Seduced by a Stranger (14 page)

For a long moment, he simply stared down at her, saying nothing, aware that she studied him as he studied her. Reaching out, he touched his thumb to her wet cheek.

Tears. She had shed enough to fill a bucket. He stepped away as she watched him with wary uncertainty, crossed to the washstand and poured a glass of water from the pitcher. Then he took up a folded cloth, wet it, and wrung it out.

Three strides took him back to her side. She was exactly where he had left her, sitting in the stripe of moonlight, her porcelain skin made all the paler by the cool light. He offered her first the cloth—she swiped it over her face and handed it back to him—and then the glass. She drank the water greedily, in thirsty gulps, and set the empty glass on the table with precise, careful movements, as though she feared slamming it down and shattering it into a million shards.

Dropping her hands to her lap, she stared straight ahead, her posture brittle. He thought that the wrong word would shatter
her
into a million shards.

“Catherine,” he murmured, reaching down, braceleting her wrist with his fingers. His thumb traced the delicate bumps and dips of her bones, the softness of her skin.

He tightened his grip and drew her to her feet. She allowed this liberty, unresisting, the silence disturbed only by the rustle of her skirt as she rose.

Then, as though waking from a daze, she
did
resist, tugging on her wrist, trying to pull away. He could not say why he did not let her go.

Her head tipped back; her lashes lifted. The moon painted a pale wash on her face, leaving her eyes too dark, too big, shimmering with the tears that had yet to dry. But she did not cry now. She gathered herself, her chin angling up, her posture adjusting as she visibly called forth her inner reserves of strength. Her back arched a little as she strained away, and her arm was stiff and straight against his. Only the quick, hard pulse at her throat betrayed her unease.

Her eyes narrowed, and her features changed from open to guarded. Her mask slid into place. He found he regretted that, though he would not have expected such.

With a last sharp tug, she tried again to pull free.

And this time, he let her go, let her step away, though it went fully against the unfamiliar instinct to draw her close, wrap her in his embrace, and hold her safe from anything that would harm her. Even himself.

Like a slumbering beast, something deep inside him unfurled, a need to claim, to mark, to protect. Primitive. Dark. He understood it not at all. Glancing down, he took refuge in the simple act of lifting the scrap of newspaper from the table, tilting it to the light, and reading the first bit. He saw immediately that he had no need to read it all. He already knew a great deal about Martha Grimsby’s murder.

“Is it the murder itself that has you upset, or something more?” He looked up. “The method of it? The organs taken?”

She took a sharp breath.

Ah
. His questions only served to distress her more. A tactical error on his part.

He stepped toward her only the single pace that she had stepped away earlier, and when she did not retreat, another pace. They were so close that all that separated them was their clothing and a thin span of night-cooled air. So close that he could feel the graze of her breasts against his chest with each breath she took, feel the trembling in her body as he took her hand in his, drew it down to his side and held it there, shifting them closer still.

Her breathing grew short and rapid. Her head tipped down so she stared straight ahead at his chest rather than his face.

“How do you know there were organs taken? You barely glanced at the page…certainly you could not have read it in its entirety.” Her voice was roughened by the violence of the sobs that had racked her earlier. He wondered how long she had sat here in the near dark, sobbing her heart out before he had found her.

For a moment, he said nothing, weighing all possible answers, and finally decided on, “This clipping is from a paper days old.” He let it flutter to the tabletop once more. “But there is little new information in the more recent reports.”

“Oh.” She blinked and shook her head mere inches to either side. Then she wet her lips and gave a soft sniffle. “I knew her. The murdered woman. Martha Grimsby. I knew her as a child.”

Seconds ticked past. Tipping her head back, she met his gaze, waiting for him to respond, to offer some appropriate rejoinder.

“You feel her loss. You regret it.” The words were not enough. He saw it in her eyes. For an instant, the silence roared as he searched…and then he came away with the fitting response, the exact words that had been said to him at a time of loss. “My condolences.”

She swallowed. Nodded. “Thank you.”

Dark lashes swept down, veiling her thoughts. But he knew what they were, read her pain in every tense line of her lush form. He wanted to take her suffering, pull it from her, swallow it into himself where it would not matter anymore.

Her lashes lifted and she looked directly at him, into his eyes. Perhaps even deeper than that.

He wanted to kiss her, to drag her against him and put his lips on hers, to know the hot, sweet taste of her mouth, her tongue.

It was not the right time. Even he, with his shallow grasp of the nuances of emotion, understood that it was the wrong time. But he let instinct guide his hand as he reached out to draw the pins from her hair, letting the thick, heavy waves tumble free over her shoulders and down her back.

There. He liked that, the feel of her silky hair against his palm, the look of her with her hair loose and mussed.

Her eyes and lips were still puffy from her tears, and he ached to kiss her lids, her mouth, her throat. To lick the salt from her skin. He thought she would not welcome it. But still the urge swelled and grew. He knew nothing of comfort, but he thought that were their positions reversed, were he the one to feel pain, he would crave the succor of her touch. A shocking realization, for he could not recall having such a thought in all his adult life.

Catherine fisted her hands in her skirt and stepped away, suddenly wary. St. Aubyn filled the space, inhabiting it, owning it. Even in the dimness, he was painted in shades of gold and honey and finely brewed ale. Yet the meager light suited him, for he was more akin to shadow than light, regardless of his sun-bright beauty. He was a man who looked nothing like he ought to. If appearance reflected inner self, he would be cast in the smoke and pewter of shadows rather than the gilded gold of sunlight.

That thought was enough to stir fear in her gut, to rouse memories of another man whose appearance had so poorly matched his temperament and secrets. A man who had cost her everything. The worst of it was, she had chosen to trust Jasper Hunt, to love him. In the end, he had broken her, shaped her to obey. By the time she had understood that, it was too late for her. For her baby.

The woman she was now had risen from the ashes of the girl she had been. The woman she was now would not be lulled and tricked by anyone. She was wiser than that. She would force herself to be wiser than that.

“What are you doing here, in my chamber?” she asked, aware even as she did so that the question was belated. She ought to have bid him leave the second he pushed open the door. And now it was too late, because even if he turned and left now, she would still have knowledge of the well-hidden part of him that had been driven to offer his own rather restrained form of comfort—a glass of water for her parched throat, a cool cloth for her fevered brow. He had taken liberties, crossed boundaries, created an intimacy she did not wish to have with him.

“I heard you. From the hallway.” His lips curved in a faint, sardonic smile. “We seem to alternate roles skulking about in the shadows, you and I.”

There was that. Strangely, his odd attempt at levity eased the ache in her heart just a little.

“Why were you in the hallway? Only Madeline and I are housed in this wing, and I have doubts that you were on your way for a pleasant visit with your cousin.”

He watched her for a moment, assessing, measuring. “I was on my way to make certain that Madeline took the laudanum Graves supplied. A night’s rest would benefit her.”

His solicitous concern for the cousin he freely admitted he despised seemed odd. She studied him, trying to judge his sincerity.

In the meager light of the moon and the single flickering candle, his hair was gilded, his eyes shadowed. But not so shadowed that she did not read the glint of desire that flared in their amber depths as he dropped his gaze to her lips, her breasts.

“I gave her a dose in a glass of Madeira,” she said in a rush, startled and appalled by the answering spark of attraction that flickered in her belly, sending hot tendrils snaking through her limbs. No. She dared not feel this. To give a man such power over her once more—

He kissed her. There was no preamble, no sweet and tentative approach. There was only the heat of his body and the strength of his hands on her arms, holding her as his mouth pressed to hers, hard, hungry. For an instant, she responded. The silk of his tongue in her mouth, the mingling of breath, the scent of his skin, faintly citrus, filled her. There was pleasure here. Primitive, savage pleasure.

Oh, God, how long since she had felt this?

Never.
The truth of that was irrefutable.

Whatever stirrings of passion she had felt in her past, it was a mere prelude to the sensations that drowned her now. She had never been kissed so thoroughly, so savagely. So beautifully.

With only a kiss he had found the part of her she thought she had killed. She had been wrong. Her passion was not dead, only sleeping.

Under the press of his lips and the stroke of his tongue she unfurled, the air around them so still it quivered, the storm inside her building until she kissed him back, openmouthed and hungry. Her fingers twisted in his hair, tugging him down to her as she fed on his strength, his passion, the physical comfort of his hard body and sheltering embrace.

He protected what was his. Coldly. Ruthlessly. She had witnessed that with her own eyes. He would protect her if she were his.

And it was that realization that chilled her, drowning the sharp flare of her passion as quickly as it had come.

She would not do this. Would not put herself in this place. Would never again be any man’s possession. His property.

With a gasp, she turned her face away and pressed hard against his chest.

“Catherine,” he murmured, his voice low and rough, his lips moving against her throat. “I want you.”

I want you.

Memories surged. A man’s voice, hard with rage.
I want you. Now. On your knees, my cat.

She felt sick. Dizzy. The room spinning. It was too much. Too many memories. Too many secrets.

Too many losses and regrets.

She worked so hard to hold them at bay, to cage them where they could not harm her anymore. But with a single kiss, Gabriel St. Aubyn freed them, freed the power of her sexual need, and other things. The need for closeness and comfort and human warmth. All things she no longer deserved.

All things she knew better than to imagine that this man, this particular man, could ever want or provide.

The tumult of her passion, too hard, too swift, died as quickly as it had swelled, replaced by a cold knot of dread. What would he do if she refused?

Break her fingers as that man had broken Peg’s? No. She could not imagine that of him.

Break her will, then, as Sunderley had tried to do in the end?

The thought made her ill.

With a desperate cry, she ripped herself from Gabriel’s embrace and backed away until she felt the cold wall against her back. Pressing her open palms against the wall, she stood there, panting, wishing he would go, just go. Uncertain what she would do if he stayed, if he bid her disrobe, if he ordered her—

Panic swelled, and she battled it with all she was. She would not succumb. She would never again be so weak and helpless.

And then it came to her, the knowledge of how she could deny him that power. She would initiate the interlude, get it over with, on her terms, and she would hold all emotion at bay, make herself safe.

He watched her with an expression that betrayed nothing of his thoughts. Was he disappointed? Angry? Not even by the faintest flicker of his lashes did he offer insight.

Feeling as though she was not at all herself, as though she were dreaming or had drunk a measure of Madeline’s laudanum, she stared past Gabriel’s shoulder, straight ahead at the looking glass above the mantel. She saw her reflection there, her expression blank, her face pale.

Gabriel wanted her? Well, she would let him have her. She would let him take her and then it would be over. The anticipation, the heart-pounding lust. The terror that this act of physical joining would dissolve her, dissolve everything she had worked so hard to become.

She could participate in the physical without offering even a bit of her secret self.

She was stronger now, a different woman. Yes. The phoenix risen from the ashes. And she would do this, face this, and come away stronger still. Men did it all the time. Made physical use of a woman they neither knew nor cared about. She suspected many women did that, as well.

There was her answer. She would become one of those women. He would have her body but nothing more. Those were her terms. It was the most she could offer. And she did not dare examine too closely her reasons for even offering this.

Her anticipation had died with the abrupt slice of a guillotine. But neither was there horror of the coming act, and that was an improvement. She had thought never again to face physical intimacy without clammy palms and cold sweat and roiling nausea deep in her gut.

Reaching up behind her neck, she unclasped her mother’s pearls and laid them carefully on the polished mahogany of the table. Next, she tunneled her fingers into her hair, taking the few pins he had missed from the thick mass, setting them down side by side like little soldiers in formation. Another pin and another. Heavy hanks of dark hair tumbled down her back to join the ones Gabriel had freed earlier.