Lions and Lace (42 page)

"I didn't come here to hurt your sister," he whispered. "I want to help if I can."

She started to cry again, and unwilling to let him see her fall apart again, she turned away.

But as before, he proved quick and agile. He took hold of her, pulling her to him by the waist. "Tell me how to help her," he whispered.

Sobbing, she didn't answer right away. Finally she surrendered. "She's ill. They're mistreating her. I've got to get her out of there . . . they'll kill her, kill her. . . ." She broke down in sobs again, and before she could stop him, he pulled her against his chest, letting her tears fall unchecked onto his silk paisley vest.

"Who do you need to see to get her out?" he prodded gently while she cried.

"
Th
-the superintendent of police."
She wept.

"All right.
I'll get her out. I can get her out."

"H-how?"
Breathless, she looked up at him in shock and expectation.

He almost smiled. "Think about it,
á
mbúirnín
.
There are more Irishmen than Knickerbockers among the police."

She stared up at him. "That's true," she said slowly.

"Then let me take care of your sister. I'll even enjoy it." He gave her a bitter smile. "This may be the only area where I have more influence than you."

"You're really willing to help us?" she whispered, clinging to this salvation but afraid he might snatch it away at any moment. He nodded, so she asked, "But why?"

"Because I like it when you need me."

Her gaze riveted to his, and a strange charge of excitement went down her spine. In his own austere way he might have just told her that he was beginning to feel something for her. Then too, his words hinted at something darker, revealing the side of him that she'd seen too much of, the side that must dominate and win at all costs.

"I do need you," she whispered, conceding anything to get her sister out of the hell that surrounded her, and ironically confessing what was deepest in her heart.

"Good," he answered simply, a mysterious satisfaction gleaming in those dark Celtic eyes.

When the Sheridan carriage departed, Nurse
Steine
stepped away from the window where she'd been watching them. She went to her desk and quickly penned a note, addressing it to Mr. Baldwin Didier, Hotel Athena,
Troy
, New York.

"Take this and see that it goes first-class," she told a male orderly who was just passing her office.

The orderly nodded and glanced at the letter.

"How is she?" the nurse asked.

"Sleeping," the orderly answered.

"Go, then. Waste no time. Mr. Didier was adamant that he be contacted immediately should anything like this happen."

"Yes, ma'am."
The orderly shrugged out of his white jacket and into his black serge one. Nurse
Steine
watched him go. Then she looked in on
Christabel
.

The girl's lips were still moving, proof of her strength even under the influence of the morphine. Dispassionately Nurse
Steine
watched on while
Christabel
gave a muffled cry and writhed in frustration at the ties that held her down.

With nothing left to do for her patient, the nurse turned to go. Walking away, she didn't hear her patient moan, "I saw you . . . I saw you . . . don't . . . Don't! Oh please, I beg of you,
don't, Uncle Baldwin!"

When they arrived back at the chateau, Alana was drained. Trevor had set off immediately for the superintendent's office, so she went to her suite to rest and sort out her overwhelming emotions.
Christal's
dangerous situation weighed on her mind, but so did Trevor's words. Alana knew her husband well enough to realize he would extract some kind of payment for his good deed, and the tune to "Bridget O'Malley" kept playing in her head, its indecipherable words a warning and an invitation.

After a brief restless nap she rose and went to the bell pull to summon Margaret. She undressed with the maid's help and was just about to order a bath when she changed her mind. Abruptly excusing Margaret, Alana wrapped herself in a pink satin dressing gown and went to the adjoining bathing room.

She had never used the room before, though it connected to her bedroom and was meant for the lady of the house to share with her husband. She had heard Trevor going through his daily ablutions in it, but she had always had a bath sent to her dressing room as she had done in Washington Square. After all, she was a Knickerbocker, schooled to turn up her nose at modern luxuries like indoor plumbing. But today she was willing to lower her standards. The temptation of all that hot water showering down on her sore, stiff muscles was more than she could resist. With Trevor gone, she saw no reason not to relax. She would need to rejuvenate for the Van Dam soiree that night and to face whatever news Trevor brought from the police.

The
rainbath
, as it was called, stood in the middle of a large marble room. Billowing curtains of oiled linen surrounded the perimeter of the marble tub to keep the water inside when it sprinkled down from the box on the ceiling. Operation was as simple as turning the gold-plated handles and adding cold water to adjust the temperature.

She dropped her satin robe,
unplaited
her hair, and stepped into the tub. Soon her only fear was that she would never want to come out. As the hot shower pounded her back and scalp, her problems seemed to drain down the tub like the water. A sense of optimism rushed through her, and she began to believe things might work out. Trevor would get Christal free. He was the master in situations like this. He could get anything he wanted; he'd proven that again and again.

And, she thought, her heart pounding with a strange excitement, wasn't there at least a chance that his unsolicited help with Christal meant that he cared for her more than he showed? She closed her eyes as if in prayer, hoping that they might turn their marriage around. The nightmare of having to leave him, even if their marriage was properly annulled, was becoming unbearable. Trevor was not the wit that Anson was, nor was he the flirt Eagan was. But she was less lonely with him than she had been with anyone, even Christal. Something in his soul beckoned her. She had seen it that very first
night,
and it had bound her to him, a kindred spirit. It was what had made him move heaven and earth for his sister, and Alana had understood it, even in their worst moments, because of her love for Christal.

But it was tragic that his love for his family kept her on the outside, kept them from creating a family of their own. She didn't want to relinquish her marriage without a fight, but she couldn't surrender her pride and beg him to love her. She needed that pride of hers because that was what would hold her together in all the lonely years that loomed ahead should their annulment go through.

The water pounded on her like a drumbeat. Steam beaded on the oiled linen. She reached for the soap in the gold shell-shaped holder. It smelled like him,
a faint
herbal cologne milled into the bar. When she closed her eyes and inhaled, the picture of Trevor was so immediate, she felt as if she could reach out and touch him.

She quickly lathered the bar in her hands, unwilling to admit how disturbed she was by the idea of rubbing it over her naked body. Determined to be rational, she washed her arms, but as the scent permeated the shower, she was less and less able to forget Trevor. He was everywhere around her, in the scent, in the air. Secretly she might have reveled in it, but it frightened her too. It made her body react with an animal response, and she could feel herself melting, heating,
aching
for him in a way she didn't want to admit.

Shaking herself, she concentrated on lathering a sponge. She ran the sponge down her breastbone and squeezed it, letting the white musky lather coat her bosom like a layer of icing. She rubbed, and suddenly she couldn't take it anymore. What should have been a perfunctory task was turning to torture, made all the more painful by a desire that was destined to burn
undoused
.

Moaning, she pulled her head beneath the water, hoping it would wash away the scent and her excitement. She stayed there for almost a minute, eyes closed as if willing it all away. But it didn't go away. Her nipples remained hard, her thoughts tantalizing. Her mind, body, and soul were wrapped around her husband, and deep down in her own private hell she knew that was exactly how she wanted it.

A noise intruded, a strange distant sound like rain beating on paper. Her eyes opened, and through the blurry rush of water she saw that the linen curtains had parted and a figure stood watching her, the
rainbath
pelting droplets onto his starched shirtfront.

With trembling hands she wiped the water from her eyes. Trevor watched her from the parted curtains, his expression a mixture of surprise and deep, hardened lust. Stunned, her fantasy by some strange magic made real, she was unable to snatch the curtain and hide her nudity. She couldn't even think of the questions she knew she must ask about Christal. Before she could utter a sound, he took her by the back of the neck and pulled her mouth against his.

A moan escaped her, but it was not a moan of protest. Protests were useless now—worse, hypocritical—for how could she lie to him and
herself
that she didn't want this when she did, so badly that it had become like a hunger that must be sated or she would die.

His tongue, hot and strong, thrust again and again into her needful mouth, a wild accompaniment to the thrum of the shower. Demandingly, he cupped her breast, his palm brushing the steam droplets that clung to her nipples like diamonds. He flicked open the buttons to his trousers.

She was hardly aware of what he did next. Her only sensation seemed to be his mouth on hers and the overriding instinct that he wanted her, ferociously.

He lowered them both to the floor of the large marble tub and pulled her, naked, on top of him. This man who was so cold and totally in control had finally been cut from his bindings, and she could see in his gleaming eyes that nothing was out of bounds. For the first time in their marriage, the possibilities were endless.

In a daze, drugged by the hot pounding of the
rainbath
on her back, the even hotter desire that ignited them, and the overriding desperation to seize this rare intimacy, she pushed aside his wet shirtfront and ran her hands greedily through the slick dark hair of his chest. He liked her brazenness because the corner of his mouth lifted in a dark smile. He caressed the soft pale thighs that straddled him before he twisted his hand in the length of her wet gold hair and pulled her down for another desperate kiss. His arm went around her hips, and he eased her onto him.

His flesh filled her to the womb, and she arched back like a cat. Panting, he showed her how to move, and yearning to please him, she proved an apt pupil, particularly when his thumb caressed her at their joining where dark gold hair met jet black. It didn't take long for her to respond, and her moan set his hands in motion. He pulled her down for another kiss,
then
took her breasts in his palms. He thrust up inside her again and again, and just when she saw the havoc this dangerous game was playing in his expression, in this man who needed control like a drug, she cried out, embracing her pleasure as if she were afraid it would be taken away.

A second passed, or an hour, she didn't know. Weak and gasping for air, she looked down at him as he still moved inside her. Her hands roamed his sodden clothes, his slick hair, his heaving chest, his pleasure-taut face, and she suddenly found she reveled in her power. For all her fears, she knew that Daisy had never had Trevor Sheridan like this. Her husband's rigid facade was gone, and in its place was a wild animal that wanted her with a greed that took her breath away.

She heard his groan, felt him shoot up inside her, and she wanted to cry, to laugh, to express any deep emotion that would equal the one she felt now. It was her first taste of power, and power was an insidious drug. But so was love, and she gloried in both because for one brief roaring moment she was a lioness.

At five thirty Margaret stood in the corridor in front of Alana's door and stared at Mr. Sheridan's valet, who stood before the master's door. Her mistress had not been in her bedroom or the bathing room where Margaret had left her. The master's rooms were all locked, and by instinct neither of them, not even Mr. Sheridan's elderly valet, dared to knock.

Margaret looked at the old man expectantly, an expression on her face that said "Now what?" The valet simply nodded and turned on his heels. With an embarrassed pink in her cheeks, Margaret did the same, rationalizing that if Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan forfeited supper, they could still be dressed and ready for the Van Dam soiree at ten.

Alana lay in Trevor's arms in sheets damp from their shower and lovemaking. Trevor's clothes lay in a wet trail to the bed. When he'd taken her there, he'd taken her twice again, more slowly but with no less fervor.

And in the silences they held each other, Alana, lying on her belly, gently toying with the dark hair on his chest, Trevor, lying on his back, quietly stroking the gentle curve of her waist. They both seemed to fear words. Words were always the villain between them. They said too much, then not enough. So when it was time to speak, Trevor spoke in Gaelic, in soft tones she couldn't translate but understood. She kissed him when he wanted kissing, he caressed her when she needed assurance, and finally when she whimpered beneath him, his pounding body within the carnal embrace of her legs, she came to the rhythm of his whispered pleasure as he said again and again
"tar-
cionn
"
until he could speak no more.