Swept Away (19 page)

He felt her body stiffen in astonishment but she did not push him away. Nor did she offer more than the softest whimper of resistance when he brushed his thumb across her nipple, stroking and teasing the already well defined circlet until the peak was hard enough to draw a groan from his own throat. With the worst done, it was a trifling matter to pluck at the ribbons that bound the bodice closed and to slide his hand beneath the feather-soft lawn so that it was flesh against flesh, incredible silky heat against roughened calluses that he knew, instinctively, had not felt such exquisite beauty in a very long time.

Emory cursed softly as heated blood surged through his veins, transforming what had begun as a modest stirring into a hard and needful swelling that strained him to the point of agony. Emerging from the parted fabric again, he spread his hand flat over her belly and slid it downward, curving his fingers into the juncture of her thighs. The cloth of her nightdress was sheer enough for him to feel the buffer of downy soft curls, silky enough for him to trace the contours of the two distinct lips of tender flesh and the sensitive nub hidden between. He expelled another soft oath against her throat and stroked his fingers to and fro, parting the delicate folds of flesh wider on each pass. He probed as deeply as the fabric allowed, until it was damp and Anna was no longer whimpering with the pleasure, but gasping and shuddering and pressing herself eagerly against his fingers.

Emory murmured something in her ear, but she was too distracted to understand what he said. Her body had never known such erotic stimulation before. She could scarcely believe she was allowing a man...a veritable stranger she had barely known two full days to take such shameful liberties, but shame was suddenly and unexpectedly the last thing that concerned her now. It was only the press and drag of his fingers she cared about. The skillful and deliberate incursions that were urging her toward the brink of some unknown ecstasy.

Her eyes shivered open, and her vision, at first blurred by the candlelight, cleared when she saw the reflection of her writhing body in the window. Her robe was hanging open, her nightdress pushed aside over a bared breast. His dark head was bent over her shoulder, his lips were still plundering the curve of her throat while lower down, his fingers were moving between her thighs, indenting and straining the lawn with each exquisitely explicit thrust.

A harsh cry broke from her throat and she twisted frantically out of his arms. Her knees buckled even as she grabbed at the length of velvet draperies to prevent herself from stumbling. She knocked against the edge of the table in her haste, jarring it enough to tip the glass and startle the candlestick. Quickly, she scrambled further into the corner, hauling the thickness of the velvet drapery with her to use as a shield. She stood there, gasping and panting, staring in utter horror at the pale outline of Emory Althorpe, who had used his cat like reflexes to catch the wine glass before it toppled onto the floor and shattered.

When it was righted, he searched out the figure cowering in the corner.

“Anna--”

“Don’t come near me!” she cried, cringing even further and raising the clutched velvet panel higher when he took a step toward her.

Emory stopped. “Anna, I’m sorry. I did not mean to frighten you.”

“No, you only meant to ravish me? To...to
take advantage of me
so that you might carry the blissful memory to your grave?”

Her sarcasm stung, but the shot was not entirely off the mark and he admitted it. “You are right. Of course you are absolutely right, and I can only say again: I am sorry. I am a cad and a miscreant, and I would not blame you for calling me every filthy name your brother ever thought to devise, although you must also believe that I would do nothing to hurt you or compromise you in any way.”

“A n-noble declaration,” she stammered, “having done just that.”

Not knowing what else to do with his hands, he raked them angrily through his hair and paced to the foot of the bed and back.

Anna watched him, still trembling from the strength of the pulsations between her thighs. Her skin felt as if it had been rubbed raw everywhere by a coarse towel and the slightest touch might cause her to faint.

“I will admit,” he said finally, “to the present circumstances being somewhat more compromising than a couple of misguided kisses.”

“
Somewhat
more compromising?”

“All right, yes. Significantly more so. But still not enough to emblazon your breast with the mark of a harlot and pillory yourself on a stockade.”

“Not in your opinion, perhaps. Not in the opinion of a self- proclaimed cad and miscreant who, although he cannot even remember if he has a w-wife, blithely attempts to seduce his way into another woman’s bed anyway.”

He looked away for a moment and when he turned back, he shook his head. “I am not married.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I cannot swear it unequivocally on a bible of course, but if there
was
a woman in my life that I loved enough to marry--” he paused to expel a small gust of air-- “I doubt very much I would be damn near coming out of my skin every time I was close to you.”

Anna was not sure if that was meant as a compliment or a means of excusing his behavior. In any case, she did not want him coming out of anything. In the past week she had broken more rules, flaunted more conventions, found herself asking more questions about who she was and what she wanted out of life than she was likely ever meant to ask. She had deceived her brother, lied to the authorities, actively conspired to conceal a criminal and destroyed her chances for a potentially brilliant marriage. Yet here she stood, trembling with an incomprehensible lust--and it was lust, she was not deceiving herself by calling it anything else--for the last man on earth for whom she should be feeling such urges.

The knowledge that he had been fighting a similar attraction was hardly reassuring. On the contrary, it was frightening and unsettling.

“The timing and circumstances are no better than they were ten minutes ago,” he added, misinterpreting her silence. “But if it will set your mind at ease and bring you out of that damned corner, we can go down the hall now and waken my brother.”

“Waken your brother?”

“He is a vicar, is he not? Licensed to perform marriages. I am sure we could persuade him to forgo the standard formalities.”

“Is
that
your idea of an apology? A proposal of marriage? Or is it just another means of getting what you wanted in the first place?”

Emory’s eyes narrowed with the first hint of a threat. “Madam, if I truly wanted what you are protecting so valiantly with your velvet shield and your pride, I could take it in a heartbeat and there would be nothing you could do to prevent it or stop me. I do not offer marriage for the mere convenience of taking you to bed. Indeed, I would not be offering it at all if I thought there was the slightest possibility it might hinder my speedy departure from these premises.”

“Nothing is hindering you from leaving now, this instant,” she gasped, the indignation flooding her cheeks

He stared at her through the darkness for a long moment, then offered a curt bow. “No indeed, there is not. Again, I thank you for your solicitude these past few days and beg your forgiveness at my unwanted intrusion here tonight. I would also wish you the very best of luck for the future, whatever it may bring.”

She watched him stride across the room and disappear into the darkness of the dressing room. A few seconds later she heard the muted click as the door to the outer hallway was shut firmly behind him, and she knew he was gone. He was gone and she was left with only her draperies and her pride for comfort.

CHAPTER 12

Annaleah discovered the loss in the morning. She had deliberately remained in bed much later than her normal hour and for added insurance, ordered a tub to be filled that she might steam away the chill that had settled in her flesh since Emory Althorpe’s brusque departure. It was when she was removing her nightrail that she noticed the key was gone. The chain had been around her neck since Althorpe had put it there on the beach, and although she searched the floor in front of the window and in the corner, she did not find it. Nor did she find the key to the gun case that she had left beside the wine decanter last night.

When Broom came to the door she sent him lumbering--and grumbling--back to the kitchens with his unwanted buckets of hot water. She dressed unaided in a simple high waisted gown and gave her hair a rudimentary brush before twisting it into a tight coil and pinning it haphazardly on the crown of her head. She left her room and hurried along the hallway, heading straight for the library when she descended to the second floor.

The key was in the gun cabinet, jutting out of the lock as it had been the previous afternoon. But instead of five pistols seated in nests of baize on the shelf, there were only three. And of the compartments designed to hold flints, shot and powder flasks, half were empty. A further, panicked thought sent her to the huge cherrywood desk where she knew her great aunt kept her household records and accounts. She yanked open the top drawer and lifted the lid of the handsome enamelled box where Florence had placed a hundred pounds in rents and sales from her cider at the beginning of the week, and was stunned to see that it too was empty.

“A horse, a saddle, and a haversack full of Mildred’s biscuits and cold chicken. Willerkins contributed a compass and supplied the name of a posting house along the Exeter turnpike whose proprietor would not ask too many questions of a stranger. That, of course, proved to be a gauntlet thrown in Broom’s face, whereupon he spilled forth a veritable list of inns, taverns, and brothels of various repute where a coin or two would guarantee anonymity.”

“But...where will he go?” she asked softly.

“Anywhere but here, in Torbay. The
Bellerophon
slipped into the harbor sometime during the night. Napoleon Bonaparte has arrived on our humble shores and the crowds will be pouring in like herds of sheep and cattle though frankly, I cannot see the attraction. I always thought him an unctuous little snipe in too-tight breeches, and knew that eventually the bad blood would out. Just because a pig knows how to root out truffles, it does not change the fact that it is still a pig.

“Speaking of refined snouts,” Florence added. “Your Lord Barrimore is in the parlor with your brother. I have been suffering genuine bouts of concern, seeking to intercept you before you barged into the room unawares.”

Anna’s head took another terrible spin and she sat down heavily in the desk chair.

She had not even considered the possibility of facing Barrimore so soon after humiliating him. Nor did she want to speculate what form of greeting he might extend, how sharp the daggers in his eyes or how thick the frost on his tongue. She could deal with her brother’s anger, even his contempt, but the thought of being upbraided for her hoydenish behavior while Barrimore stood witness was enough to drain the blood from her face with the speed of an opened vein.

“We could always say you were so stricken with guilt, you threw yourself off the cliff and are too distraught to receive visitors,” Florence suggested dryly. “But I dare say that would only delay the inevitable a day or two. And besides, it could be much worse.”

Annaleah shook her head. “I cannot imagine how.”

“Well for one thing, the vicar and his annoying little wagtail could still be here, and Willerkins would have had to fetch the constables to arrest me on a charge of murder. As it was, having to listen to her incessant natter over breakfast, I came perilously close to striking my own head with my cane just to give myself something more painful to contemplate.”

Anna’s eyes were silvery with tears as she looked up at her aunt. “Oh Auntie, I wish I could stay here with you forever.”

Florence clutched her hands together. “I wish you could too, dear, but...” She braced up and attempted a smile. “Good God, child, in a month you would be as addled as the rest of us. We have had a bit of an adventure together, though, have we not? And you have discovered--I trust--that I am not nearly as frightening or as peculiar as your mother would make me out to be.”

“You are sweet and kind and generous to a fault.”

Florence trembled and looked down at her hands, trying to remain constant, but failing miserably. “I’ll thank you not to repeat that anywhere, young lady, for it would seriously dent my reputation as a dotty old witch. Now come along. Let us square off against the Philistines together.” She stiffened her shoulders and thrust out her chin. “They would not dare cast stones, verbal or otherwise, in the presence of a feeble old woman and her cane.”

Anna blew out a resigned breath and pushed to her feet. Arm in arm they walked out of the library and turned in the direction of the day parlor.

“By the by, Rory's face was as long as a pike this morning too,” Florence murmured. “Not that it is any of my business, of course, but I had the distinct impression his mind was not on guns or horses or mad flights into peril. And dear Lucille, in her earnest zeal to be helpful, was only too eager to expound on what occurred after I retired last night.”

“Auntie, I’m sorry, I--”

“Do not be sorry, dear.” Florence patted her hand. “I only wish you would do your kissing where I might judge the attributes for myself, first hand. Lucille was quite breathless in her recounting.”

Anna was too startled to do more than glance sidelong at her aunt as they walked through the doorway and into the parlor. Nor did she have a chance to fully recover her wits before her brother and Lord Barrimore marked their entrance and ceased their murmured conversation to turn and offer polite bows. They were both standing by the fireplace, Barrimore in his usual staid funereal black from head to toe. Anthony displayed a fashionably more colorful splash of green satin in his waistcoat and buff trousers, and oddly enough, wore a cheerful expression.