Come the Dawn (40 page)

“You’ve made your point,” Thorne said darkly.

“But I don’t want him. I want you.” India stared up into his eyes, needing. Wanting.

Suddenly there was a universe of wanting for both of them.

Her voice came low and husky. “I warned you, Dev. I never promised to make this easy for you.” Her hand drifted along his chest and slid between the folds of his shirt, nestling against the warm planes of taut muscle.

“Any more of that, woman, and I’ll—”

India eased sleekly against him. “You’ll what?”

A muscle flashed at Thorne’s jaw as he read the hunger in her eyes. “I think,” he said huskily, “that I will give you anything you want, my lady.”

“What I want is this.” India eased to her toes and slid her tongue against his ear.

Dev’s hands clenched against her soft hips as she whispered lingeringly. “Sweet God, India, I’ll die of pain right here and now.”

“You can’t die of what I suggested.” She frowned. “At least I don’t
think
you can. I’ve never tried it of course, though I suspect there were any number of men who would have been happy to show me how to—”

Dev caught her up against his chest, his expression thunderous. “I don’t want to hear about the other men who have fallen in love with you. Don’t cast my stupidity up in my face. For me you were the only one, ever since I saw you in that muddy street in Brussels.”

“And what about the notorious river pirate?”

“He was never as notorious as he seemed. And he was simply a role, another of those I have learned to play too well in this chameleon’s life of mine. Only
you
seem to have the uncanny ability to get past my facade and find the truth of me.”

India bent her head and nuzzled the warm skin at his neck, delighting in his instant shudder. “Prove it to me then. I want to feel your heart pounding against mine. I want to see your eyes blind with desire. And then I want to feel you against me. Driving inside me.”

Devlyn groaned. His hands shook as he kissed her.

They didn’t make it to the bed where Charles II had slept. Thorne lifted her back against the nearest stable surface, which happened to be the great trestle table.

Never mind that the Magna Carta had been signed there. They had their own momentous history to make, history of a more intimate sort, against those polished wooden planes.

In a flurry of black broadcloth and peach satin, they struggled against layers of unwanted clothes.

“Dev, I-I can’t breathe.”

“Neither can I,
sauvage.”
He tossed away her damask sash, eased her foot around his waist and slid up her skirts, his eyes dark with the sight of her creamy skin. “It will be here,
ma mie.
I can’t wait. It feels like forever already.”

“Yes, here.
Now.”

And it was there, right at that moment. India met him halfway, supple and perfect, smooth heat against his hard male need. Her hands gripped his shoulders and she eased him deeper inside her.

“Doucement,
beauty,” he said hoarsely. “Too fast and I’ll hurt you.”

But India burned in his touch, burned with months of fantasies and the raw reality of the prior night. Her Delamere blood was on fire and there was not a shred of patience left to her. “Give me tomorrow, Dev. Here in this square of sunshine help me make another child. He would want that of us, I think.”

Her husky plea slammed through Thorne. His hands tightened and he drove deeper, feeling her clench around him. Fighting for control, he kissed her face, her hands, her neck.

And then her hands slid low and circled him and he was lost.

He closed his eyes. His hands were shaking as he laid her back, moving hard and fast, as deep as a man could go.

They were both lost then, lost to everything but the desire that raged free, unbound and unfettered, in the wake of confidences shared. Thorne whispered to her with every hard stroke, hoarse words that worshiped her beauty and adored her wild courage. With his words he loved her, as much as with body and heart.

And his prize was her wild yielding.

He smiled darkly when she tensed against him, back arched, hands clinging to his shoulders. And when her breath had stilled, he brought her high and blind again, through a dark landscape of magic forged anew.

She shuddered her way back down to the quiet square of sunlight in the quiet room in a quiet corner of Norfolk. When she opened her eyes, slumberous and hazy with desire, her mouth took on a determined force. “And now, you rogue, I’ve had enough of your charm.” She moved against him, her hands doing painful, extraordinary things to all his muscles.

Thorne shuddered with each erotic slide of movement. “I meant to show you I was serious. I meant to show you how well I could grovel.”

India’s eyes glinted as she studied their joined bodies. “You grovel, my dearest husband,
quite
wonderfully,” she purred. “But did I tell you about that dashing young officer who tried to convince me to elope with him after—”

As she’d hoped, Thorne’s response was instant and fierce. His hands dug into her soft hips and with a low curse he drove hard against her, all restraints forgotten. Now they were just two people burying sad memories and forging the first of many happy tomorrows.

Two people who had by some wondrous miracle discovered that death could sometimes hold the seeds of life.

Two counties away in London the Duke of Wellington looked up from his crowded desk at the secretary holding out a sealed message. “Not another death threat, I trust, Stevens?” Three such letters had already arrived in the last week, and one angry ex-soldier had even attacked his carriage. “I must be back to the Continent soon.”

But this time when the duke opened the vellum sheet, his face broke into a broad smile. “Damned good work by the lot of them! The little girl is safe, Stevens. We must drink a toast of thanks.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Wellington’s aide turned away. With the meticulous movements that had first caught the eye of his superior officer, he slid open a decanter of brandy and carefully tipped the mellow spirits into a cut crystal tumbler.

“Take one for yourself, Stevens. This is an event worth celebrating. With any luck, Thornwood will have caught the rest of the brutes at one stroke, and we’ll have no more trouble from this group called l’Aurore.”

Glasses clinked. The two men savored their drinks in silence. Then with a long sigh, Wellington turned back to his desk and the mound of paper
work that seemed to grow higher during his visits to London. Meanwhile, his aide turned away to straighten up some outgoing correspondence carrying Wellington’s signature.

Silently Stevens pulled back his cuff, revealing an odd curving scar just above his wrist. It was not the jagged mark of an accidental wound, but precise and sharp, almost as if made by design. The pattern was simple, a straight line running beneath a half circle. The crown of radiant lines at the top might have depicted the sun setting in the west.

Or the sun rising.

At dawn.

After smoothing back the cuff, Stevens looked out at the small garden, remembering how that scar had hurt him when it was cut into his skin five years ago. Their numbers had been far fewer then. Stevens had been among the very first to obtain access to Wellington’s select circle, and he had used his position carefully and cleverly. No one had guessed his real beliefs — or his secret identity as the leader of the group known as l’Aurore.

His jaw hardened. No matter that Waterloo was done, they would
still
win. His whole existence was dedicated to that goal. One day soon, Napoleon would walk down the hillside at St. Helena and board a boat for France. When he did, his supporters would return to Paris in grandeur, and the course of Europe would be changed once more.

And
he
would be there to watch it, glorying in his triumph.

Stevens thought of his father, a graceless, impoverished younger son openly mocked in his village. Jonah Stevens, his only son, had also been an outsider, first in the Hampshire village where he was born, then in the lonely halls of the school where his father had scrimped and saved to send him. The loneliness had only grown worse when Stevens entered the tight, clubbish world of the officers who surrounded Wellington. Soon his efficiency and skill for organization had been noticed, resulting in access to more secret materials.

Now he would show them all. This time, he
would
belong! Soon everyone else would be made to suffer the pain he had known all his life.

“Stevens, are you forgetting those letters must be out within the hour?” Wellington’s voice had an edge to it.

Dangerous, the aide thought angrily. He must be especially careful not to draw suspicion now. “I was simply looking over the rear garden, Your Grace. I thought I saw someone hanging about near the gate. They have asked you to make a public appearance at Hyde Park, but it is hardly advisable after all these threats you have been receiving.”

Wellington laughed harshly. “The day that it is too dangerous to walk in Hyde Park is the day in which Waterloo might as well not have been won,” the general said fiercely.

Stevens shrugged. “One cannot be too careful, you know.” His face held a thin smile as he turned away to complete his tasks for the duke.

It was true, he thought. These
were
dangerous times. No one knew that better than he.

And as he picked up the duke’s silver letter opener, he was thinking with cool delight of Wellington’s impending death.