Recklessly Yours (29 page)

Repulsed, Holly pressed deeper into the cushions. All these glorious creatures brought down, not to feed a family, but to the ignominious fate of being stuffed and mounted to satisfy a man's pride. Her gaze darted back to the stag's head, and images flashed in her mind. The duchess's bruised wrist . . . Bryce's scarred hands . . . Sabrina's bravado . . . Geoffrey's timidity . . .

Colin's rebellion, first against his father and now against his queen. Her heart wrenched painfully as the truth stared blatantly back at her from the buck's empty, spiritless stare.

She pressed to her feet, falling back when pain flared in her hip. She gripped the arm of the settee and, sucking in a fortifying breath, tried again. Ignoring the spasms, she made her way to the foyer and went to the front door. She grasped the latch, was about to throw the door wide when a voice behind her stopped her short.

“The horses are stabled and Mrs. Fulsome is warming a meat pie for us. Where do you think you're going?”

In a burst of defiance she whipped around. “I can't stay here. I won't.”

“What are you talking about?” As though she were a cornered rabbit and he feared frightening her away, Colin approached her slowly. “The Fulsomes are trustworthy and there is no one here to recognize you. No one to go telling tales.”

“I don't care about that. This place . . . it's horrible. It's . . .” She clamped her lips shut.

“It is my father's special lair,” he said quietly, “but he's far away now. He can't bother us.”

“Oh God, Colin,” she whispered. “He's a very bad man, isn't he? He hurt you . . . all of you.”

He barely reacted, but the slight flaring of his nostrils and the clenching of his jaw told all. Until that moment she had hoped she was wrong, but she had guessed so horribly right, and now everything about this contrary family made sense. A pang gripped her heart as Colin momentarily bowed his head and shut his eyes. His stance remained determined and strong, and she saw how steadfastly he had shouldered the burden of holding his family together through the years, how bravely he had born the responsibility.

Surely even Simon de Burgh, his best friend, didn't know these most intimate and awful secrets about the Ashworths' lives. Surely if he had, Ivy would have known, too, but she had never given the slightest indication.

The thought of Colin's silent suffering sent Holly to him, her arms opening as she drew near. “I'm sorry. So sorry.”

“No.” He held up his hands as if to stop her, but then his arms went around her, seeking purchase, his forehead sinking to her shoulder and his face pressing to the curve of her neck. His lips, moist and parted, trembled against her skin.

“He doesn't give a damn,” he said softly. “Not about his wife. Not about his children. He cares only for his cursed, malicious self.” His hands sliding to her shoulders, he lifted his head, his eyes fierce, filled with the angry pain of an injured wolf. “How did you know? I know I told you he hit me, but fathers and sons often come to blows at some point in their lives.”

“Everything I've seen and heard these past several days. And then—that.” She thrust a finger toward Thaddeus Ashworth's macabre drawing room.

“Ah, yes.” Colin's laughter echoed bleakly in the silent hallway. Releasing her, he turned half away to stare through the arched doorway. “That is essentially what he does to everyone and everything he touches. We are each of us his victim and his prize, to be stripped of spirit and hung on the wall for his friends to admire.”

“Not you,” she said emphatically. “Not Sabrina.”

He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Me and Sabrina most of all. We're the special ones, you see—the heir and the only girl. Growing up, we constantly attracted his notice. He'd grow bored with Bryce and Geoff because they so rarely dared to oppose him, but Sabrina and I presented a challenge he couldn't resist, like that wolf in there. My father tracked that wolf for days before he put a bullet through its back, and straight into its heart.”

He strode to the doorway and raised an arm to brace himself against the woodwork. “He's a great hunter, my father, an expert marksman. Invited by the past two kings every year to stalk with them in the royal forests. Of course, all that's changed now. The queen doesn't hold hunting parties, not like in the old days. And so Father found it necessary to court favor in an entirely new way.”

Holly went to his side. “The colt. That's why he gave it to her, to curry her favor.”

“He took something that didn't belong to him, something he could never understand if he tried for the whole of his ungodly life. And he simply gave it away, as if it were of no account, meant nothing.”

“Couldn't you simply have gone to Victoria and—”

“And what?” His vehemence made her jump. “Tell her what? That this colt, most assuredly not a Thoroughbred despite its appearance, possesses qualities that no one, not even I, can come close to grasping? And because of that, she must give it back?”

Holly's shoulders sagged and she tucked her chin low. “No, I don't suppose she would have accepted that.”

“And now it's gone.” He released the doorframe and fisted both hands in his hair. “It's gone and I don't know how the bloody blazes to get it back. There'll be the devil to pay for it.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, her voice barely audible because even as she spoke, she dreaded admitting the truth. “It's my fault. If I hadn't followed you . . .”

“No.” He reached for her and drew her close. “You're not to blame. You couldn't have known. I should have been brave enough to take you into my confidence back in Masterfield Park.”

“Why didn't you? Have you always mistrusted me? I know you never cared for me, not as you cared for my sisters.”

His sardonic chuckle vibrated into her. “Is that what you think?”

“It is what I
know
, the simple truth. You needn't spare my feelings.”

His strong arms fell away from around her. Then his hands came up and seized her face. “The only thing I ever wished to spare you from was the reality of my ill-fated family, my fiend of a father. Do you think I'd ever let him near you, let him treat you as he's treated the rest of us? Good God, I'd die first. I'd see him dead first.”

Her heart thundered inside her. Her throat and eyes throbbed with tears. “You were protecting me? All this time, when I believed you indifferent?”

He held her closer, his fingers burrowing through her hair and pulling it free of its pins. “As if any man could be indifferent to such a woman. A brave, bold woman who defies convention and meets life head-on, astride and with a pistol in her purse.”

“I rode sidesaddle when I followed you,” she reminded him around a sob.

“You did at that, and still you caught up to me, warrior that you are.”

The world stood still as he bent his head, bringing the scent of his skin to swirl through her, his heat to warm her, the softness of his lips to melt over hers . . . melt and reshape and move, as molten rock moves over the earth, forming itself to the very landscape it conquers.

His arm hooked beneath her knees and all at once he swung her up off her feet. With her arms around his neck, their lips pressed and their tongues tangling, he carried her up the stairs.

 

Wrong. A mistake. Go back
.

His conscience railing at him, Colin cleared the top step with Holly secure in his arms. The first door he came to as he crossed the landing he soundly ignored, as he ignored the logic that shouted at him to return to the foyer below.

That first bedroom belonged to his father, and he would never take Holly in there. Colin had no permanent bedchamber in this house, but he strode to the guestroom he'd used in the past. The bed, curtained in heavy brocade and covered in supple satin, beckoned like a night-darkened glen dripping in foliage and draped in vines.

He moved past it and went instead to the window.

Letting Holly's feet slide to the floor, he kept one arm solidly around her waist while he flung the curtains wide. Cloud-dappled moonlight spilled into the room, gilding her milky skin and transforming her eyes to emerald-tinged stars. Those eyes . . .

Shimmered with emotion, and communicated the very gift he longed to see.

Downstairs, he had almost confessed all, almost told her he loved her and had from the very first. Now, seeing her glowing like a moon goddess with her lips parted and her heart in her eyes, he almost spoke those words.

Instead he expelled a long sigh that stirred the fallen tendrils beside her face. He swept his fingers through her hair again, filling his hands with an immeasurable treasure of rare crimson gold. “By God, you're beautiful.”

A shadow dimmed her eyes, and he remembered that in their society, redheads were not accustomed to being considered beautiful. That she could think of herself as anything less than a goddess cast a pall over his own pleasure in having her in his arms. He couldn't bear it; he wouldn't have it.

Their time together would be too short for such misgivings.

“You are beautiful and I'll prove it to you,” he said, as if she had demurred out loud.

He kissed her and swept his tongue into her mouth when her lips opened to him. Spurred by the unleashing of a passion too long held in check, he moved his hands over her, everywhere, seeking out her most feminine places, learning every curve and line of her through her clothing, while she panted into him and yielded her body against his. He filled his hands with the weight of her breasts, then claimed her hips and belly and buttocks. Trembling, all awareness of time and place lost to the rushing, aching heat that drove him, he bunched her trailing skirts in his fist and raised them.

She gave a desperate whimper, and he stilled his hands while his heart shook his rib cage. The sound spilled through her lips again, but with it came a
yes.
She tightened her arms around him.

He swept her up again. This time he went to the bed and tossed her lengthwise into the pool of moonlight slanting across the coverlet. Crawling up over her, he braced his hands on either side of her face and dipped his lips to her smooth neck. Between kisses, he spoke her name.

“Holly?” It was a question, an appeal for permission, and it contained more vulnerability than he had dared express in many years.

“Yes,” she repeated that single syllable, assuring him she knew as well as he why they were there, and what would follow.

Yes. Oh God, yes. His body responded with a surge of lust that strained his cock against his breeches. Whisking open the buttons of her riding jacket, he shoved its edges aside and dropped his face to her bodice, burying his nose and lips in sultry flesh. Tantalizing, spicy, her essence spiraled through him and made him tipsy with pleasure. He sat up and tore his coat from his arms. He ripped his neckcloth free. Without untying the laces, tugged his shirt over his head and tossed it away.

Raising her up to a sitting position, he went to work on the buttons down the back of her dress. Soon her bodice had joined the growing pile on the floor. She herself reached for the ties that held her skirts in place.

His conscience nudged, and he closed his hand over hers. “You should tell me to go to the devil.”

The sudden swat to the side of his head not only startled him, but smarted, too. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her, nose to nose. “If you wish to go to the devil,” she said fiercely, angrily, “then go. Don't put it on me.”

“I only meant . . .”

She shook her head. “No. You must do as you wish. Be here with me, now, because you wish to be. It is the only reason I am here.” A fiery tendril slid into her face. She blew it back, and suddenly her vehemence faded and the vulnerability of a girl, a virtuous, untouched girl, peeped through. “I am here,” she whispered, “doing as I have never done before because . . .”

“Why, dear heart? Why now?”

“Because of you,” she said simply, the quiver in her voice resonating like the pluck of a harp. “And I will not take it back.”

“Nor will I.” No, were he granted one wish, it would be to change his life, his family, his father . . . his legacy. But to wish himself elsewhere but in that room and on that bed, gazing into the eyes of this one woman—
that
he would not have changed for all the priceless colts in the world.

For tonight, he would cease to be the Earl of Drayton, heir to the Duke of Masterfield. He'd merely be a man, with the world's most desirable goddess sprawled lushly beneath him, her body warm and welcoming, her eyes misty with desire and consent. The tenderness on her face made him feel good enough, blameless enough, for the first time in his life. Whatever else they would share, she had already bestowed a rare gift, the greatest possible gift.

“Nothing else exists tonight.” His lips to her ear, his teeth nipped at the tender lobe. “We won't think of this as my father's house. We aren't in a house at all, but on a cloud just beneath heaven.”

“And no one can hurt us or judge us or hinder us.”

“That's right, dearest heart.” He slid her loosened skirts down her long, slim legs. Crawling back up to her side, he kissed a trail from her chin down her throat to the swell of her breasts at the neckline of her chemise. “We're free.”

Her hands ran through his hair. She locked her fingers behind his head and pressed him more fully to her bosom. “Free to rule ourselves.”

“And our desires.”

Her nipples, dark beneath the sheer muslin covering them, beckoned. Through the fabric he kissed each one, his lips demanding and taking more as she pressed higher, pushing her firm breasts into his mouth in the most innocently seductive way. His groin tightened, and the exquisite pain served as a reminder of the boundaries that must be set.