossing her ankles at the base of his back. Wrapping one hard arm around her, he stood in a single motion, dropping her blanket and carrying her to the bed. He laid her down upon the mattress as carefully as he might a porcelain vase, retreating only long enough to discard his tailcoat and cravat and unfasten the fall of his trousers.
She moaned as he covered her. Then gasped as he lifted her against him again, spinning until he sat on the bed with his back against the headboard and she sitting atop his lap, feeling his stone-hard staff slide against her folds with beseeching heat. “Oh!” she muttered, digging her fingers into his neck.
“If anything hurts, sweet, I want you to tell me.” The words ground out of him. His eyes held a glint of concern that told her he meant what he said.
“I will.”
Gently, he untied the bodice of her dressing gown, removing the layers of muslin until they pooled around her hips, and her breasts were there for his taking. His eyes darkened and burned as they fell upon the bruises.
“It does not matter, Colin,” she whispered, stroking his cheek to soothe him.
“He must die.”
“He is already dead.”
“He must die again. Slower.”
“Shh. Just touch me, my darling. Let me feel the pleasure only you can give me.”
Slowly, the muscles in his abdomen relaxed and his hand came up to brush ever-so-lightly over her aching nipple. Then, he used his tongue to trace each fading bruise, to soothe and stroke and drive her mad with wanting.
His fingers plucked at the ribbon tying her hair, releasing it to spring outward and flow across her chest and back. He filled his hands with her curls, drawing her forward into his kiss.
His hands found her waist. Lifted her. Slid himself slowly, gently inside her heat, filling what was empty. Stretching her until she groaned his name.
He let her control their rhythm, resting his hands lightly on her hips. She leaned forward and ran her tongue along his neck, rubbed her nipples against his heaving chest. Ran her hands down over his abdomen, where three ridged scars served as a reminder of how much he had endured. She felt his thick, hard staff throb and pulse inside her like another heartbeat. His heartbeat.
“Please, Colin,” she panted, running her fingers over his ears and his chin and down along his collarbone. She was trying, but she could not get the rhythm right. It was driving her mad to feel this need inside her. “You must …”
“Must what, sweet?”
She growled her frustration, working her hips over him and missing something vital. “Please,” she begged, not knowing what to ask for or how to make him understand. “I need you.”
“Ah,” he said teasingly. “The governess wishes to relinquish control, does she?”
“Yes. That is it precisely.” She wriggled against him. “Now, do what you do. And be quick about it.”
He laughed so hard, it shook the bed. She even felt it inside her, moving up from where they were joined and bubbling out of her throat. The sheer joy in his blue eyes became her joy. “As always, sweet Sarah, I serve at your pleasure.”
With that, he gripped her waist and gave a startlingly deep thrust, slamming a gasp of delight from her throat. Then he did it again. And again. And five more times. And then she lost count because the wondrous, spiraling pleasure gathered and squeezed and imploded with sharp, pounding, breathtaking force. She screamed and wept her gratitude for his mastery, took his answering pleasure deep inside her body, took his answering shout into her mouth. And clung to the only man who had ever proved a temptation.
Afterward, they lay quietly beneath the blankets, he cradling her against his chest and playing with her hair. She suspected she had no bones remaining, having been reduced to flesh only. Warm, satisfied flesh.
“Do not ever leave me, Sarah. I beg of you.” The hoarse plea brought her head up off his shoulder.
“Why would you—”
“I saw the letter. From the school in Bath.”
His eyes held fear. Real fear and sadness. He believed she had meant to take the position, to abandon their marriage.
She traced a finger along his brow. “Retrieving the letter was a moment of doubt that I regret most profoundly. I feared that you did not love me and might tire of being my benefactor after the danger had passed. I was a fool.”
“Never that, sweet.”
She smiled and scooted so her eyes and lips could hover directly above his. “Besides, I cannot possibly leave you,” she said softly, absorbing the miracle of their love. “Where would I go without my heart?”
*~*~*