Eve Silver (22 page)

“Nothing can change the ugly truth, Darcie. I killed her.” His voice lashed through the room with the vicious speed of a whip, cracking the still air.

“K-killed her?” Darcie stammered, shocked and horrified by his abrupt admission. Her thoughts skittered this way and that, and she leaped to the most obvious conclusion. Sally? Did he mean Sally? Her heart lurched and twisted, then settled into a steady rhythm once more as reason returned. She had no idea why she had even thought of Sally. They had been talking about the girl in the miniature. His wretched admission must relate to her. “You mean the girl in the portrait?”

“Yes,” he rasped as he turned from the window, his expression bleak, tortured.

Darcie stared at him, feeling his pain, suffering at the realization that he believed with a bone-deep certainty the words he spoke, truly saw himself in such a terrible light. But she could not believe it of him, and she had Abigail’s story as her proof.

“But Abigail said she breathed her last breath before you came. How then do you take the blame for her death?”

Damien laughed, a hollow sound. In three long strides he closed the distance between them and curled his hands around her upper arms, pulling her close until their lips were mere inches apart. She could see the wildness, the haunted grief that churned and roiled, his storm gray eyes a reflection of his soul.

“I killed her with my neglect,” he said. His fingers tightened around her arms, not enough to hurt her, but enough that she felt the barely leashed turbulence of his volatile emotions. Seconds ticked past, and then he set her away, creating distance between them. “Run from me, Darcie. I will cause you only harm. There is a darkness in me that I cannot control, a disgust over my own failings. I have no love left to give.”

Shaking her head, Darcie stepped forward. Her head fell back, and she met his tormented gaze, feeling his terrible pain. “Tell me,” she whispered. “Let me help you.”

She leaned in, resting her lips against his. Her lids drifted shut and she focused all her concentration on him, willing his suffering to flow away like the ebb of the tide. He shuddered against her.

“
Darcie.
” Her name was wrenched from him on a harsh whisper.

Suddenly, he thrust her from him, stepping back, as though their proximity was too intimate, too tempting to bear.

“She was my sister, and I am responsible for her death.” The vowels and consonants were strung together, enunciated with careful precision and impeccable diction, as though by focusing on the sound of them, Damien could distance himself from their meaning.

Darcie stifled a gasp. Whatever admission she had expected, it was not this.

“I promised my mother on her deathbed that I would care for Theresa, guard her with my life. I failed.” The words were clipped, bitten off with harsh exactitude, falling like leaden weights from his lips.

Moving towards him, Darcie held out one hand, slowly, gently letting it come to rest on his arm. He stiffened and she thought he would pull away. Then his shoulders slumped in acceptance of her silent support.

“Tell me, Damien. Share your burden with me and together we will carry it. I promise it will be lighter for the sharing.”

“Theresa was headstrong, volatile. With our mother's death, she went a little wild. Parties and balls were very well and good, but she had in her mind a fairy tale dream of a prince who would whisk her away and make all her dreams come true. If not a prince, then a title at the very least. With Father gone, Mother gone, and an older brother who was caught up in the euphoria of his studies and his own youthful folly—in fact little more than a rake himself—she longed for hearth and home, the promise of a man who would never leave her. She was a naive innocent, easy prey for the first unscrupulous man who came along.” Damien sat on the edge of his desk. Catching Darcie's hand, he pulled her against him, looped one arm about her waist, and rested his forehead on her shoulder.

“I had such dreams myself, once upon a time,” Darcie said, feathering her fingers through Damien’s silky hair.
You are my dream,
her heart whispered.

“She met her
prince,
” Damien continued derisively. “Met him secretly, told no one his name. He was no prince. Within weeks, she was ruined and pregnant.” He tightened his hold on her, and Darcie thought her closeness offered him some comfort. “My sister did not tell me of her plight. Perhaps she feared that I would refuse to help her, or worse, that I simply would not care. I cannot say that I acted the part of protector. Mostly, I paid her pretty compliments and little else, leaving her to her own devices. She trusted me to protect her, and I failed.”

Damien tipped back his head to meet Darcie’s gaze. His emotions were naked and clearly etched in his expression. “She sought the services of a back-alley abortionist. Mrs. Feather found her that night, bleeding, near death.”

Darcie swallowed, feeling ill as she imagined what his sister had suffered. He blamed himself. She could hear it in his words, feel it in the guilt that emanated from him in undulating waves.

“It was not your fault.” She squeezed his hand, her heart heavy as she wished with a fervent, silent prayer that she could take this terrible pain and gnawing guilt from him.

With a snarl, Damien rose from the edge of the desk, his face a mask of anguish. “She was too afraid to come to me. My own sister. She was desperate and terrified, and I killed her with my ignorance. I should have paid closer attention to her comings and goings, should have known where she was, what she was doing, who she was with. I would have helped her. My God, I would have helped her. If only—”

Darcie pressed her fingers to his lips. “There is no ‘if only,’ Damien. She is dead. A terrible, terrible loss. An unbearable waste of a young life. But there is no ‘if only.’ If I have learned one thing in my life, it is that lamentation and regrets only make things worse. A person must move on, move forward, never forget the past, but learn from it. If you ponder the ‘if onlys’ of life, they will drive you mad.”

Damien caught her wrist, his lean fingers curling about her small bones. Slowly he drew her arm down until it rested by her side, his grip solid and unyielding, his gaze holding hers in a swirling pool of molten silver.

“How do you know that I am not quite mad already?” he rasped. “There are nights...”

Darcie held her breath as his voice trailed off. What terrible secret was prefaced by those words? No secret, she admonished herself firmly. Just a man wracked by guilt over his sister's tragic death.

Was that the reason he had taken her in? “When Abigail sent me to you, that night in the carriage, I asked you if you would please do this one favor for your old friend Mrs. Feather. You looked at me so queerly, and your whole demeanor changed. You took in a total stranger on the request of a notorious madam. Why?”

Damien stared down at her. “A sister for a sister. She tried to help mine, and then asked me to help hers. A fair trade?” he asked, his fingers tangling in her hair, his expression shifting to one of desire.

“A fortuitous trade, for me,” Darcie whispered, confused by his mercurial moods, entranced by the glittering intensity of his gaze. Gone was the torment, the angst. The face he turned to her showed only burgeoning hunger.

“I had another reason for keeping you in my employ.” His lips were a hair's breadth from her own.

Her pulse raced at his declaration, a steady, heavy pounding in her veins.

“What reason did you have?” Darcie’s breath hitched as she willed him to voice an avowal of his affection. Oh, she was not foolish enough to expect declarations of love or undying devotion, but she sensed more in his regard for her than mere attraction. “What reason?”

He laughed harshly. “If I could name it, perhaps I could have defended myself against it. I have no rational explanation. I only know that I am drawn to you in a way I cannot deny. You are a fire inside of me, Darcie, licking at the edges of my soul.” He kissed her then, a hard press of his lips to hers. Possessive. Hungry. Leaving her gasping for breath when he pulled away.

“Damien.” Darcie raised herself up on the tips of her toes, molding her body against his, welcoming the closeness of their contact.

He needed no further invitation. With a low groan, he took her lips once more, plundering them with the heat of his desire, open-mouthed and wild. She gave what he demanded, and demanded his conciliation in return.

Her skin tingled everywhere he touched. She felt as though she would burst into flame.

“Come,” he whispered. Taking her hand, he edged the door open and peered out into the empty hallway.

Damien led her to his bedchamber and drew her inside.

She glanced at the window, at the beam of sunlight that surged through the partially open drapery to land with unerring precision upon the cream-colored satin coverlet of his bed.

“The sun yet shines,” she whispered.

One side of his mouth curved. “That sounds like an observation, not a protest.”

She could not help but smile in return. Strangely, the thought of standing unclothed before him in the bright light of day held a certain appeal, adding to the intensity of the sensations rioting inside of her, for he too would be naked, allowing her to gratify her craving for the sight of him. Catching her chin between his fingers, he tilted her face for his kiss, a possessive caress of his lips.

“I want to see you. I want to touch, to taste, to let my senses feast upon you.” He undid the buttons of her dress, his fingers skimming lightly over her heated skin. A gentle stroke of his palm moved her collar aside, baring the tops of her breasts to his fervid gaze.

His words, his touch, stoked the fire, sending her careening over an unseen precipice into the boiling cauldron of her desire. Hands trembling with the rampant urgency of her passion, Darcie forced the top button of his shirt through the buttonhole, then the next and the next. Her fingers fumbled and she tamped down the urge to simply rip the garment open. She ached to run her tongue along his sun-kissed skin, to taste him, to inhale the scent of his body.

At last he stood shirtless, glowing with golden perfection. Darcie exulted in the quickening rise and fall of his chest as she ran her hands over the hills and valleys of his muscled torso, reveling in the feel of his warm skin. Her palms skimmed lower, her fingers working earnestly at the fastening of his trousers. He neither helped nor hindered, merely allowed her free rein in her explorations. But the sharp hiss of air that slid from him as her hand closed about the hard thickness of his erection attested to the strength of his reaction.

She gloried in the surge of pleasure that coursed through her. She did this to him. She engendered this raging need.

He kissed her lips, her throat, parting her bodice so his mouth could taste the valley between her breasts. Her dress slid from her shoulders, then pooled at her feet.

“No,” she whispered as he pulled himself from her avaricious grasp, denying her the velvety feel of him cradled in her palm. He sank to his knees before her, wrapped his arms about her waist, his tongue probing the hollow of her navel.

“No.” She gasped.

He gave a wicked chuckle and tipped his head back to look up at her. “No?” he asked, and then traced his tongue down her belly.

Desire curled in a liquid knot.

“Yes,” she whispered, and then stood mute as he pulled the remainder of her clothing from her trembling limbs, rolled her gartered stockings down over the curve of one calf, then the other, his fingers stroking, teasing. Her hands curled over his muscled shoulders, her fingers digging deep.

She cried out in shock, in ecstasy, as he kissed the soft brown curls at the juncture of her thighs, his fingers sliding smoothly into the moist furrow that welcomed him. Nudging her legs apart, he leaned forward, his tongue flicking over the sensitive bud of her desire. She wriggled, both horrified and enticed. Her legs threatened to collapse from beneath her, would have collapsed if not for the support of his warm hand grasped firmly around her hip, the long fingers splayed across the round globe of her buttock.

Caught in the throes of pleasure, she thrust herself forward to meet each rasping stroke. There was only Damien. Her world had narrowed to the touch of his hand, the scrape of his tongue against her overheated flesh. She was wild for him. She shifted her hand, weaving her fingers through the thick strands of his hair, melding him to her as firmly as she could.

“Oh, please, Damien. Please...” She wanted his weight pressing down on her. She wanted to delight in the feeling of his fullness between her thighs, to share all of herself with him.

He surged upward at her frantic plea, tumbling her backward onto the smooth coverlet.

“Open for me, Darcie.” His hands guided her legs to do as he bid.

Following his lead as he urged her knees up, she tilted her pelvis toward him. With a single fluid thrust he came into her, then again, and again. She rocked to meet each thrust, held nothing back.

Her high, keening cry was muffled in his shoulder as she bucked and jerked beneath him, her world splintering into a thousand points of pleasure. And with his hoarse cry she knew he joined her there, sharing the pinnacle of ecstasy.

They lay together, a tangle of limbs and unspoken emotions, uncaring of the passage of time. Darcie floated on a haze of contentment. Her lids fluttered, drifting shut. She slept, wrapped in the safe haven of Damien’s embrace.

Much later, she stirred, opening her eyes, taking in her surroundings. The sun had moved with the passage of time, no longer casting its rays upon the bed. Now, the watery light of evening filtered through the glass panes.

Damien rose up on one elbow and gazed down at her.

Darcie waited for him to speak, uncertain what he might say. She expected that the sharing their secret thoughts and wounded hearts and the melding of their bodies would have a lasting effect on the harmony of their budding relationship, but she did not know what to expect from her lover by way of overt demonstration of his feelings. He had shown her with every touch, every gentle caress, but even in the peak of passion he whispered no words of affection.