His Mask of Retribution (14 page)

The house was in complete silence. Callerton had left them in privacy for their wedding night.

He kicked the door shut behind him and set her down on the Turkey rug without releasing her from the circle of his arms. The room was warm. A fire still burned on the hearth, the coals glowing orange and red. She glanced over at the bed and again he felt that stiffening of her body.

‘Rafe...’ she whispered and there was such dread in her eyes that it shocked him. ‘I...’ She bit at her lip.

‘There is nothing to be afraid of, Marianne. What happens between us will be pleasurable for us both. And I meant what I said: you need do nothing you do not want.’

She only smiled at him in grateful relief. But when he touched his hand to the buttons of her dress she shrank back.

‘Marianne?’

She backed away further, increasing the distance between them. ‘I...cannot...’ Her eyes were wide and sparkling with tears as they flicked between him and the bed.

He stared at the panic escalating in her.

‘Marianne.’ He spoke the word as softly as he would to a skittish mare; stood stock still, keeping his hands low and open, as if he would soothe her, calm her. ‘We do not have to do this tonight. If you wish to wait...’

‘Yes,’ she said as a drowning woman might clutch at a lifesaving hand. ‘But we are supposed to...’

‘No one need know, Marianne. Only you and I.’ His gaze held hers.

She bit at her lip. ‘You would not force me?’

‘Of course not. I would never force you.’

‘Even if it is your right as my husband?’

‘It is never a man’s right to force a woman, Marianne. No matter what you may have been told.’

She dropped her gaze.

‘I shall not bed you, Marianne, until you ask me—maybe not even until you beg me. I give you my word.’

Her gaze came back to meet his. And the raw emotions in her eyes—relief and gratitude and love—reached right through his chest to touch his heart. He held out a hand to her. She hesitated only a moment and then placed her own in his. He closed his fingers around hers and felt the tension in her relax. She slipped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, pressing her lips to his breast bone through the cotton of his shirt.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

He dropped a kiss to the top of her hair, then released her. ‘I will leave you to change into your nightclothes. A man and woman might share a bed to sleep and nothing more. When I return, that is what we will do.’

They looked at one another and he could see the guilt in her eyes.

‘I am sorry, Rafe.’

‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Marianne.’

She closed her eyes as if she could not bear to hear the words.

He kissed her forehead and walked away, wondering just why the hell his wife was so afraid of the marriage bed. But he knew this was a matter of delicacy and could not be rushed. He needed to be patient and teach her gently of how it could be between them.

* * *

Marianne did not look. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the wall while Rafe stripped off his clothing, her body tensing with the prospect of him climbing in next to her. But when she finally felt the bed dip and her heart thunder so hard that she thought it would leap from her chest, he did nothing more than kiss her eyebrow and bid her goodnight. They lay side by side, not touching. And yet they did not need to touch, for she could feel his warmth thawing her fear steadily with every hour that slipped by. She listened to the sound of his breathing. And when he slept she rolled on to her side and studied his profile in the candlelight.

In sleep he looked younger and the severity was gone. He was so handsome: those dark brows sitting low over his eyes, the strong masculine nose, the full firm lips and the line of his jaw. He was so strong, so irascible. He had no fear and could stand undaunted by the world. Yet his words from the warehouse whispered through her head.
We all have our fears, Marianne.
She could not imagine that he had ever felt afraid or powerless or small. Nothing frightened him. He was the one from whom others fled.

There was definitely darkness in him, and danger. And yet she had never known a man of such integrity. A man who did what he believed was right without a damn for the rules. A good man. The man that she loved. She did not understand why, when all of these things were true, she could not give herself to him. She feared that it might always be this way—she feared that Rotherham had ruined her for ever.

* * *

She woke in a dapple of autumn sunlight. For a moment she thought she was in her own bed in Leicester Square, but then she remembered: her wedding and her new home in Craven Street. In her line of view she could see that the curtains framing the window were a deep dark blue, not pale-pink chintz. And the faint scent of sandalwood in the air made her shiver in a response over which she had no control. She was tired from too many hours spent awake, but the fear that had gripped her so intensely last night had gone this morning.

She heard the sound of toothbrushing from across the room and shifted her eyes, but nothing else, to the sound. Rafe was standing with his back to her at the wash cabinet. He was not wearing the breeches he had worn all night, only a towel tied around him so that from the waist up he was naked. Marianne felt her mouth go dry.

She knew that she should avert her eyes, but she found she could not tear them from him. Wearing his clothes he looked tall and strong and athletic, but without them he was...magnificent. Like one of the marbles in a book of the classics. She could see every line of muscle that rippled beneath the skin of his back and shoulders and upper arms as he moved. He was a pale-golden colour and damp with water droplets that glittered in the sunlight. His hair was dark with water and slick against his scalp and over the nape of his neck. She felt the breath catch in her throat and her nipples grow taut and more sensitive as she looked at him. Yet still she could not look away. Her eyes traced the breadth of his shoulders and the way his body narrowed at his waist and hips and she wondered what it would be like to trace her fingers down the length of his spine. Her heart began to beat faster.

He spat the toothpowder into the basin and rinsed his mouth with water from the glass. When he turned round it was too late to shift her gaze and pretend she was still sleeping.

‘Good morning, Mrs Knight,’ he said in his velvet voice.

His eyes were the colour of clear orange-blossom honey in the sunlight. The shadow of beard stubble had been scraped from his face and when he smiled at her, her heart skipped a beat and she felt pure unadulterated desire flash through her body.

‘Good morning.’ Her words sounded strangely husky. She didn’t dare glance down to the towel wrapped around him like the kilt of a Scottish highlander, or stare at the sprinkle of dark hair across his naked chest. The blush burned on her cheeks.

‘I have almost finished. Then I will bring you warm water and cook you breakfast.’ He turned away and pulled on clean drawers beneath the towel while he spoke.

‘Ham and eggs. And coffee. Or would you prefer hot chocolate?’ The towel dropped away and she could see a hint of the firmness of his buttocks through the linen of his drawers before he pulled up a pair of dark pantaloons to cover them.

‘Coffee would be very nice, thank you.’ It came out high enough to be almost a squeak and the heat in her face intensified.

Rafe reached for a clean ironed shirt and turned to her once more before pulling it on over his head. She caught a glimpse of a flat abdomen ribbed with muscle and a line of dark hair that led into his breeches before the fine white cotton slid down to cover it and she felt the slither of desire low in her belly.

Oh, my!
It was all she could do not to speak the words aloud.

‘Callerton will not return until this afternoon. He wanted to give us some privacy.’ He smiled again, but she felt guilty, knowing what Callerton thought they would have been doing last night. What they should have been doing. What she wanted to do...but could not.

He sat down in the easy chair by the fireplace. ‘We need to hire some servants. I thought you might wish to take charge of that...as you are now mistress here.’ And when he stood up he was wearing stockings and shoes.

‘I...’ She was not sure she knew how to do such a thing. At home her family allowed her to do nothing.

‘Or Callerton could do it, if you prefer.’ He fixed the collar of his shirt.

‘I will do it.’ She wanted to do something for him. If she could not fulfil her wifely duties in the bedroom, she would at least undertake them everywhere else.

He looked into the peering glass as he tied his cravat in place.

‘How do you wish me to run the house?’

His eyes met hers in the glass. ‘However you see fit.’

She watched in continued fascination as he donned his waistcoat and tailcoat, and when he came to stand by the bed again he was fully dressed. ‘If you wish to discuss anything of it, Marianne, then we will discuss it.’

And she had the feeling that it was not only the housekeeping of which he was speaking.

She nodded.

He turned and went to fetch her water.

* * *

They breakfasted together in the dining room. Unlike when she had been here as his captive, she ate all that was on her plate, but there was a new awkwardness between them that had not been present before.

He took her with him on his morning ride over the Wenlock Barn fields, saddling up one of his horses for her. The hour was still early, the fields quiet save for a few other horsemen. They walked their horses for a while, breathing in the nip of morning air, fresh and invigorating and filled with the scent of autumn—dampness and brambles and dew-laden grass. The sky was white-grey, but the light bright. The russet leaves of the surrounding trees whispered even though there was no breeze. The quietness of a day just awakening. The calm that had been his respite on all of the days in the past months, the chance to breathe between playing the parts of the rake he was not and the highwayman he had forced himself to be. He glanced across at Marianne. She filled her lungs with the air and put her face up to the sky. He could see the pleasure in her eyes.

‘It is wonderful,’ she sighed.

‘Do you see that great oak tree over there by the barn?’ He gestured to the distance.

She nodded.

‘I’ll wager you a kiss that you cannot reach it before me.’

‘We cannot race! What would everyone say?’ But her eyes sparkled and her face shone with excitement.

‘Do you care so very badly what everyone says?’

Marianne considered it for a moment. ‘No, I suppose I do not.’ She gave a laugh, as if the realisation astonished her, and then she spurred her horse and took off for the oak tree.

He laughed, too, to see such gladness, then galloped after her.

She was a good horsewoman and it was a race in earnest to the end. Afterwards they walked their horses to cool them and chattered and laughed some more. Only as more horsemen began to appear on the grounds did they leave and head home.

* * *

At the stables they dismounted and saw to their horses, removing saddles and tack and brushing them down. For a woman who had never done such things she learned quickly and with a relish that surprised him. Her fingers were quick and deft with the buckles and she was strong for her size. She dealt with all the low parts. He dealt with all the high parts. They were the perfect team.

‘You are looking very happy for a woman who did not win the race,’ he said, looking at the roses in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes and the windswept curls that had escaped from her pins to dangle enticingly around her face.

‘I am feeling very happy.’

He laughed at that. ‘I admit that you would have won were I not riding the stronger horse and were you not riding side-saddle.’

She smiled even more at that. ‘Do you really think so?’

‘I know so,’ he said. And then they were looking intently at one another and sensual awareness rippled between them. All was quiet. They could hear the murmur of distant carriages and the cries of delivery men and hawkers, and, in the stable stalls, the soft whicker of a horse.

He reached over and lifted a stray curl from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear.

‘And now I suppose you wish to claim your kiss,’ she said quietly.

‘I was under the impression that you liked my kisses.’

‘I do.’

Her eyes held his.

He made no move.

‘But someone might see us,’ she said and knew she was just making excuses.

‘There is no one to see us, Marianne. As I told you yesterday, Callerton will not return until much later and you know there are no other servants.’

The tension stretched tighter between them.

‘Rafe,’ she whispered, stepping closer and reaching her face up to his. When their lips touched, he took her in his arms and kissed her, fully, properly, as he had wanted to kiss her last night. He made love to her with his mouth, teasing her, nibbling her, tonguing her, until she was clinging to him, until she was kissing him hard, with passion, with want and desire.

‘Rafe,’ she said again, gently nipping his lower lip with her teeth.

He pulled the pins from her hat, removing it and setting it aside, before starting on her hair. Plucking the pins from it, mussing it, threading his fingers through the long silken waves, wrapping it around his fist, angling her head to kiss her neck and lick at the tender spot where her blood pulsed as strong and fast and hard as his. He sucked her, tasted her, grazed her. And the passion that flared between them was not gentle, but raged hot and urgent and dark with desire. She arched against him and he felt the press of her body, the tease of her thighs. He was hard for her, his shaft straining as if it would burst through his breeches.

He slid his hand down to cover her breast and it seemed he could feel the hard nub of its peak even through the thickness of her deep-red riding habit, through the layers of her underwear that separated their skin.

She moaned as his fingers closed over her breast, massaging her there—and it was a sound of relief and of growing need. Her hands slipped beneath his coat, moving over his stomach, against his chest, over his throat, his jaw, pulling the ribbon from his queue.