Desired (18 page)

“What of the others?” Owen said. His voice was so rough he barely recognised it. He did not want to know the answer to his question but he knew he would have to bear it. If he was to help Tess he needed to know the whole truth, no matter how painful. But she was shaking her head. She did not pretend to misunderstand him.

“Brokeby was a jealous man,” she said, “so although he wanted his cronies to see what he possessed and to
envy him for it, he was not prepared to share me. Not then. Maybe when he had tired of me.” She smiled but there was no amusement in her eyes. “Lucky for me he died before that happened.”

“How long?” Owen said. He was so angry he was not sure he could even get the words out. “How long before he died?”

“Two months,” Tess said, “but mercifully he was up in town for one of those.”

Dear God. She had spent a whole month with a whore-mongering, libidinous bastard like Brokeby.
Owen felt his throat close with despair for her.

“I ran away whilst Brokeby was in London,” Tess said. “I went back to my uncle and aunt’s house, but my uncle was a most God-fearing vicar and he said I was breaking my wedding vows. He took me back to Brokeby in person to make sure I could not run again. I should have gone to Joanna,” she said bitterly, “but she had difficulties of her own. She and I had a talent for choosing the wrong husbands.”

“You have both made up for it now, though,” Owen said, and just for a moment he saw a smile filter like sunlight into her eyes and he felt a fierce desire to bring that laughter back into her life and banish the shadows for good.

“Maybe we have,” she said slowly. The smile vanished from her eyes. “After Brokeby died I found some of the portraits in his effects and destroyed them. It never occurred to me that there would be more. Fool
ish of me, but I was not thinking clearly and—” She gave a shrug. “I tried very hard to not think about it at all. I tried to wipe Brokeby from my mind, obliterate him.” Her eyes clouded with pain. “You will have heard that I was very wild. I tried everything in order to forget—gambling, drinking… But no lovers.” Her gaze snapped up to meet his again. “I could not bear anyone to touch me.” The words, so desolate, dropped into the silence of the room. “Darent found me in the gutter one night after I had drunk too much at a ball. He was a kind man.” She smiled faintly. “We came to an understanding. His health was ruined through the laudanum.” She made a slight gesture. “I was…safe…with him.”

“He did not want to bed you,” Owen said.

“No.” Tess shifted, sighed. “After Darent died I made my home with Joanna and Alex, but the damage was done in terms of my reputation. And then Melton mounted his exhibition—” again Owen saw her hands clench “—and ruined me all over again. I tried to pretend it was not happening. I never went to see it. But the knowledge of it burned at the back of my mind all the time. I could not escape it.” She made a slight gesture that had a wealth of hopelessness in it. “So you see, my lord, why I wished for another impotent husband. I can never be a true wife to you.” Her eyes begged for his understanding. “It truly is for the best that we should part.”

No.

Owen’s reaction was an instinctive refusal. He did not speak the word aloud but he was never going to accept it. What damage had been done, and it was terrible damage, hideous violation, could surely be undone with enough time, patience and care. He had to believe that because he wanted it to be true.

“We’ll discuss this in the morning,” he said gently.

It was late—almost dawn—and she looked exhausted, every nerve stretched tight. She was translucently pale. He could not leave her here in the library, for the fire had gone out and she would be chilled to the bone within minutes. She was already shivering, though Owen doubted that was entirely with cold. Tiny shudders racked her.

Upstairs there was a room that had been prepared for her to occupy. All her portmanteaux had been sent round from Bedford Street. He had seen them earlier, standing in serried rows, waiting to be unpacked. He wondered whether it would comfort Tess to have her belongings around her or whether it might simply send her running back to the place she probably thought of as home, a place where perhaps she felt safe. He could imagine her climbing out of the window and running off into the night, driven by desperation and despair.

Perhaps his room might be better. There were no bulging suitcases there to remind her just what a lonely stranger she was in this house.

Well, she could not stay here, whatever the outcome. He scooped her up in his arms to take her upstairs.

As soon as he touched her, her body went rigid as a board and he heard her breathing escalate to a pant of terror.

“Calm yourself.” He spoke very soothingly, as he would to a frightened horse, and held her with impersonal gentleness. “I won’t hurt you. I’m just taking you upstairs so that you can get some rest.”

He could hear the frightened flutter of her breath and feel the erratic rise and fall of her chest against his. Her entire body was stiff with dread. If she could not bear him even to touch her, Owen thought grimly, they were in deeper trouble than he had ever imagined. But after a moment her breathing slowed a little and some softness came back into her limbs. She relaxed against him, her head brushing his shoulder, her hair tickling his cheek. She made no further protest as he carried her up the stairs and into the warmth and light of his room. Her head lifted from his shoulder; she looked at the bed and he felt her give a slight shudder.

Hell.
He sat her down on the side of the bed and drew off her evening slippers.

“I’ll call your maid,” he said. “You need to undress. Your gown is covered in paint.”

Tess nodded slightly. She already looked more than half asleep.

The maid came so quickly Owen wondered if all the servants had been listening at the door. Very probably they had. The events of his wedding day would have circulated halfway around London by now, he was sure.
The maid was a thin, plain girl, but she looked practical and there was a fierce light of affection in her eyes when she looked at Tess.

“I’ll look after her, my lord,” the girl said. “You can trust me.”

Owen nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Mallon,” the girl said. “Margery Mallon.”

“Thank you, Margery,” Owen said. Regardless of convention, he hated calling servants by their surnames and would even have called Houghton by the name of Harold had he not thought that the butler would have expired with disapproval to be so addressed.

“Come and find me when Lady Rothbury is asleep,” he said. “I want to stay with her to ensure she is safe.”

“Yes, my lord.” Margery’s gaze was quick and approving. She went over to Tess and talked to her gently, easing her from the paint-spattered gown. Owen watched Tess lean back against the pillows and heard her give a tiny sigh, as though she felt safe at last. He looked at her. Tess, his beautiful, damaged bride. It all made perfect sense to him now; the way that she had helped Harriet Knight and Emma Bradshaw and all those other women who had been lost, broken and betrayed, how she had given away money to the charities that saved women and children ruined on the whim of men, her utter determination that Sybil Darent would never be sold into marriage with a middle-aged lecher…?. Tess had known the desolation of such a life
and had resolved to do everything she could to prevent that misery ruining the lives of others.

The fury that had possessed Owen earlier flared back into vivid and vicious life. It was fortunate for Brokeby that he was already dead. But the others, the men who had been there at that fateful house party… He wanted to hunt them down and kill them one by one with all the anger and violence that was in his soul, especially the man—whoever he was—who had so cruelly, so carelessly, closed the door and trapped Tess in a world of misery and fear. Owen felt something very close to despair twist his gut. Only once before, on the night he had almost killed a man, had he felt such fury fill his entire being. Now he was not sure that he could control that anger. White-hot and vicious, it seeped into every corner of his being. He would find them, every last man of them. And he would make them pay.

T
ESS SLEPT FOR A WHILE OUT OF
sheer exhaustion but woke on the edge of a nightmare, uncertain where she was. For a second she felt the darkness and the nameless fear bear down on her and a gasp rose to her lips, but then the room swam into view, the candle burning low, the fire a glow of comfort in the grate. In the faint light she could see the outlines of the room. It was bare and plain, the sort of chamber that belonged to a man who took only what he needed and was accustomed to travelling lightly and moving on. She was in Owen’s chamber. She could smell his scent on the sheets and it pierced her with desolation. Earlier, all she had wanted
was to be free of Owen, to run away from him and from her fears, to be alone again because that was the only way she knew. Now she realised that she needed him. She needed his strength and his comfort and his reassurance, but she had no right to claim them because she could offer him nothing in return.

The ragged edges of the nightmare taunted her again. Despite herself, a little sob broke from her lips. She tried to stifle it but the fear pressed closer, smothering the air in her lungs.

And then someone was beside her, his hand smoothing the hair away from her hot forehead, his arms about her, holding her with gentleness she craved but had never found.

“Sweetheart.” His lips were against her hair. “Hush. You’re safe now.”

Owen.

He was there for her when she needed him. She had thought to push him away, uncomfortable with his physical proximity, but found herself clinging to him instead, burying her face in his shirt and holding him as though her very life depended upon it. She inhaled his scent and it felt so familiar and reassuring that her body softened into acceptance. There was no danger here. Owen would never hurt her. She knew it in her soul.

After a moment he drew her back beneath the sheets—it was cold in the room, even with the flicker
of the fire. Her head was on his shoulder, and his arms about her were as strong as steel bands.

“Safe…” She murmured the word and felt his lips brush her brow. She was so tired; habit and an instinctive wariness told her that she should stay awake, that she should be vigilant. A deeper instinct told her that she could trust him and sleep. The warmth crept from his body to hers, wrapping her about with comfort, a drug on her senses. She could not resist any longer. Sleep ambushed her and with slight surprise she succumbed.

When she woke the next time, the entire length of Owen’s body was pressed against her and she felt hot, as though she had a fever. His lips were about an inch from hers. She could feel his breath on her skin. Through the tangle of her nightgown she felt his erection—no, he most certainly was not impotent—and her gasp of shock brought him awake so fast she barely had time to register it. One moment his face had been vulnerable in repose. The next he was staring into her eyes, and his own were dark with desire, sleep fading fast. Tess froze, the terror pouncing on her, turning her body to ice. But then an extraordinary thing happened. Owen’s lips curved into a smile. He kissed her with the briefest and most fleeting of caresses, and rolled away from her onto his back, one arm behind his head.

“I apologise,” he said, “if I shocked you.”

“I…” Tess grabbed her scattered thoughts. Her heartbeat was slowing, the patter of fear easing from
her body leaving her weak with relief. “I thought you would—” She stopped.

“You thought I would make love to you?” Owen said. His face was tilted towards her. She could barely see his expression in the shadows. “I don’t force my attentions on an unwilling woman.”

He had told her that earlier but it was still a revelation to meet a man with restraint, even though she had known they must exist.

She frowned. “But you were aroused…” The heat flooded her body, embarrassment mingled with something else. She had never left so many sentences unfinished in her life.

“I find you very attractive.” He sounded matter-of-fact. “I won’t lie. Nor apologise.” A thread of amusement came into his voice. “However, I don’t actually have to do anything about it.”

“Oh.” She felt naive. In fact she felt a whole welter of emotions, but for the first time fear was not the strongest. She snuggled closer to his side, seeking his warmth again, and immediately felt him stiffen. She drew back. She had done something wrong. She knew it from his reaction.

“I’m sorry.” She was mortified.

“No.” He pulled her very firmly into his arms. “I was surprised, that’s all.” His breath stirred her hair and sent delicious shivers skittering over the skin of her neck. “I’m glad you trust me.”

Tess relaxed. Her head was resting on his shoulder
again, her lips only a couple of inches from his throat. The scent of him was like rainwater but with something in it that was uniquely his. Once again the relaxation seeped into her limbs but it had a different quality to it now. It felt peaceful, undemanding.

She lay like that for a long time, watching Owen, listening to his breathing as he fell asleep. She felt different and strange, humble, filled with awe and happy. The happiness rippled through her like sunlight and she revelled in it, revelled in Owen’s closeness and the uncomplicated pleasure she could take from it. It was like a revelation to her. But slowly her awareness of him changed. Contrarily it was spiked with attraction now. She felt very awake.
Excited.

This time her gasp of shock was from a different cause. Impossible. It was impossible that she should want him…?. And yet she did.

She shifted imperceptibly closer to Owen. He was lying very still with his eyes closed, deeply asleep. Tess pressed her lips softly to the skin of his throat. It was warm, skin soft, stubble rough. The contrasting sensations jostled within her. So did the curiosity and the apprehension. Greatly daring, she parted her lips and tasted him with the tip of her tongue. Again that uniqueness; she tasted salt, fresh air, clean linen, Owen… Her head spun. She touched her fingers to his hair, feeling the smoothness of it like the flick of feathers.