Chapter 5
“It is simply madness, Starlight,” Alys muttered in the cool gloom of the stables as she straightened after securing the saddle on her skittish mare. “Nor do I appreciate your marked interest in that brute. He is as dark and unpredictable as his master.” She gave Deveril’s black stallion, two stalls down—and the reason for her horse’s current restlessness—a censorious glance as he snorted and pawed the cobbled floor in a show of a return of the sexual interest in her usually placid mare.
Really, had the whole world gone mad?
Her brother’s behavior, despicable as she considered Teddy to be, she could at least understand if not condone. He was apparently more desperate for money than she could possibly have realized. So desperate, in fact, he was willing to put a price on his sister’s reputation to achieve his goal.
Deveril’s motives for insisting on marriage were far less obvious…
A cold shiver ran the length of Alys’s spine at the memory of the coldness both within and without Deveril when the two of them were confronted by Teddy and Holmes in her bedchamber. A coldness she knew must indicate Deveril really did believe her to be a part of this plot to entrap and blackmail him.
Alys gave a snort of her own. “As if I would ever willingly marry that man.”
“Then it will have to be unwillingly because I assure you the marriage is going to take place,” that man taunted softly behind her. “And sooner rather than later.”
Alys spun round so quickly she felt dizzy and had to grab hold of Starlight’s mane to steady herself. Her dismay was not helped by the fact Deveril was blocking the entrance—and consequently the exit too—to Starlight’s stall.
Deveril gave a humorless smile. “As of five minutes ago, your brother and I have reached a verbal agreement for the details of our betrothal and marriage,” he continued in a hard voice. “You now belong to me.”
Had there ever been five more ominous words spoken?
If there had, then Alys could not think of them.
She straightened her spine, her chin tilted at a defiant angle. “I belong to no one but myself.”
Deveril’s smile became devilish. “A wife belongs to her husband.”
“You are not my husband.”
“Your brother has agreed the terms of our betrothal are enough to transfer your future care to me. All of your future care,” he added pointedly. “Your more immediate future will contain suitable chastisement for having openly disobeyed me. You not only left your bedchamber after I had instructed you not to do so, but your actions now indicate you were intending to leave Newcomb Manor completely. Without informing me or anyone else of your movements,” he added in a hard voice.
“I will not be dictated to in this high-handed manner—”
“At this point in time, you will do exactly as your fiancé tells you to do. As I tell you to do.” Deveril’s fury was no less noticeable for his having spoken in a soft voice. “Am I making myself clear?”
“Very,” Alys snapped. “But—”
“There are to be no buts in this conversation.” The marquis glowered at her. “You are mine now, Alys. To do with as I wish.”
Alys mouth had gone dry, making speech difficult. “My brother cannot do this to me,” she choked.
“Oh, but he can.” Deveril nodded abruptly. “Have you not realized yet that a woman has few or no rights of her own in today’s Society?”
Of course Alys realized that. It was the reason her life had changed so dramatically these past three years, and she had been forced almost into subservience toward her brother. She had certainly not been allowed to have a will of her own. Or the freedom of choice she had enjoyed when her father was alive.
Her chin rose again. “I would rather walk the streets than become your wife.” She repeated her earlier thought.
Deveril’s mouth thinned. “My future plans for you have nothing to do with you walking anywhere and more to do with keeping you in my bed, naked and available for whenever I feel in the mood to make love to you.”
Alys widened her eyes. “You cannot be serious.” To her shame, her alarm was quickly followed by a warm and tingling awareness of the arousal of her body as she was beset with tantalizing images of her lying naked and in this man’s bed while he made love to her…
He raised dark brows. “Have you ever known me to be anything less than serious?”
Not since his arrival here yesterday, no. But he had seemed less intense three years ago—
Never mind what Deveril had or had not been three years ago. This was here and now. And the here and now Deveril was not the same man she had once known. This Deveril was hard and unyielding as he clearly stated what his intentions were for her future. A future she appeared to have absolutely no say in.
Until yesterday, Alys had not so much as shared a kiss with a man.
Deveril had made it clear he intended to do much more than kiss her in future, and whenever and wherever he wished to do so.
“The blush I can see in your cheeks indicates you are not averse to the idea,” he taunted.
Her eyes flashed. “I am averse to anything which involves my having anything more to do with you!”
He eyed her mockingly. “That is a pity, because I intend to ensure you see and hear nothing but me for the next few months at least.”
Alys felt panic welling up inside her. “I was not involved in the subterfuge my brother used to blackmail you.”
Deveril continued to look at her with those unyielding and unreadable dark eyes. “I am supposed to believe that?”
She nodded. “When it is the truth, yes. You were the one who came to my bedchamber, remember?” she accused.
Deveril’s smile was completely lacking in humor. “I remember very well.”
“There you are, then.”
He shook his head. “You had already allowed me to kiss you.”
Her eyes flashed. “You took that kiss from me. As you took what you wanted from me today—”
“And you responded. I do not intend to argue with you on this point any further,” he dismissed in a hard voice as she would have spoken again. “It is irrelevant to me whether you were or were not complicit in your brother’s trickery, when the outcome remains the same,” he dismissed. “The two of us will be married as soon as my lawyer arrives with the Special Marriage License.”
“No—”
“Yes.” He stepped forward into the stall.
Alys instinctively took a step back, only to find herself pressed up against the coldness of the outer brick wall of Starlight’s stall. “Dislike and suspicion on my part, and anger and mistrust on yours are no basis for a marriage.”
Deveril now stood directly in front of her. “I was a little angry at the situation initially, I admit it. But now I have grown used to the idea, and considered all the…possibilities, I find I have no complaint with the arrangement,” he taunted.
Alys felt the sting of tears in her eyes. Was it really only days ago she had been lamenting how dire her marriage prospects were? Now, when she was presented with the possibility of becoming a marchioness, the wife of a very wealthy marquis, she realized those dire prospects were preferable to being the wife of a man who obviously distrusted her as much as he claimed to desire her.
There had never been a deep affection between Alys and her brother, Teddy making no secret of the fact he believed their father overindulged and spoiled her. Even so, Alys had never thought Teddy would behave so despicably toward her he was willing to sell her into a marriage he knew she did not want.
Devil hardened his heart as he saw the tears in Alys’s beautiful blue eyes, still angry at the memory of watching her saddling her horse with the intention of leaving him. Where she had intended traveling to, he had no idea, nor did he care. Because the only place Alys was going today was back to her bedchamber.
Once she was his wife, and if it should transpire Alys was Napoleon’s spy, Devil intended to keep her so busy in the bedchamber, she would have no time or opportunity to contact or pass on information to any of her cohorts.
A drastic way of preventing any further treasonous behavior on her part, but no longer one Devil took exception to. Not when the end result was to have Alys in his bed as often and for as long as he wished her to be there.
He reached up to run a finger lightly down one of her heated cheeks. “You did not seem to dislike my touch earlier.”
A sweep of her tongue moistened pink and pretty lips. “I was…taken by surprise, at finding you in my bedchamber.”
“What a little liar you are,” Devil taunted as his fingers continued to stroke the increasing heat of her cheek. “I shall relish learning all that pleases you in the bedchamber. As I intend to teach you all my own sexual likes and dislikes.”
She drew in a sharp breath, her eyes wide, the pupils dilated. “Are they—are they very wicked?”
Devil could see her excitement in the fast beating of the pulse in her throat, the glitter in her eyes now feverish rather than tearful. Her lips had also become fuller and redder from the heat of the blood coursing through her body.
As those lips between her thighs would also be plump and slick with the juices he so longed to taste?
“If it is what you want, then I will take care to ensure your surrender to me is very wicked indeed,” he promised before his mouth claimed hers.
Alys knew she should take exception to the word “surrender,” but instead she gave a low groan at the first touch of Sebastian’s lips against her own. Her lips parted beneath his, and her hands moved up his chest of their own volition, touching, petting that hardness, before moving over his shoulders until her fingers became entangled in the silky hair at his nape.
Her senses felt under siege from the hard press of his arousal, his tongue stroking and caressing her bottom lip before pressing forward into the heat of her mouth as her lips parted. There was no hesitation from Sebastian, but a claiming as he kissed her long and deeply. A taking possession that caused Alys’s body to tingle with ever-increasing excitement.
When he finally broke the kiss, it was so that his lips could trail a now familiar and fiery path down the length of her arched throat. “But it is not going to happen in a stall where we might be trampled beneath your horse’s hooves at any moment,” he assured her huskily. “I do, however, intend to finish what we started earlier. To that end, I fully intend to taste you before we go back to the house.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “You make it sound as if you intend to eat me.”
He raised his head, eyes glittering darkly. “That is exactly what I am going to do.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks burned with fiery color.
Alys’s married friends spoke to her freely about what went on in their marriage beds, so much so that she often found it embarrassing to look at some of those ladies’ husbands after such conversations. Although a part of Alys had been convinced her friends must have exaggerated some of those sexual practices. Men did not really put their mouths on a lady there. Did they?
The dark promise in Sebastian’s eyes told her they did. That he did. Could. And would.
She frowned. “Is this the chastisement you spoke of?”
He chuckled softly. “You must be the judge of that.” He grasped her hand in his and pulled her behind him out of the stall before closing the door. “Thunder seems to be equally as keen for a taste of your mare,” he drawled as the stallion gave the door of his stall such a vicious kick, it seemed in danger of shattering. Sebastian paused long enough to stroke down the stallion’s long snout as he and Alys passed by. “I believe you and I are both going to have to accept that a little patience is good for the soul, old chap,” he soothed.
Alys began to hang back as they approached the ladder leading up into the loft area, where the hay for the horses was stored. “I am not going up there.”
Sebastian eyed her mockingly. “Do not tell me you have never fantasized of being seduced in a hayloft.”
For her sins, she had!
When she was fifteen years old, she had been infatuated with one of the young grooms. He had seemed to like her too. Whenever Alys daydreamed about his wide shoulders and lithe body, it had always led to the two of them being together up in the hayloft.
It had seemed a deliciously wicked fantasy at the time.
But Sebastian was no youthful and golden-haired Adonis infatuated with the young mistress of the house. He was a fully grown man in possession of a physical experience Alys could not even begin to imagine, let alone match.
“Up you go.” Sebastian lifted her to place her feet on the bottom rung of the ladder, giving her bottom a playful tap as she made no move to climb higher.
“Someone might see or hear us,” she protested.
“Your brother’s grooms are all accompanying him on the shoot.”
So they were… “What of your own grooms?”
“If they chance to come in here and hear us, then I am sure they will discreetly go away again,” Sebastian drawled.
But surely not before they realized what they were doing? As Holmes had earlier gazed avidly at her bared breasts.
Alys tried to step down from the ladder, but Sebastian’s fingers tightened about hers, preventing her from doing so.
“I am running out of patience.” He spoke evenly, but the dark glitter of his eyes spoke of a much deeper emotion. As did the bulge at the front of his pantaloons. “Climb up the ladder. Now, Alys,” he instructed firmly.
Her cheeks burned as she began to ascend, very aware of Sebastian climbing those same steps behind her. No doubt it gave him an unrestricted view of the sway of her bottom.
Once in the hayloft, Alys moved as far back as it was possible to go without falling over the edge. “I do not want this.”
“Liar.”
She was lying.
To herself, more than anyone else.
Sebastian’s lovemaking earlier had been as deliciously exciting as it was forbidden. The expression in his eyes now promised more of the same. “I do not wish to become your wife,” she pleaded.
Dark brows rose over expressive dark eyes. “You would prefer to remain here after I leave, prey to more of the whims and fancies of your brother?”
“I— No,” Alys acknowledged with a shudder, her lashes lowered as she looked down at the straw beneath her feet. Who knew what Teddy would decide to use her for next? “But it cannot be any worse than marrying you and having you be cruel to me for the rest of my life.”
“Cruel?” Sebastian placed a hand beneath her chin and raised her head until she had no choice but to look at him. “When did I ever say I intend being cruel to you?”
“You did not say it,” she conceded. “It is there, in your suspicion and manner toward me. In the chastisement you threatened.”
Devil closed his eyes briefly as he drew in several deep breaths. He had been angry, yes, and he was still angry. But that anger was mainly directed at Teddy Newcomb, not his sister. Having seen what Alys’s life had become these past three years, Devil could understand why, without her father to love and protect her, she might have been forced to agree to being a part of her brother’s trickery.
Being a possible spy for Napoleon was a different matter.
But not one to be addressed at this moment. Now Devil intended to reassure Alys that when she was married him, she would not be escaping this life only to enter into a worse one.
Because he wanted to marry her?
Devil wanted Alys. Any way he could get her. If that involved marrying her, then so be it. She certainly could not remain here under the guardianship of her brother. God knows how and in what way Newcomb might try to use her in future.
Is that my only reason for demanding marriage in exchange for the twenty thousand pounds Newcomb and I have settled upon?
Did it matter what his reasons were? Devil had made it clear to Newcomb that Alys belonged to him now. The throbbing of his cock wholeheartedly agreed.
“Will you beat me?” Alys continued. “Lock me away in my bedchamber if I attempt to defy you again?”
“I will do neither of those things,” Devil dismissed impatiently. “All I require from you is to know you will never disobey me again.”
She shook her head. “I cannot promise you that and must retain the right to act as I see fit in any given situation. Especially if that situation threatens my own well-being.”
He sighed. “Then I suggest you allow me make love to you and decide afterwards whether or not you consider my attentions to be in the least cruel.” He may not have been in love with any of his previous lovers, but that had not prevented him from learning all there was to know about the art of pleasuring a woman. As he intended to pleasure Alys.
Alys looked at Sebastian searchingly. There was still only coldness in his gaze, and no smile curved his lips. But as he had just been blatantly blackmailed by her brother, she really could not blame him for that.
Teddy had behaved disgracefully today, and Holmes, as his accomplice, was no better.
Her father had taken Holmes on as butler here not long before he died, but Peter Newcomb had very quickly decided he did not like the other man and had been considering terminating the other man’s employment before he was murdered.
Obviously, Teddy did not feel the same dislike, the butler’s devious nature more in tune with his own—
“Alys?”
She brought her wandering thoughts back under control. This was neither the time nor the place for her to allow her attention to wander from the more immediate danger, which was Deveril.
Deveril.
Alys realized, until a few seconds ago, she had begun to think of him as Sebastian.
That would not do. It revealed an emotional vulnerability toward him she dare not show or allow to deepen. She had to at least try to talk him out of marrying her.
She raised her chin. “How much did you agree to give my brother?”
Deveril’s mouth thinned. “Twenty thousand pounds.”
Twenty thous—
Alys could not even imagine such a sum. She had thought—
Unknown to Teddy, she still had some of her mother’s jewelry, which she had kept tucked away in one of the trunks in her dressing room but now had in the small bag she had intended taking away with her. But even if she managed to sell all the jewelry, she could not hope to receive twenty thousand pounds in exchange.
So much for thinking she might at least be able to return the money Deveril had agreed to give Teddy in the hope he might realize she was not a part of the blackmail, and that he would then agree to release her from their betrothal.
Her decision to escape Newcomb Manor had been rushed and consequently not thought out in any great detail. Alys’s need to get away as quickly as possible had been paramount. She had packed very few of her belongings, knowing she would be unable to carry them traveling on horseback. The jewelry had been the first thing she had placed in her bag, and she had inwardly thanked her father for having given it to her on her seventeenth birthday.
But her other plan, of riding to the home of one of her female friends and begging for a few days’ shelter, had been sketchy to say the least. As had the idea she might go to London soon after that and find someone who would buy the jewelry from her. That way, she would have been able to give Deveril back his money, and honor would have been served, with no need for a betrothal or marriage between them.
Nothing she owned, or would ever own, was worth twenty thousand pounds.
Alys realized she was well and truly trapped.
Her brother had sold her and her future, to Sebastian Trentham, Marquis of Deveril, for twenty thousand pounds.