Secret Worlds (608 page)

Perhaps the night wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Isobel smiled with gritted teeth as the rotund earl she was dancing with stepped on her feet yet again.

She really needn’t have worried about her performance on the dance floor. What the dancing master should have taught her and her charges was a way to defend themselves, or more precisely their feet, from the onslaught of clumsy partners.

Foot-murdering earls aside, the night had been surprisingly pleasant. The large ballroom was impressively gilded with a multitude of crystal chandeliers. Elegantly dressed people milled about, trying not to appear to be enjoying themselves too much.

The men were more uniformly dressed in black, but the women wore a multitude of colors. She admired their jewel-like gowns from a distance, grateful that her husband’s good taste ensured she was not out of place. The new jewels she wore had been universally admired. Her gown was not the only one in that particular shade of green, but it was among the most elegant.

A number of young ladies wore white, and after speaking to a few of them, she learned they were here in advance of the regular season to acquire a social polish in a less demanding and critical setting. When the regular Season commenced, their manners and looks would be evaluated and judged in the highly competitive marriage mart. The entire future of some families rested on making an advantageous match for their daughters.

It was a cutthroat business. Isobel wondered if she would have been subjected to a similar ordeal in Edinburgh had her father lived. They had never discussed giving her a season.

Turning away from her cheerless thoughts she focused on the novelty of her surroundings. In addition to the extravagantly decorated ballroom, the buffet had been lavishly laid with game, lobster patties, and other assorted delicacies. To her eyes it looked sumptuous, but she heard more than one person sniff that it was miserly compared to the buffets laid during the regular season.

The only real problem was the dancing. She suppressed a wince when her partner trod on her toes once more. Hot and winded, she was glad when the dying strains of music signaled an end to the torture. With relief, she allowed the slightly sour-smelling earl to escort her back to her party.

In addition to her husband and his father, she was surrounded by a circle of their acquaintances, friends they had made in previous visits and kept up through correspondence.

To her surprise, the circle also included family, a young cousin of Matteo’s named Gideon Wells, the son of Clarence’s youngest sister, Anna.

Gideon, a youth eighteen years old, was down from Oxford with some friends for the weekend. He had been thrilled to learn Matteo was in town. He had latched onto him with endearing enthusiasm and was peppering him with questions about Italy and how his cousin had met her. He gave her a commiserating smile when she rejoined the party.

“Did ’ol Lynton leave you crippled? I told my uncle it was a bad idea to accept his request for a dance,” he whispered with a genial grin.

Isobel allowed herself a tiny smile in response before assuring him that she was fine. But her amusement dropped away quickly when she caught sight of her husband.

A streak of cold ran through her overheated body. Matteo’s eyes were dark—too dark. And there was a tell-tale streak of black in his aura. Fighting full-blown panic, she made her way to his side and slipped a hand in his arm.

“Darling, are you feeling all right?” she asked, her voice strained.

He looked down at her, eyes glassy like dark pools reflecting distant starlight. When he didn’t answer, her heart picked up speed.

“Matteo?” she whispered, caressing the inside of his arm.

“I’m fine,
mi amore
,” he said, his voice as remote as the look in his eyes.

“He should be asking you that,” Gideon laughed.

Matteo looked up at him sharply.

“Old Lynton stepped all over her feet. It’s a good thing I already had a chance to take a turn with your lovely new wife.” He leaned in as he said it, smiling at Isobel warmly.

Under her hand, Matteo stiffened and from the corner of her eye she saw his aura flare.

No, no, no!

How could she not have realized? She’d been so stupid. Normal socializing was taxing enough for Matteo, but a ball? A place where other men not only spoke to her, but also touched her. And she was obliged to let them as they partnered her on the dance floor.

Gideon kept up a steady stream of small talk, apparently not noticing that Matteo had essentially withdrawn from him and the rest of the company. She was trying to decide what to do when another man, a viscount this time, came up to their party to request a dance.

The flare-up of black next to her was startling in its intensity, and underneath her fingers she could feel him growing colder.

It must have been worse that her admirer was young and attractive. Looking up, she gave the balcony door a longing glance, ignoring the Conte’s nod of approval of the viscount as an acceptable dance partner. She closed and opened her mouth, trying to come up with an appropriate excuse when rescue came from an unexpected source.

“Sorry, Berkeley, my cousin-in-law can’t oblige you right now. She’s still fatigued from her last dance,” Gideon said with a smile, digging in an elbow into the viscount’s side and mouthing
Lynton
.

“Oh.” Viscount Berkeley laughed. “Perhaps later then,” he said before launching into a conversation with Gideon about the last sale at Tattersalls.

She murmured something noncommittal and turned to Matteo. “My lord, I’m a bit overheated from all this excitement. Could we take a breath of fresh air outside?”

Without waiting for an answer she tugged on his arm and led him away. Thankfully, he followed. She smiled, making polite excuses to the assembled group as they headed to the balcony. Once there, she immediately changed her mind.

Despite the coolness of the night, enough people were outside to make a stroll in the gardens inadvisable. She hailed a passing footman and asked if there was a room where they could have a little privacy.

Flustered by her boldness, the servant directed her to the empty library on the ground floor. Trying to appear sanguine and composed, she hurried into the darkened room, pulling Matteo in after her.

He turned her around, his grip tight, before she could find a taper to light. There was, however, enough moonlight filtering through the glass doors leading to the garden to make out most of the room, including the man in front of her and his intense expression.

“Did Lynton hurt you?” Matteo asked, his voice reverberating with that strange oscillation she’d grown to fear.

But this was not about her feelings. It was about distracting the demon from harmful intent.

“No!” She assured him hastily. Her fingers trembled as she reached up to stroke his face. “I just wanted to be alone with you,” she whispered, tugging on his cravat to pull him down for a kiss.

That was all it took.

Matteo’s arms wrapped around her, his hands rough and searching. His mouth aggressively plundered hers as they stood there in near darkness. Yanking down her sleeves he exposed her breasts and she gasped, wondering what she had done.

His hands cupped her before he bent and his mouth closed over one rapidly hardening peak.

She began to have trouble standing as he sucked hard on one breast and then the other, his tongue leaving a trail between them. She was about to put her hands around his neck when she heard it, that distinctive purring growl no normal man would ever make.

Her entire body clenched in both fear and arousal.

“My lord?” she asked apprehensively.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted and carried her deeper into the room. There was no couch in the library, only armchairs, so he set her down on a sturdy looking waist high cabinet in the far corner just outside the light of the glass doors.

Breath a little ragged, she tentatively opened her arms as he pulled her to him. Closing a fist in her hair, he tugged her head to the side, exposing her neck so his mouth could work its way down to her breast. His other hand moved under her skirt, tugging it upward before pushing her legs open.

His fingers were cold as they stroked her intimately, but they warmed quickly, almost as if she was transferring her heat to him. He growled again and tore at his breeches before pulling her to him with hard hands.

Isobel’s lips parted and she threw back her head as he roughly brought them together. A sound escaped her, a cross between a moan and a whimper as his shaft worked all the way inside her tight wet channel.

The shade inside Matteo liked the noise she made. It purred in approval and withdrew before pumping back into her forcefully.

It’s okay, he’s warm, he’s warm
, she repeated to herself, even though she knew it wasn’t true.

Putting her hands on his shoulders, she held on as he rocked into her body. His hands held her tight against him while he took her mouth hungrily, his tongue mimicking the movements and rhythm of his shaft as he penetrated her again and again.

Around her, the room spun. It felt as if her will was being torn from its moorings as her husband’s large and hard cock plundered and consumed with an intensity not his own. She wouldn’t think about her body’s soft and eager acceptance just now. The shame would come later.

The sudden burning orgasm that coursed through her overwhelmed her senses, making her blind and deaf as her body went rigid, convulsing in his arms...which was why she didn’t hear the door open.

A sharp exhalation escaped her as male laughter penetrated her lethargy. At least two men had entered the room. For the moment they were shielded by the deeper shadows at the back of the room, but the men were moving closer. If they lit a taper she and Matteo would be seen.

With trembling hands, she clutched at him, but it was as if he didn’t hear them. He didn’t stop making love to her, continuing to move in and out her body with determined thrusts. She tugged on his hair, trying to signal him to stop as the men moved closer, but he was insensible.

A startling pulse of pleasure streaked through her as the men stepped into view, laughing as one handed the other a cigar. Despite having just climaxed, her body tightened hungrily around Matteo’s thick member as he relentlessly claimed her warm wet sheath.

Heart in her throat, she put both her hands on Matteo’s mouth, holding her breath when one spoke to the other.

“We better smoke these outside, or I’ll never hear the end of it from my wife,” the man said.

It was their host, Lord Southmont.

The other man said something she didn’t catch while Southmont opened the door. Tense in Matteo’s arms, she belatedly noticed he had stopped moving too. Frozen together in their intimate embrace they stayed silent in the shadows just a few feet away from discovery.

The men, distracted by their own conversation, went out with their cigars and disappeared into the garden.

Isobel let out a shaky breath, her body slumping against Matteo in exhausted relief. But he was still hard inside her...and he wasn’t finished.

He put his hands on either side of her face and took her mouth again before slipping out of her. Languorous in his hold, she barely registered when he hauled her off the cabinet and turned her away from him.

For a moment his hands moved over her, stroking her bared breasts and down to the heated core under her skirts while he drew on her neck with his lips. Enervated by his touch she leaned against him until his hand forced her head down, bending her over the cabinet.

Startled, she clung to the polished wood surface as the head of him circled her heated entrance. One of his feet nudged her legs farther apart and then he was inside, so large he was almost too much for her. Stroking fast, he drove deeply into her, making her cry out. She pressed her cheek against the cabinet’s surface, trying to hold on as her body moved helplessly underneath him. But he wasn’t satisfied with her just holding on. He took hold of her breasts and pinched the tips until she bucked and cried out, blinded by another climax.

A few moments more and a shudder passed through him, his breath ragged and low when he whispered. “I love you, Isabella.”

She shuddered too...because it wasn’t Matteo speaking to her. It was the demon.

If the cursed has moments of lucidity, moments when he or she goes about their business, their normal life and work, then the possibility of purging the taint remains. If the cursed is overwhelmed by the demon spirit inside them for all or most of the day, then the cursed should be relieved of their burden.

Isobel clutched the thin volume, pressing it so hard against her body that it dug into her ribs. It wasn’t one of the books her grandmother had written. The diary was much older and written in a masculine hand. It had been in the last trunk, a forgotten little leather bound journal that didn’t identify its author. It was also in Greek, a language her father had taught her along with Latin, French, and a little Italian.

The brief passage was the clearest mention of a spell that resembled what was happening to Matteo. She had found others, descriptions of curses that instructed the user on how to afflict others with ailments from a mild rash to sexual dysfunction. Other more pernicious curses made a person insensible, while a few killed.

What she’d found related to Matteo’s condition was vague. She didn’t know what the book meant by a purge. Despite translating all of the text in the book, there wasn’t more detail on that part. But now that she knew what she was looking for, maybe things would go faster. And she still had more volumes to check.

She had asked the
Conte
to acquire several more that had been mentioned in her reading through one of his agents in town. He had sent word that they had been found, and he would drop them off this afternoon. Pleased that the count was finally contributing to his son’s recovery, she was actually looking forward to his visit for a change.

Unfortunately, her assumption that Aldo was going to be helpful proved false. A few hours later he’d burst into the library, tracking mud on the carpet all the way up to the table she’d been sitting at, making notes on her reading. He’d been looking for Matteo, but his son had been asleep...again.