Patricia Potter (34 page)

“Did I hurt you?” His voice was low and she heard doubt in it for the first time since knowing him.

Such a wonderful hurt. Such a wondrous kind of pain. She took his fingers from her face and kissed the tips in an instinctive gesture of love. She wanted to say the words so badly, but she couldn’t. Not now. Not until she confessed everything to him. She wasn’t worthy now.

“No,” she finally whispered, and she heard a long release of breath, as if he had been holding it. But didn’t he know? Couldn’t he tell what he’d just given her? A new world she’d never suspected existed.

Her eyes found his. “Is it always like this?”

He grinned. “No. I can quite honestly say no.”

They heard a happy chattering then, and Lauren suddenly remembered Socrates.

Adrian chuckled, a sound that came from deep in his throat, and she felt his chest, on which her chin rested, move slightly. “He’s in monkey heaven at the moment,” he said. “Tender leaves, fresh bark, trees to climb.”

“He won’t … get lost?”

“Oh no. He never goes far,” Adrian replied ruefully, wondering why he was discussing monkeys at a moment like this. Socrates’s presence definitely had disadvantages. But Adrian felt Lauren relax, and he found her concern for his wayward pet a trait he liked very much.

And the rest of her character? He wasn’t quite sure. The meeting with the Union officer earlier confirmed his belief that Lauren had indeed secrets to hide. And yet he also knew she had risked everything to help him, and was now herself a fugitive. On the long ride tonight, he had thought of little else than the fear and uncertainty he’d seen in her eyes. He’d also seen the flare of determination there, and he was afraid she’d meant to leave him, so he’d seized the reins. She couldn’t go back now, just as he couldn’t.

But he wouldn’t ask questions. He didn’t want to force answers, and he knew he couldn’t demand trust. He would wait until she told him herself.

Especially when she looked at him as if he’d just invented the world.

He’d discovered one thing, however. She was a virgin. Spy or not, she’d never before used her body as a means of extracting information. He shifted slightly, sliding from her and holding her tight because he wanted to, because she felt so right there.

Adrian had not really known what he expected tonight, or the next day or the next. He’d willed himself not to think about it; for the past hours, escape had been the important thing, and he’d needed no distractions. But he had been very aware of Lauren, of her tense figure, and set, guarded expression.

And he had not meant for this to happen. Or had he?

Adrian ran his arms along her skin. The weather was warm this night, and the pine needles had provided a relatively soft—if, at times, a bit scratchy—bed. He moved again slightly, positioning himself against a tree and pulling Lauren against his chest so he could fondle her breasts.

“Will you go to England with me?” The question came suddenly, to him as well as to her.

He felt her tense.
Talk to me, he
wanted to tell her.
Trust me.

“I … can' t.”

“Then where will you go? It’s no longer Elsie Brown who helped a Union prisoner. It’s Lauren Bradley.”

She stilled. He could feel her every muscle grow taut.

“I … don’t know,” she said finally.

“To Nassau?”

No. She had betrayed Jeremy, too, in the end. She had betrayed them all: her brother, Adrian, his crew, Jeremy … herself.

She shrugged. “Tell me about your home,” she said, desperate to change the subject.

“Ridgely?” His voice softened as he said the word, almost making it a song.

“Is that where you’ll go?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He was silent, his hand continuing to play along her skin. It should have been a soothing gesture, but it wasn’t. It was fraught with danger.

“My family no longer owns it,” he told her finally.

She heard the loss in his voice, the poignant ache of regret.

“I had hoped to buy it back,” he said, his voice low.

“What will you do now?” She forced the words to break the silent tension that suddenly flared between them.

“Reach Wilmington and find a ship for England.”

“And then … ?”

“Buy or build a new runner.”

Lauren barely suppressed a gasp. All for naught! Her stint as a Union spy had changed nothing. In a matter of months, he would be transporting guns again. And in danger. She couldn’t bear either thought.

“Why?”

His arms tightened around her. “I have to get Ridgely back.”

“How … long will it take?”

“It would have taken only a few more runs with the
Specter
. Now … I don’t know. I’ll have to invest in a new ship, and I’ll lose months.”

Lauren wanted to understand why Ridgely was so important.

She shivered. “Tell me about Ridgely.”

But instead, his hands took her hands and rubbed them. “I think I’d better get something on you first.”

For the first time, Lauren felt awkward about her nakedness. It had seemed so natural with Adrian, but now she recalled how far outside the boundaries of accepted behavior she had ranged.

He helped her up, and she was more conscious of his body than ever. She averted her head even as she wished to stare at him, to memorize his perfection.

She started to pick up her camisole and her other clothes, but he slid the sleeves of his shirt over her arms, buttoning it in front as it fell far beneath her thighs. The rough cloth smelled of him and felt good, because she knew it had been on him. He seemed so sure of himself, so proficient, and a pang ran through her. How many other women had he helped dress? How many had he bedded?

And left?

Why should she care so much? She had known from the beginning there could be no future for them, not for an English nobleman who fought for the South and the doctor’s plain daughter whose brother died in defense of the Union … and whose brother had been killed by the very man touching her now.

Lauren suddenly jerked away. “I’ll do it,” she said in a ragged whisper.

“Lauren.” He lingered on the last syllable of her name, as if he didn’t want to let go of it. The thought twisted her heart.

She turned back to him, putting her hand on his face, touching it as if he would break, or disappear, if she pressed. She wondered how he felt, whether what had happened was as cataclysmic for him as it had been for her. But no. He was an English lord; he could have his choice—probably
had
had his choice—of the most beautiful of women.

“Lauren,” he said again, and he put his arms around her, pulling her tight against him as if to reassure her, as if he felt every one of her doubts and fears.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “Not now.”

Lauren was silent. The soft glow sifted from her body, leaving in its wake an emptiness, a huge bleak place. She moved away from him and went to a tree, leaning against it, barely aware of noise as Socrates dropped from one of its branches and ran to Adrian, as if he had been waiting to have his master all to himself.

Adrian had pulled on his trousers, but his chest was still bare, and she saw now in the moonlight how much leaner he was than he had been three weeks ago. In the moonlight his face appeared paler too, and new lines seemed to crinkle the area around his eyes. Because of Ridgely, she wondered, and the thought of losing it?

But then he grinned, the irresistible, charming grin that had captivated her from their first meeting. “You said there was some food … ?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, but went over to where the saddles rested on the ground. The bundle she had given him earlier lay beside it, and he untied it, finding jerky and cheese and hardtack.

“It’s not very much,” she said apologetically.

“After the Yank prison, it’s a banquet.” As if to prove his words, he took one of the pieces of dried beef and chewed slowly, but with unmistakable hunger.

“Was … prison very bad?”

“Not when I thought about you.” He looked up from the package, and his gaze met hers. His lips still smiled, but some of the guardedness was back in his eyes.

He slid down beside her, offering her a piece of cheese. She shook her head. There wasn’t much—she hadn’t planned on sharing it; she had thought she would be on her way back to Delaware.

Watching him eat was painful to her. She didn’t want to care this much; she didn’t want to ache so badly at seeing how carefully he ate and knowing he must have gone hungry in prison. She didn’t want to think about running her fingers through the thick hair, or touching the smooth skin of his back. She didn’t want to crave the feel of his lips on hers, or the comfort of his arms around her.

Yet she did all of that, with such longing that she was on fire again.

She didn’t want to love him. She couldn’t love him. But she did. She knew that as she met his eyes and saw them flare with fire of their own, watched his mouth curve into a smile, watched his hands stretch out for her …

CHAPTER 19

The nightmare came back with a ferocity that night. Larry was standing there, watching her, but she couldn’t see the expression on his face. And then he faded, and she felt the searing pain again.

She reached out, trying to tell her twin not to go; but as he had the night in Nassau, the figure started to dissolve.

Lauren woke to her own moans, and she felt the momentary comfort of arms around her.

“Lauren,” she heard a voice whisper. But the voice no longer gave her reassurance. Had Larry been condemning her, warning her?

She opened her eyes slowly and tried to focus. It was still dark, yet now a thread of gray appeared beyond the trees. Adrian’s face was very close, his hands oh so gentle. She remembered how tender they had been last night, how she fell asleep wrapped in his arms.

And now his voice was a soft whisper, meant to be comforting. “It’s all right, love,” he said.

But it wasn’t all right. It would never be all right.

She swallowed, turning her head away from him. She felt Socrates next to her, heard the monkey’s worried chattering.

Adrian drew a deep breath. “Talk to me, Lauren. Let me help.”

But how could she? “I’m all right,” she said. “I just had a nightmare.”

“Tell me about it.”

Lauren forced a shrug.

“You called a name. Larry. Your Union friend said the name Laurence.”

Lauren sighed. “My brother. My twin brother.”

Adrian’s hands stilled. He knew the next question he should ask, but he couldn’t. She had said she was from Maryland, and she had a border-state accent. Laurence Bradley could have fought for either army, but Adrian was sure now which one it had been. Tell me, he willed her.

Ask, she almost begged out loud, and if he had, she would have told him the truth. She couldn’t do it on her own, couldn’t blurt it out that she had worked for the Union, had deprived him of Ridgely, at least for the time being. She hadn’t known till last night about the estate but that, she realized, didn’t matter. What mattered was the betrayal.

She couldn’t bear to lose that look in his eyes as his hands caressed her, as if he were feeling all these things for the first time too. She couldn’t bear to see the tenderness turn to contempt.

She wouldn’t. Not now. Sometime soon, but not now, she would confess. Lauren brushed away the warning in her head, the remembrance of the poem by Sir Walter Scott about the tangled web of deceit. But then she thought of another British adage: “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Her hand curled around Adrian’s. She was in for the pound, the whole pound. She would stay with him until Wilmington. She would make sure he made it safely aboard a ship and then …

Adrian’s hands tightened around her, as if pleading with her to talk to him.

She turned and looked at him, her face only inches from his. She tried to think of him as she had in the beginning, as her brother’s murderer, but she couldn’t, not when she saw the concern and worry in his face. Worry for her.

He was so incredibly handsome. Never in her life had she thought a man like Lord Ridgely would be interested in her, never had she thought her body could react as it had … as it did.

Part of her wished he would question her, until finally she told him everything, but he didn’t. Instead, his hands caressed her, soothing and relaxing wherever he touched. She felt her tense muscles begin to ease, her eyes grow drowsy. Tomorrow, she told herself. Or the next day.

Or the next …

She would tell him everything.

When she woke again, the sky was the light gray-blue of just past dawn. She could see the sun beyond the trees, and her hands reached for the body she’d grown accustomed to throughout the night—and found it gone.

Panic filled her for a moment. Then she forced herself to look carefully. One of the horses was missing; the other was contentedly grazing on a spot of grass between trees. Socrates was nowhere to be seen.