Claiming the Courtesan (16 page)

But it was impossible. The familiar whirlwind snatched him up and swirled him to the skies.

And as ever in the conflagration of desire, questions of ownership and domination dissolved to ashes.

Kylemore gradually returned to awareness to find Verity lying silent and unresisting beneath him. Tears marked silvery trails across her ivory cheeks and clumped her thick
black lashes together around her dazed gray eyes. She didn’t need to tell him she despised herself for what had just happened.

If his goal had been to return their interactions to their simplest level, he’d failed utterly. She still held him in thrall. Every time he took her, hard, fast, or slowly, tenderly, the bonds uniting them twisted tighter.

He was a barbarian, but he’d willingly go through all the turmoil and trouble again just for these precious moments in her arms.

He hadn’t found Soraya in the end. He hadn’t reawakened the daring, uninhibited lover she kept locked within her, the lover he remembered from London.

Yet when he made love to this woman, who opposed him with every ounce of her soul, he touched emotional depths he’d never sounded before.

He broke away from her slowly, reluctantly. She gave a soft grunt of discomfort.

He’d been brutal. But he hadn’t missed, even in his drive to completion, that she’d reached her own peak. It hadn’t been last night’s dazzling explosion, but at the height of the tempest, she’d embraced him. He’d made her confront the truth that she could no more deny him than he could deny her.

Her body had opened to his. While she’d kept her mind and heart closed.

He told himself her body was all he wanted.

The declaration sounded laughably hollow. The feverish encounter had bitten more deeply than the fleeting demands of flesh alone ever could, however much he wished it otherwise.

She took a shuddering breath as he settled at her side. He fought the urge to stroke the damp black hair back from her brow. She wouldn’t welcome his tenderness, he knew with piercing regret.

They lay in tense silence for a long moment. Then, without glancing in his direction, she rose from the tumbled bed, gathering her ruined dress around her.

She looked sad, crushed, used. She looked beautiful and as necessary to him as breathing.

Exhausted as he was, he reached out and caught at her crushed skirts. “Where are you going?”

“To wash,” she said desolately.

“Stay with me.”

“Yes.”

He frowned. Such easy agreement seemed unlikely. “Yes?”

She looked at him fully. Her eyes were flat and lifeless as he’d never seen them before.

He’d summoned passion from her. But at what cost?

“If I run, you’ll only find me. So I will stay.”

“Good.” He let her go, hating himself as she hated him, however tightly she’d clung to him as she’d ridden out her climax.

When she raised her hand to brush back the heavy fall of hair, he noticed a ring of bruises circling one slim wrist.

“I’ve hurt you,” he said, loathing himself even more.

She glanced at the marks without interest. “They’re from last night. They don’t matter.” She turned away, her head bowed under the tumbled mass of hair. “Nothing matters.”

He’d fought like a madman to crush her defiance. Why, now that he’d succeeded, did such grief slice into the heart he denied he possessed?

K
ylemore crawled into the dark hollow in the bushes where he’d always been safe. Outside, the monster rampaged closer and closer, then it began tearing at the protective wall of branches and brambles.

When it found him, it would kill him.

He shrank into the darkness, trying not to breathe. The monster already knew where he was, but maybe in the blackness, he could disappear.

But of course, he couldn’t disappear. The monster reached out its terrifying white hands and twisted them into the front of his torn and soiled shirt.

Kylemore whimpered with horror. Thorns at his back dug at his flesh, preventing escape, even if the impossible happened and the monster let him go. He whimpered again, despising his weakness, despising his stupidity in getting caught.

The monster gave its mad laugh and tugged him forward.

More pain awaited, he knew. The monster would cut him into pieces and feed him to the dogs, just as it had
promised so many times before. Before, when he’d managed to escape.

But this time, he hadn’t been so lucky.

“No! No, Papa! No, please! I promise I’ll be good. Just don’t hurt me! Papa, no!”

But the long white hands that were larger, crueler versions of his own dragged him onward.

“No!” he sobbed. “Please.”

The long white hands shook him.

But they no longer bit like talons into his flesh. Instead they were cool and gentle. He opened his eyes to find Verity leaning over him in the darkness. For a moment, he was too disoriented to be ashamed of his trembling and his tears.

“Kylemore, wake up. You’re having another nightmare,” a soothing voice said.

No monster then. He was safe.

This particular monster had died twenty years ago. Coming back to reality, he blinked and took a deep breath. His chest hurt, as if he’d been running for hours.

“A nightmare,” he repeated and abominated the croak in his voice.

He’d suffered bad dreams right through Eton. His hardier schoolfellows had tormented him endlessly about his sobbing and moaning in the night. Those bad dreams had continued into early manhood. He thought he’d trained himself out of them. The memories hadn’t overtaken him for years. Cold Kylemore, the magnificent duke, permitted no vulnerability to rattle his sangfroid.

It was this glen. He should never have returned. Coming back to this house had been the final test to see if he’d become as impervious as he so desperately wanted to be.

A test he spectacularly failed.

His body was slick with sweat, and he shivered. He felt so alone that he thought he’d die.

With a wordless groan, he wrapped his arms around the woman who hated him and buried his head in the softness of her breasts. Immediately, her haunting scent filled his senses, and his racing heart calmed.

How did she imagine he could ever let her go? She was the only being in creation who gave him this peace. Verity was all that stood between him and madness. It was the intolerable and eternal burden fate placed upon them both.

For a long moment, they lay entwined in silence. He anticipated her rebuff. What a pathetic admission that in his whole life no one had given him kindness or comfort he hadn’t bought. Until she’d come to his room yesterday. When she’d offered up her strength and warmth as lights against the dark.

He didn’t deserve her generosity. Even in his overwhelming need, he recognized that. He tightened his grip on her slender body, braced for mockery and rejection.

“Shh, Kylemore,” the woman in his arms murmured. “You’re safe here.” She shifted up toward the headboard so he lay more comfortably against her.

Astonishment clawed at him, banished his ability to speak. She abhorred him, wished him dead.

So why was her voice so soft? Why was her touch so gentle?

“Shh.” She smoothed the hair away from his damp brow with a tenderness that cut him to the bone. “It was only a dream.”

Such consolation was sweet indeed from the woman he wanted above all others. But for once, his craving for simple human warmth exceeded his craving for sex.

His own mother had never held him like this. His own mother had never touched him in affection as far as he could remember.

He lay motionless while Verity’s cool hand brushed across
his hair. Each slow stroke drew out a little more of the dream’s lingering dread.

She smelled like everything good in the world. Baking bread and mown grass and the countryside after rain and the clean air above the waterfall at the top of the glen.

Yet she smelled like none of these, but purely herself.

If she sent him away now, he thought he’d scream like the terrified boy who had fled in fear of his life from his own father. But she didn’t send him away. Instead, she curved around him to shield him from the house’s dark shadows.

She crooned soft nonsense in his ear. It was the most enchanting sound he’d ever heard. He pressed up against her, his fingers tangling in the nightdress she’d put on before sleeping. Gradually the nightmare receded.

Still he didn’t move away. He listened to the even tenor of her breathing, while her warmth slowly seeped through his cold, cold soul.

What was she thinking? He sensed no condemnation or scorn, although he deserved both after the wild, destructive passion he’d conjured between them earlier.

“I was born on a farm in Yorkshire,” she began quietly after a long silence. “My father was a tenant to Sir Charles Norton.”

She paused, as if waiting for some reaction, but Kylemore didn’t speak, afraid that if he did, she might stop.

Astounding to think that she finally offered him a clue to her mystery. Astounding she offered her secrets when he least deserved such a gift.

“My brother, Benjamin, is five years younger than I, and I have a sister, Maria, five years younger again. My mother’s health wasn’t strong, and I cared for the little ones.”

She would have been good at that, he thought. At her most basic level was a nurturing instinct. Witness how she succored him now, even after everything he’d done to her.

Her voice was calm and level, as if she read a fairy tale to a child. The night crowded in, inviting confidences.

“My father wasn’t much of a farmer, but we managed well enough until I was fifteen and fever swept the moors.” Here the calmness faltered slightly, but after a longer hesitation, she went on. “Both my parents died within a week of each other. There was no money, and I was too young to take over the farm, even if Sir Charles would have rented it to a female. We had no family to turn to for help. So I found Ben and Maria a place with a woman in the village and I became a maid up at the big house. I didn’t earn much, but it was enough to keep the children from going hungry.”

And it had been unending drudgery, Kylemore knew.

Perhaps because the only people who had shown him any kindness as a boy had been servants, he was unusually aware of conditions below stairs. A fifteen-year-old rustic would have obtained only the most junior post in a great household. And junior maids did the roughest, hardest, most unpleasant work.

“I wasn’t happy, but I was determined to endure.” Another hesitation, one fraught with emotion. She stopped stroking him. “Until…”

Kylemore raised his head from where it rested on her breasts. In the gloom, he just discerned the perfect line of her cheek and jaw above him. The candles had long ago burned down to unlit stubs. The lack of light emphasized other senses. Touch, smell, hearing.

“What is it, Verity?” he coaxed. “Until what?” He shifted up so she lay in his embrace now. She hardly seemed to notice.

Her body was tense, where before there had only been supple ease. She shook her head.

“This is stupid,” she said in a voice that grated. “I don’t know why I’m telling you. What interest can a man like you
have in the life of a whore?”

“Don’t call yourself that!” he snapped, then he forced himself to speak more temperately before he aroused the self-protective caution she usually hid behind. “Tell me what happened, Verity.” He no longer clung to her as his only refuge but held her fast to give her the strength to go on.

“Sir Charles was old. A widower. Kind enough in his own way. Life was bearable. Until that summer.” Her short, choppy sentences revealed her agitation. “His son John came down from Cambridge. By rights, he shouldn’t have known I existed.”

“But he wanted you.”
The old story,
Kylemore thought bitterly, but that didn’t make it any more palatable.

He could imagine Verity at fifteen. Good Lord, she must be nearing thirty now and she still took his breath away. Just emerging from girlhood, she’d have been exquisite.

Exquisite and utterly defenseless.

She nodded, her silky, unbound hair sliding pleasurably against the bare skin of his sheltering arms. “Yes.” She took a shuddering breath. “I tried to stay out of John’s way once I understood what he wanted. I begged him to leave me alone. I asked the other servants for help. They did what they could. But—”

“But he was the son and heir and you were a penniless nothing.”

Kylemore wished the unknown John Norton was here so he could have claimed the privilege of beating him senseless. Ironic, considering his own behavior toward Verity.

“Yes. I was such a bumpkin then. My parents were strict Methodists, and I was as naïve a country mushroom as you could meet.” She gave a humorless laugh. “I had a foolish trust in the goodness of humanity I can’t believe possible now.”

“The bastard tricked you,” Kylemore said flatly. What she said hurt him, cast cruel reflection on his own behavior.

“He…he sent a note telling me he wanted to apologize. As if that cod-faced ninny ever lowered himself to such a thing. I was so stupid, I asked for what happened.”

Kylemore’s hold tightened around her. “No,” he said hollowly. “You didn’t ask for it.”

He meant every evil that had befallen her, not just rape from a thoughtless young scion of the gentry. Shame flowed black and acrid in his veins, and his belly churned with contrition and regret.

“He asked me to meet him one afternoon in the music room. And he…and he…”

She buried her head against him as if to hide from the old memories. Did she even realize the man who tormented her in the present held her safe against old ghosts? Did she guess how his heart contracted with pity and wonder when she turned to him in her extremity?

“He attacked you,” Kylemore said, sickened.

“Yes. I couldn’t fight him off.” Her husky voice was muffled in his chest. “I screamed for help, but no one came. He ripped at my clothes and he punched me. I fought, but he was bigger and stronger. He knocked me to the floor. As I fell, I hit my head. When I could see again, he was…he was on top of me and he was trying…he was trying—”

“He raped you.” How could he bear to hear any more?

“No,” she said unsteadily, raising her head and looking up at him. Her eyes shimmered in her pale face. “No, he didn’t rape me. Sir Eldreth Morse was a guest in the house. He heard the screaming and he came in before…”

She sucked in a shaky breath before she went on. “He pulled John away from me and refused to listen when the cur tried to blame me for what happened. It must have been clear he’d forced me—I was bleeding where he’d hit me.”

“So Eldreth rescued you only to debauch you himself,” Kylemore said austerely.

Why the hell was he so angry? He hadn’t behaved any better when faced with the temptation this one woman presented. The brutal reality was that he and John Norton were brothers under the skin. Kylemore might never have forced himself on the servants—he’d never had to—but his treatment of his mistress shone in no kindlier light.

“No, you misunderstand. Sir Eldreth helped me,” she said vehemently. “He was kind. He told Sir Charles about John. It wasn’t his fault I lost my position.”

“They dismissed you for the crime of attracting their son’s notice.”

“They believed John rather than Eldreth. They shouldn’t have. I wasn’t the first servant girl who took his fancy, and I certainly wasn’t the last—or the most unfortunate. I realize now he was a man who liked to hurt women. Sir Eldreth saved me from all that.”

“Christ,” Kylemore muttered under his breath.

Roughly, he tore himself from her arms and left the bed. The violence in his soul threatened to erupt. He needed to regain control before he shattered under the storm of emotions buffeting him. Guilt. Sorrow. Anger. Unwilling empathy for someone who had a past as tortured as his own.

Continuing to swear, he strode across the room and flung the curtains wide with a loud rattle. It was still dark outside. But not nearly so dark as the raging tumult within him.

With shaking fingers, he fastened the breeches he hadn’t even bothered to remove before he’d taken her. The air was cold on his bare shoulders as he glared out the window.

“Kylemore?” she asked in bewilderment from the bed.

“Eldreth saved you for a life of vice and degradation,” he said with difficulty, scowling through the bars at the mountains outlined against the night sky.

“It was better than going on the streets,” she returned with equal heat. “Which is where I’d have ended up. And what
would have happened to Ben and Maria then?”

God help her, God help him, she was right. His hands crushed the rich brocade of the drapes. She’d begun her story to divert him from his nightmare. Little did she know that what she described created its own nightmares.

This was a confession, but a confession made to a priest cast into hell for his own vile sins.

“Sir Eldreth found me in the village. When he saw my destitution and that I had the little ones to look after, he asked me to be his mistress.”

“And you said yes,” Kylemore said bitterly.

Mixed in with his other corrosive reactions, jealousy gnawed like acid in his gut. Jealousy over the elderly baronet’s physical possession of her, but even more over the affection in her voice when she spoke of him. She still admired, respected, liked Sir Eldreth.

Had she loved him?

Why did the question even arise? Love wasn’t part of any bargain he’d ever made with Soraya. Or Verity.