Anne Stuart (23 page)

“
No. Darnley’s sister. The woman you’re so intent on avenging.”

She’d hoped to goad him into anger. Into some show of emotion. Instead he merely smiled at her. “I thought I’d already explained it to you, my love. I have no heart. Darnley took something I wanted and broke it. My pride demands suitable punishment. Maude is long dead—it could hardly matter to her what I do with her despicable brother.”

“
Does she haunt you?”

This time it worked. And she was very sorry that it had. His face whitened, his green eyes blazed, and he was very angry indeed. She wondered, quite suddenly, whether he could hurt her.

A moment later he had himself under control once more. “You’re right,” he said casually. “I did underestimate you.” He started toward her. “But I imagine it will be a simple matter to teach you a salient lesson. It would be wise not to provoke a sleeping lion, my pet. You will always come off the worse for it.”

She backed away from him, against the table, and the water in the basin sloshed noisily. She wasn’t afraid of pain, she told herself. She’d been hit and hurt before. She closed her eyes and steeled herself.

It was far, far worse than she had imagined. He pulled her up against him, his hands not the slightest bit gentle, and his body was hard and strong against her softness. “Let me give you a little demonstration of what I’m sparing you,” he whispered against her mouth.

She’d been kissed before.

She’d fought Frederick Varienne’s assaults, and her uncle’s too fond salutes, and she had always thought she didn’t like kissing.

She was wrong.

He put one hand behind her neck, his long fingers holding her head still, while his other arm encircled her waist. He lowered his mouth to hers, leisurely, brushing his lips against hers, back and forth, slowly, oh, so slowly. She wanted to push him away, she wanted to draw him closer, so instead she simply let her hands rest at her sides. As long as she didn’t respond, didn’t participate, there could surely be no harm in it. Besides, she didn’t have much choice in the matter. If Killoran decided to kiss her, for whatever dark reasons, then kiss her he would.

His thumb was stroking the side of her face. He was pressing his hand against the small of her back, so that her hips were thrust up against his, and she let her eyelids flutter closed as he just touched the surface of her lips, his brandy-flavored breath warming her.

The sensation was disturbing and enchanting, and she wanted more of it. He started to withdraw, a mere fraction of an inch, and her mouth followed, clinging to his.

The faint sound of his laughter made her eyelids fly open in sudden dismay. “You’re too easy, child,” he murmured. “I need more of a challenge. You’re supposed to despise me, remember?”

She couldn’t trample on his foot; she wasn’t wearing shoes. She couldn’t slap him; her hands were trapped by her sides. She considered using her knee, a tactic that had served her well in the past, but some latent sense of self-preservation stopped her.

She could only use her mouth. “I
do
despise you,” she said furiously. “You’re a bully and a coward, a mean, nasty man who’s not grateful for the advantages he’s been given, but instead—”

“
Advantages?” he interrupted calmly, untouched by her rage. “What advantages do I have? I wasn’t one of your English lordlings, born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I’m Irish, child. That ranks slightly higher than a Gypsy, but not much. It didn’t give me a particularly sanguine view of the world. Anything I have today I earned.”

“
You’ve the devil’s own luck at the gaming tables,” she countered. “Nathaniel told me so.”

“
Nathaniel’s been busy,” he observed. “What about Lady Seldane? Did she bore you with similar tales of my misspent youth?”

Emma wasn’t about to tell him, or to let herself be distracted. She glared at him. “You’re sinfully handsome, women everywhere fall at your feet, you have a beautiful house, friends, companions, anything you might desire. Surely you could be happy…?”

For a moment there was real humor in his dark green eyes. “Sinfully handsome, Emma? Women fall at my feet? Then why, pray tell, aren’t you there?”

“
I’m not interested in being one of your conquests.”

“
I don’t conquer women, Emma,” he said in a low, sinuous voice. “I seduce them. Charm them into doing exactly what I want them to do. Does that surprise you, that I would hold that much charm?”

She looked up at him. Indeed, she had no choice—he was still holding her close against his body, and she could either look at him or close her eyes. She wasn’t sure which was more dangerous.

“
No,” she said. “It doesn’t surprise me.”

“
Then why haven’t you succumbed yet?”

“
I’m stronger than most women.”

“
So you are,” he agreed. “But you’re no match for me.”

She hadn’t realized he’d been moving her slowly, carefully, backward, until her body came up against the side of the high bed. She halted in sudden panic, but it was too late. He carried her down onto it, his body covering hers, his weight warm and solid.

She fought him, but it was useless. Within moments she was on her back, staring up at him, breathless with fury and frustration. His hips trapped hers, pressing her body into the soft feather bed, and his hands held her wrists firmly against the white damask sheets.

“
And now, dear Emma, I’ll show you just what you have to be wary of,” he said, and his head moved down, blotting out the light.

This was no slow, sensuous caress of mouth and lip. This was no chaste salute, nor was it the wet awkwardness of an untried boy or a randy old man. He opened his mouth over hers and kissed her, using his tongue, his teeth, and all the clever weapons he had in his arsenal.

She told herself she was being kissed by a practiced rake. She told herself it meant nothing, it was a trick, an act, a small skill that anyone could acquire. She told herself that as her body trembled and melted beneath him, as her mouth opened to his skillful insistence.

She told herself it meant absolutely nothing as his tongue pushed into her mouth, and the moan that came from deep inside her had to be one of displeasure, didn’t it?

It wasn’t one kiss, it wasn’t twenty, it was a long series of unending kisses, leading one into another, so that she barely had time to begin to regain her sanity when he stripped it away once more. He kissed her eyelids, the side of her mouth, the beating pulse at the base of her neck. He kissed her nose and her chin, he bit her earlobe, and then he covered her mouth once more, kissing her with a devastating thoroughness that had her damp and trembling in his arms.

His hands were on her petticoats, slowly drawing them up her long legs, and her hips cradled him. He was hard against her, she belatedly recognized that fact, and the knowledge panicked her. He wanted her, his body wanted to claim hers, and there was no way she could stop him. No way, God help her, that she wanted to stop him.

He broke the kiss, rising up over her as she lay on the bed, staring down at her with a hooded expression in his eyes. His mouth was wet from hers, and his breathing was slightly labored. It would have been the only sign of his arousal, had it not been for the heat pressing against her hips.

“
Do you want me, Emma?” he murmured, his voice low and insistent. “You don’t have to say a word. Just put your mouth against mine.

Oh, God she did want him, as terrifying as that notion was. She wanted to touch him, to feel his skin against hers, and she felt a dark burning deep inside her that she knew only he could assuage. She wanted his mouth, she wanted his heart, she wanted his soul.

But he had no heart or soul to give her. And he would take hers without a second thought,

“
No,” she said. Calmly, firmly, with a sureness she was far from feeling.

There was no hint of regret on his dark, dangerous face. No argument, or attempts at persuasion or force. “A wise choice, child,” he said.

And he rose from the bed, leaving her there in a tangle of clothing.

He was almost out the door when she called after him. “Did I really have a choice?”

He paused, considering. And then he smiled, a bleak, bitter smile. “You’ll never know, will you?”

“
You buggered this up nicely.”

Miriam DeWinter stared at the elegant wastrel who sat sprawled in one of her straight-backed chairs. Her thin fingers curled into claws in her lap, but she didn’t move.

“
You don’t like my language, do you, my gel?” he continued, slurring slightly. “That’s too damned bad, it is. You’ll have to get used to it, and a lot more. Like paying attention to who’s calling the shots around here. Those men were supposed to bring me the girl. Instead one lies dead, another won’t survive much longer, and the third’s long gone.”

“
It’s hardly my fault if you hire inferior employees,” Miriam said in her icy voice.

“
This kind of work doesn’t attract the finer elements of society, woman,” Darnley sneered. “And they would have done just fine if they’d obeyed orders.”

“
What makes you think they didn’t?”

“
Hendries had twice the amount of money I’d paid him tucked in his pocket when he managed to crawl back to my house. Had a devil of a time explaining him to my man.”

“
Maybe he stole his partners’ share.”

“
Maybe. Or maybe someone paid him double, to make certain things came out her way instead of mine. You want the girl dead, and well I know it.”

Miriam maintained her icy demeanor. “I really don’t care what happens to the girl as long as she ends up dead, and spectacularly so. She’s a whore, and you may use her as such if you wish. Just as long as you don’t let her go.”

“
Kind of you,” Darnley muttered. “Killoran will be on his guard now. It’ll be twice as hard to get her away from him.”

“
He was already on his guard,” Miriam said. “Why do you think your henchmen failed?”

“
Damn it!” Darnley said bitterly. “They won’t fail again.”

She looked at her cohort with withering disdain. He was her superior in rank, in wealth
in breeding, in gender.
He filled her with contempt. “See that they don’t,” she said calmly. “Or I shall have to see to it myself.”

And she knew Darnley had no doubt she could do just that.

Chapter 13

“
I love you.”

Lady Barbara looked up in surprise, the cards dropping from her hands. She’d been waiting for hours for the inevitable declaration, but now that the moment had come, she found herself uneasy.

She would bed him, she had decided that afternoon after she’d run from Killoran’s house. The hell with Killoran, and with Nathaniel. She would take Nathaniel into her bed and let him hunch and groan and sweat on her, and she would put her arms around him and make the requisite sounds, all guaranteed to convince him of her sublime pleasure. And then she would dismiss him. She’d gone back and enticed Nathaniel away with her, planning to end this farce quickly and efficiently. But for the past two hours they’d simply played piquet in her small, exquisitely decorated withdrawing room, while Nathaniel had watched her.

She picked up her hand and smiled at him, resorting the cards. “You’re very young, aren’t you?” she murmured.

“
I’m twenty-three. Older than you are.”

“
I doubt it. I was older than you when I was twelve,” she said idly, laying a card on the green baize table. “Pique.”

He tossed his own cards down. “I don’t want to game with you, Lady Barbara.”

She smiled at him, not fooled for a moment. “I’m certain you don’t,” she murmured. “You want to bed me.”

“
I don’t—”

“
You don’t want to bed me?” she interrupted his protest, sourly amused. “How very unflattering, Nathaniel. Are you telling me you don’t find me desirable?”

“
Of course I do. You are the most beautiful, desirable woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“
But then, you’ve spent most of your life in the wilds of Northumberland, have you not?” she said.

“
Don’t toy with me. Lady Barbara,” he said, frustration and anger beginning to creep into his voice. “Don’t mock my devotion.”

“
Devotion, is it? I thought it was lust, pure and simple.” She leaned back in her chair, stretching slightly, arching her back like a cat. It showed her well-formed, partially exposed bosom to advantage, and she knew his eyes would glaze over and his noble protestations would vanish.

Except that he wasn’t playing the game properly. He kept his expression glued to her face, as if the look in her eyes were somehow more important than her perfect curves.

“
Barbara,” he said, his voice gentle, irritatingly so. She wasn’t used to men being gentle with her. She didn’t like it.

“
If you want me, you have only to say so, Nathaniel,” she murmured, pushing back from the green baize table. “I’ve been waiting for you to evince some interest. Don’t you listen to gossip? Don’t you know that I make myself available to any man who appeals to me? I’ve been thinking about you ever since you kissed me. You’re a very handsome young man. I imagine you’ll be an energetic lover, and I’ve grown tired of jaded, older men. A little enthusiasm wouldn’t come amiss.” She reached behind her and unfastened the diamond necklace, setting it on the table in front of her. “Will you help me with my dress, or shall I call Clothilde?”

“
Barbara...” he said, rising, and there was anger and denial in his beautiful blue eyes.

She came up to him. He was a great deal taller than she was, and strong. He smelled clean and fresh, like soap and wool and candlelight. She put her small hands up to his shoulders and smiled at him. “Don’t be afraid, Nathaniel,” she mocked him gently. “Surely you’ve bedded women before. You know the pleasure I can offer you.” She began to remove the plain gold studs that fastened his white linen shirt.