Miracle (42 page)

"Where is she?" he demanded in a rough voice, bringing her penny eyes flying back up to his.

"
Yer
. . . Grace?"

"Miracle,
dammit
. Are you deaf as well as dumb?"

Bosom swelling with indignation, Gertrude huffed, but before she could respond, a door opened on the above landing. Dressed in a white, floor-length cotton gown, Miracle floated partially down the flight of winding stairs before stopping stock still at the sight of him. One hand gripping the balustrade, her hair loose and wild and flowing all the way to her knees, she looked as if he had awakened her. Her eyes were dark and sleepy. Her mouth slightly pouting. She didn't smile or speak, but glared at him as she had the day he'd first arrived at Saint Catherine's Hill. All that was missing was the howling wind and a rampaging sea.

"Get out," he growled at Gertrude as she attempted to grab up her cheddar from the floor. When she didn't comply immediately, he shouted again, "Get out and stay out, unless you wish to find yourself unemployed on the morrow."

She scurried from the room. A door slammed in the distance.

His gaze still fixed on Miracle, Clayton moved to the bottom of the stairwell, one foot resting on the bottom step. "Come here," he ordered her.

"Nay. I think not."

"Come here,
dammit
. Now."

A moment's hesitation, then she slowly descended, stopping only when they stood face to face. "You're inebriated," she stated with no emotion.

"Yes.
I
am. I'm drunk. And angry. And jealous. What do you have to say about that?"

She appeared to ponder the question. Then, with no warning, she slapped his face. Not once, but twice. As fiercely as she could. So fiercely her fingers curled from the sting of fiery pain. Then she drew back her shoulders and thrust up her chin. "That's for bringing me to this detestable city. And for deserting me the last week. For disappearing for four miserable days without a word of explanation, then for showing up this afternoon with no solitary sign of contrition for your behavior—and for treating me like a barbarian, then leaving me again only moments after you arrived."

He moved up the step.

Miracle retreated a stair, stepping on her gown hem in the process. It clenched upon her neck like a noose.

"Tell me," he said softly. "Did you enjoy my kiss this afternoon,
Meri
Mine?"

"No.
I
. . .
I detested you this afternoon! Everything about you. Your horrid hard eyes and that infuriating way you have of smiling as if everyone else in the world were bugs. That way you have of making the rest of us plebeians feel inferior. But
I
shan't feel inferior to you or anyone else in this godforsaken city.

"No! I did not enjoy your kiss this afternoon, sir. I hated the feel of your hands in my hair, on my face and—and body.
I
grow ill now to think of it. Stand away! Don't touch me. Not with those hands. They're cold. Horribly cold. Even now I shiver to think of them on me! Oh, go away, Salterdon, and leave me alone.
I
wish . . .
I
wish
I
had never come here!
I
wish
I
had never fallen in love with you. I want to go home. To Cavisbrooke. At least
I
was happy there!"

Miracle fled up the stairs, into the dark, tripping on her gown hem, stumbling, refusing to look back because already his dark eyes and the red imprint on his cheek were haunting her and regret was caught like a fish bone in her throat. She wanted to take back all the ugly words that had just spilled from her mouth because she had trooped down those stairs with her well-rehearsed speech anticipating coming face to face with the cold-blooded, frigid-handed, swell-headed buffoon she had grown to loathe those months ago at Cavisbrooke. There was no way this side of perdition she would marry
that
man. Instead, the moment her palm had connected with his cheek, the very instant that look of surprise, pain, and vulnerability had flashed through his eyes, she had felt herself tumbling back into that same
guagmire
of confusion in which she had flailed throughout the afternoon.

How could she detest the man one moment and grow weak with love for him the next?

How could she loathe the touch of his hand, and now— God help her—desire him again?

Why the blazes did love have to be so irrational and painful?

He followed her up the stairs, his footsteps thundering and vibrating the floor like an earthquake. She ran down the corridor to her room, attempted to slam the door in his face, but he kicked it open, propelling it against the wall so hard two pictures fell from the wall.

Backing toward the window, hands fisted, teeth clenched, she declared, "Get out. I don't want you here."

"My house, remember? We're not at Cavisbrooke any longer,
Meri
Mine. I can bloody well come and go as I please. As the duke of Salterdon, I can damn well take what, and who, I want. That's what birthrights will do for you, sunshine.
Meri
Mine. Come here."

"Go to blazes."

Her eyes wide, her back pressed painfully against the windowsill, Miracle reasoned feverishly. "If you touch me I'll scream. I'll jump from this window. I'll—I'll—"

"You didn't object so strenuously this afternoon, did you?" he demanded through his teeth.

"Stay away from me or I'll—"

"You'll do nothing," he said in so deep and silky a voice her heart skipped. He was little more than a shadow before her, tall, broad, looming and threatening, until he stepped into the faint light spilling through the open window at her back. Then his dark eyes turned to tiny sparks of fire.

Lifting one big hand to her face and cradling her small cheek, he murmured, "Did I say you'd do nothing? I was wrong. I know exactly what you'll do. You'll roll those big green eyes up to mine and with one coy lowering of those outlandish lashes, you'll turn me inside out. You'll make me crazy. You'll make me want you more than any woman I've ever known. You'll wrap me up in your magic and make me, for a little while, feel happier than I've felt in my life. You'll make me look forward to tomorrow, when so many bleak and lonely tomorrows have rolled past me I once thought I would rather be dead than face another one alone."

Curling his long fingers around her nape, he gently pulled her against him, pressed her head to his chest, slid his hands into her hair, and kissed the top of her head.
"Meri, Meri,"
he breathed. "Don't be angry with me. I thought I could do without you. I tried. But I've found that I want you now more than ever, and time is running so damn short."

She started to speak.

"Don't," he told her, and tipped up her chin with one finger. "Forgive me. I never meant to hurt you, sweetheart." He saw the passion bruise on her neck—a dark shadow on her white skin—and a look that was almost terrifying crossed his anguished features. "Bastard," he murmured, then clutching her jaw in his fingers, he demanded, "Make love to me. As if we'll never hold one another again. I need you tonight,
Meri
Mine. Please . . ."

Forgetting her earlier anger, forgetting that just moments before she had been ready to fly out the window in an effort to escape him, Miracle closed her eyes, surrendering to the odd, confusing effect his nearness stirred inside her.
This
man's hands were warm, tender, stirring the blood in her veins with a mere brush of his fingertips upon her flushed and tingling skin. He made her want him with every fiber of her being. He made her, with a simple whispered word, ache in the very pit of her heart and deep into her soul. Ache with love. And desire. And passion. Perhaps tomorrow she would dwell again on that
other
man, the one who occasionally roused to so infuriate her, but tonight
this
was the man she loved. This was the man she would marry—no other.

His hands lifted the gown over her head, then dropped it to the floor. The cool breeze through the window made her shiver as she stood before him, nude, her hair slightly dancing across her back and shoulders and falling softly as down over her breasts.

He lowered his head, and as her eyes drifted closed, she felt his lips against her cheek, slightly moist and soft, his breath smelling faintly of sweet liquor, his clothes a little of fragrant tobacco. Then his hands slid beneath her breasts, gathering them gently in his long fingers, his thumb stroking the tight, erect nipples so gently she trembled.

"Oh, oh," she murmured, and swayed against him, all resistance lost. And to think that just moments before she actually thought that she hated him; that she hoped to never see him again; that she had actually contrived to leave Park House at dawn and return to Cavisbrooke, hoping to put him behind her forever.

"Oh," she sighed, and smiled, and quivered. The fragrance of his skin filled her senses. The steady beat of his heart beneath her hand made her whimper with a new pleasure that dissolved in a hot ecstasy that mounted until control vanished like mist. Her legs throbbed, the mound between them swelling unbearably and uncontrollably.

"Tell me you want me,
Meri
Mine." His voice was husky and urgent.

"Yes. I want you."

"How badly do you want me,
Meri?
Show me."

"But ladies don't—"

"Show me,
dammit
. Make me believe."

Her hands went to his breeches, tore at the buttons, releasing them one by one until his heavy splendid organ sprang into her hand, grew larger and harder and arced like a magnificent sword toward her body's opening.

He lifted her onto the windowsill and parted her legs, moved between them, sliding his body into hers little by little until she whimpered, until she clutched at his hips, until he filled her to the extreme, until she was forced to grip his shoulders, the back of his neck, to raise her hips to accept all of him.

He shuddered.

She couldn't breathe.

His arms around her, holding her fiercely, he said, "Don't move,
Meri
Mine.
I
want to stay this way forever. Would you mind?"

Swallowing, her eyes closed and her ear pressed against his chest, she shook her head.
"I
think not," she finally managed. "But I wonder what the good folk on the street would think tomorrow were they to look up and see us."

Laughter, like gentle thunder, sounded in his chest, and he squeezed her tightly—so tightly—just before his hips began to slowly pump, to withdraw and drive, to awaken the pain, the beautiful pain, that started like an ember in the heart of her womanhood and radiated outward, to every extremity, to her fingers and toes, to grip her heart and lungs, to sluice through every muscle until she could no longer control herself.

A moan rose from her. She grabbed the windowsill for support. Her head fell back, her body arched, offering up her breasts, which quivered with each deep thrust he made into her body. When she thought she could stand no more, he moved his hand down between her legs, there, where their hot, wet bodies were joined, and stroked the swollen apex of her desire.

The cataclysm came, rising up like swift liquid pulsating fire, turning her body to stone, incapable of movement, erupting, ripping, disintegrating. Consciousness became water—deep and dark and rushing. Roaring. Sweeping her away on a tide, and in some distant space of her mind, she wondered if she were dying, and she sobbed shamelessly.