How to Master Your Marquis (36 page)

“Oh God, oh God, it’s so much . . . I can’t quite . . .”

He gripped her backside with his strong hands and lifted her with him, still joined, his hips locked against hers. He tumbled her back on the bed and stretched her long and tight. “Look at me, Stefanie,” he rasped, and she forced her eyes to meet his. He hovered above her like a bowstring, drawn tight with anticipation, and kissed her lips. “Look at me loving you. As if . . .” His fingers curled around hers, high above her head.

“As if what?” she gasped out.

“As if I’ve loved you all my life.” He thrust his hips into hers, and in a few heroic strokes he finished her off. She cried out, her back curved upward with the crashing force of her climax, and with a low roar he spent hard into her body, his buttocks clenching under her hands, his voice growling her name.

Afterward, drifting to sleep with his body still inside hers, his heavy shoulders draped protectively over hers, she thought how utterly they had united just now, how they were inseparable, bound and soldered together from tip to toe, and that nothing in the world could possibly come between them.

T
he pounding began shortly after dawn. Hatherfield’s body tensed, and in the next instant he leapt to his feet and grabbed the dressing gown from the floor beside the bed.

Stefanie struggled upward. “What is it?”

“Stay here,” he barked.

Well, she couldn’t do otherwise, lying naked in Hatherfield’s bed without a shred of clothing within reach. She sat up and clutched the blankets around her chest and stared at the closed door. Her pulse hammered hard. Was it the anarchists, her father’s assassins, hunting her down at last?

She jumped from the bed and ran to the wardrobe. Oh God. Clothes, anything. Hatherfield’s suits dwarfed her. She went to the chest of drawers and found a shirt, a pair of old breeches. She threw them on and wrapped a belt around her waist to hold it all together.

From beyond the closed door came the sound of brusque male voices, several of them, and heavy footsteps. The voices lifted almost to shouts, and then Hatherfield’s stern tones cut through, low and implacable. What was he saying? Damn it all, what was going on? Were they fighting?

Stay here.
But she couldn’t just stay, when it was her fault. Her family’s enemies.

Weapons. She needed a weapon, fast. Hatherfield must have revolvers about. But where? His drawers contained nothing but clothing and male haberdashery. The desk drawer? Locked. The wardrobe? She flung the door back open and searched the corners with frantic hands, while frantic ears craned to the sounds from the other room.

A firm weight came down on her shoulder.

She started and whipped around.

“Come with me,” said Nelson.

“How did you—?”

“There’s no time. Come.” His hand grabbed hers and tugged her toward the door in the corner, Hatherfield’s simple bathroom.

She resisted with fury. “I can’t leave him! They’ll kill him!”

“For God’s sake! Now!” He bent down and flung her over his shoulder and ducked through the doorway into the bathroom. He opened the window and tossed her out.

Her scream was cut short when she thumped atop a wide ledge, a sort of balcony. Nelson’s boots crashed into the stone next to her. “Down the stairs. Now.”

“But—”

Nelson pulled out a revolver and looked over the ledge to scan the street below. “Go on, now! Master’s orders.”

A narrow metal staircase zigzagged downward to the alleyway below. Stefanie’s feet flew along the steps. She could reach the bottom first and then run around to the entrance and come up, before the men discovered she was missing and hurt Hatherfield. Killed Hatherfield. Oh God! And he had sacrificed Nelson, his one ally, in order to make her safe.

The cold February air rushed across her cheeks and her shirtsleeves, but she hardly noticed the chill. She reached the bottom of the stairs and launched herself forward, but Nelson was ready. “Don’t even think about it,” he said, grabbing her hand. He dragged her down the alleyway, away from Hatherfield’s building, until they came out to Prince Consort Road.

Stefanie looked up the pavement. A cluster of vehicles stood outside the entrance to the building. She strained against Nelson’s iron grip.

“This way!” he said.

“Where are we going? I have to see him! I have to help!”

“You can’t help.” He was hurrying her down the street, without looking back, at a jogging pace just below a run.

“I can try!”

He stopped and spun her about. “You can’t. It’s the police, miss. We’re taking you back to Cadogan Square before anyone knows you’re gone. Before anyone connects you with the events of last night.”

“But why? The police? What do they want with Hatherfield?”

They turned the corner into Exhibition Road. A hansom was clopping swiftly down the cobbles. Nelson raised his hand. “Because it seems a woman was murdered last night, at that ball.”

“Murdered!”

The hansom clattered to a stop beside them. Stefanie looked up and saw with amazement that it was Hatherfield’s hansom, Hatherfield’s driver. His face was pale. “Get in, miss!”

“I can’t!”

Nelson picked her up and hauled her into the seat. The doors banged shut.

“But were are you going?” she demanded.

“Back to the master.”

“I don’t understand! Will someone tell me what the devil’s going on? Is Hatherfield in danger, or not?”

Nelson laid his hands on the metal doors and leaned forward. In the gaslight, the whites of his eyes glowed with sallow malaise, but the pupils were dark and tight and free of liquor. “Nothing he can’t handle, I daresay, but there’s trouble ahead, and it’s best you’re out of it.”

“What sort of trouble? About the murder?”

Nelson’s eyes locked with hers. “It’s the Duchess of Southam, ma’am. Stabbed to death with a letter opener in her own boudoir.”

The blood drained from Stefanie’s head. She curled her fingers around the edge of the doors to steady herself. “Oh no! And do the police think Hatherfield has information about the murderer?”

Nelson’s head made a single negatory shake.

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why—?”

“They think he
is
the murderer, ma’am. They’re taking him off to Scotland Yard this very minute, in a police van like a common criminal.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Old Bailey

August 1890

T
he gentlemen of the jury filed into their seats, one by one. By and large, their whiskers covered their expressions, though Stefanie strained hard to detect some clue among the springing hair of lip and jowl, some flicker of glance to reveal sympathy or sternness.

Hatherfield stood in the dock as he always did, hands braced lightly on the rail, on either side of his muscular body. She looked at him, and the shock of his blue-eyed gaze went straight to her chest, making her gasp for air.

“Have you reached a decision, gentlemen?” asked the judge.

The foreman stood. “We have, my lord.”

The bailiff stepped forward and accepted the folded slip of paper from the foreman’s hand. He bore it across the room to the judge’s dais, high above the assembled crowd below, the orderly rows and squares of justice.

The judge took the paper, unfolded it, and studied it without expression.

He looked up. “Lord Hatherfield?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“The gentlemen of the jury find you guilty of the crime of murder.”

Guilty.

The blood left Stefanie’s head in a sudden rush. She gripped the edges of the table to keep herself from falling. From the corner of the room came the sound of wailing.

Hatherfield’s face, stark and shocked.

The wooden crack of the gavel.

The gray-haired voice of the judge: “Sentencing to take place tomorrow at noon in these chambers. Court is adjourned.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he guard’s voice was respectful. “A visitor, your lordship.”

Hatherfield went on staring at the stone ceiling above him, the infinite pattern of round intersecting shapes. His brain was still numb with shock, still unable to comprehend this basic contradiction. That he was innocent, and yet he was guilty.

Guilty
, the judge had said. But he was innocent.

“Send him in,” he said.

A creak of hinges, and then Stefanie’s familiar footsteps on the flagstones. The door closed with a gentle bang.

She hesitated near the threshold. He could feel the tender weight of her indecision, a few yards away; the undulation of her grief in the hot quietude of his prison cell. He held out his hand.

“Oh, Hatherfield.” She knelt beside the cot, holding his hand to her cheek.

He sat up and bent over her head. The soft hair smelled of soap and pomade and Stefanie, warm against his lips. “Shh. Shh. It’s all right, little one.”

“It’s not possible. Guilty. How could they think you guilty? You?”

“Because a woman is dead, Stefanie. Murdered brutally in her own boudoir. Someone has to pay.”

“It’s not possible. Sir John . . .” Her back heaved. “Sir John said that was the point of the British system of justice. That sometimes the guilty go free, and that’s the price we pay so that the innocent aren’t convicted.”

He closed his eyes and concentrated on every detail of her, every tremor of her body, every sob from her throat. “Listen to me, sweetheart. We haven’t much time. I want to be sure you’ll be taken care of, safe and sound. Nelson will look after you. I’m going to leave a letter for Sir John, explaining everything, and until your uncle turns up again . . .”

“Stop. Stop. Don’t speak as if it’s certain.”

He stroked her hair. “The houses, everything I own, it’s yours. I’ve already had documents made up . . .”

“Stop.” She lifted her head and took him by the ears. “It’s not possible. It’s not possible. They can’t do this.”

He kissed her, because what else could he do? She was there, and time was short. He took her lips gently, stroked her cheeks gently. Her mustache tickled his lip. The softness of her skin was a miracle.

She pulled back an inch or two. Her eyes were wet. “I have something for you,” she said.

“What is it?” He couldn’t stop touching her face, her sweet skin.

She reached for the buttons of her jacket, her padded jacket that hid her feminine body from the watchful world. One by one she slipped the small brass knobs through their holes, while her wet eyes remained fixed on his, and the blood coursed like fire in his veins.

“Sweetheart, we can’t . . .” The words struggled out, but there was something in the way she undid the last button, something in the way she parted the jacket, and in the instant before her swollen waistcoat appeared before him, he realized what she was trying to show him.

He whispered, “Oh God. Stefanie.”

“I couldn’t tell you.” The tears were wandering down her face now. “I thought you might do something foolish, and by the time I knew for certain, we were already so busy, and I thought I’d tell you afterward, when you were free and we could . . .”

“Oh God. Oh God.” He slipped off the cot, on his knees next to her on the hard stone floor. “Oh, my little one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Oh God.” He held her, rocking her against him, trying to encompass this new thought, this great and terrible miracle. Stefanie’s belly nestled into his like a round little melon. His brain grasped at the sequence of months, trying to count them. Five? Six? “I am a selfish brute,” he said.

“Don’t say that.” Her arms tightened around him. “I wouldn’t change a moment. Not a single moment.”

“How . . .” His throat was so tight, he could hardly speak. “When?”

“November.”

There were things he should say, things he wanted to say. Joy and fear and pummeling grief. And gratitude to her, to Stefanie. And guilt, for what he had done to her.

He couldn’t say any of them. The words had simply fled, leaving him hollow, leaving him crammed to bursting.

He thought, she shouldn’t be on the hard stone floor like this.

He lifted her up and sat down on the bed and wept quietly into her hair.