The Dark Affair (9 page)

He snapped her a most irritated look. Christ, he was concentrating, and he didn’t need her
baaa
ing at him. He gave a curt nod. Straightening his arms, he launched himself up. His entire body swung. The air whooshed around him, and his brain seemed to plummet to his feet.

“My lord? My lord!”

He caught himself somehow and swayed on his bare feet, his toes gripping the fibers of the plush rug. After finding his footing, he noticed with dismay his nightshirt hanging about his knees. He gazed down at the linen despondently. “Hate nightshirts.”

“’Twas the only thing your man had to put on you.” She frowned, her gaze sliding up and down the material skimming his body. Those remarkable and sin-inspiring eyes widened and then widened some more. “What is it you usually wear?”

He gave a rough laugh and stared at her.

She flushed.

She was so easy to rile. Even in his state.

Brushing off her agitation with a quick bustle of motion toward him, her hand outstretched, she said, “You’re certain you need no help.”

He blew out a derisive sound, which he immediately regretted, beginning to think silence was really the only reasonable course he could take to ease the aching in his head and general state of disorder in his body. “I laugh in the face of assistance.”

That irritating red brow shot up and her lips, glorious pink and full, pursed. “Just don’t be letting assistance have the last laugh, if you get my meaning.”

“Wouldn’t . . . d-dream of it.” It was tempting to stop discourse altogether and focus only on her mouth. What he intended to do with it. How he would seduce it carefully with soft kisses, the touch of his tongue, and words, beautiful words and filthy words all meant to shock and accentuate the pleasure he would give her. And there were other things she could do with that mouth, just as he would use his mouth upon her.

He studied her face, the part of her which was the most stunning, and attempted to hide his curiosity. She was most peculiar. Though getting her to flush was fairly easy, she was not cowed by him. Couldn’t be, he supposed. Not in her line of work. Dealing with mouth frothers day in and day out. It seemed hard-pressed to believe money was enough motivation to live her life thusly. “W-why . . . ? Why are you . . . helping me?”

Where the hell had his sense of articulation gone? Yes. It was happening again. His mouth was disobeying him in a most disturbing way.

“Catholics like suffering. Isn’t it the path to heaven, by God? Now, just take it slow.”

He bristled and felt one roiling mass of emotion. “Must you”—he girded up his tongue and forced himself to say carefully—“be so damned annoying?”

“Indeed, I must.”

He nodded, wondering why he’d bothered to ask. “Of course you must.”

“It’s what I’m paid for.”

“No wage . . . could be enough. Besides . . . you don’t earn a wage. You’re . . . my . . . God . . . I don’t really want to say it—”

“Wife. I know. I’d say that was a bit of a disadvantage and not a bonus.”

“Would you?”

“Mm. Now, shuffle on to your bath. By now, the water’s been poured, water I’ve had on the boil just waiting for your cheerful rise. ’Twill get cold, and I’ll not have you wailing—”

“Wailing, madam?”

“Like an infant,” she said emphatically.

He opened his mouth, ready to set her down, but then his brain seemed to spasm and he was quite concerned that whatever he would say would come out as utter shite. And that was something he wouldn’t have. Settling instead for a withering look, he turned from her and focused on the tall mahogany door at the end of his room, which was cracked open.

He could make it.

With Herculean effort, he lifted his foot from the floor and dragged—
dragged
—it forward. He was one of the strongest men he knew; he ensured it with a daily fitness regimen. One would never know it based upon the effort with which he took that step.

“Only about twenty or so more to go,” she prodded.

He snapped her a disgusted look, which then sent a pressure booming through his head, and his legs started to shake. “Your . . . silence would be m-most appreciated.”

“I’m sure it would. Most men like their women silent, but alas, I am of the uncooperative sort.”

He
hmmph
ed and took another step forward. If he could only just make a strong go of it.

“That’s it,” she purred. “Fast as a racehorse, you are.”

Was this some sort of reverse motivation? If she drove him mad with her yammering, he’d finally ask for assistance? Well, she could talk herself blue. Swallowing back hard, he focused on the door, gathered up the strength that had got him through years, and strode forward.

He ignored the shaking of his legs, the hammering of his heart, and the sensation that he was about to collapse through air at any moment. All that mattered was he prove her wrong. He didn’t need help. Viscount Powers, no matter how tempted, would
never
need help.

“A
ll right,” she acceded. “You’ve made it to the bath. I’ll give you that.”

The look those piercing eyes gave her sent shivers down her spine. It was a look to say,
I will never fail, woman
.

Margaret folded her arms just under her breasts and felt a grudging respect for the man who was no doubt going to make her life hell for the next months while she attempted to save him from himself. That very arrogance was going to be his worst enemy. “I’ll call your man in, then.”

Strain tensed his features, which on most men would have weakened the beauty of his visage, but not Powers. Instead the furrowed plains of his forehead and jawline only emphasized the sharp ruggedness of his masculinity. “Not. Necessary.”

She sniffed, eyeing him like a mad goat about to charge. The longer he went without opium, the more unreliable he would be . . . at least for a day or two. “You’re not bathin’ on your own. I can tell you that now, me lad.”

“
Lad?
”

She ignored him and planted her hands on her hips. “I’ll not have you drowning.”

“Early release from marriage,” he offered, though his considerable deadpan was diminished by the fever in his cold stare.

“And certain death by your father.”

He nodded. “Tricky.”

She sighed and headed for the bellpull beside the door. Just as she was about to reach for it, his hand darted out with shocking speed and slipped around her wrist, his thumb gently pressing against her throbbing veins. “You bathe me.”

Her entire body froze under that touch. No. Not froze. Enveloped in flame, that’s what her traitorous flesh did. She hadn’t even realized her blood had been pumping ferociously at their interaction. And with this one touch, he was strapped to that bed again. They were kissing, her entire world melting away as he’d shown her that the body was meant for something she never known or given credence to. Pleasure. Unmitigated, soul-stealing pleasure. “’Tis not my place.”

“You’re my nurse,” he countered softly, his gaze seeking hers with a seductive determination.

“I’m not that kind of nurse. I no longer do chamber pots or bedpans.”

He grimaced. “My wife, then. You
are
my wife.”

She fought the growing heat in her palm, the wish to step closer to him and discover if that one kiss had been an entire aberration. “In name only for the now.”

His thumb stroked the vulnerable flesh over the underside of her wrist. “Are you frightened?”

Ah, now. Why did he have to go and ask that? Because she was. She was bleedin’ terrified at this feeling he’d awoken inside her, but there was no way under the stars she’d let him know that. She sniffed. “Of course not. I’ve seen my share of men’s bodies. They’re just so hideous, I do my best to avoid them.”

He smiled, a lopsided, uneven grin, made even more lopsided by his slightly uneven breathing. He let go her hand and took a slow step toward the bath. “A most educated and jaded woman.”

“Exactly.” She shrugged. “They’re all the same,” she said grandly. Sure, she could pull this off. She could bluster her way through this, and he would never be the wiser that she was in wonder at his body, the little she’d seen of it and the way it moved underneath his garments.

That strange smile still remained fixed upon his rugged features as he grabbed hold of his nightshirt and whisked it over his head.

“For if you’ve seen one, you’ve—” Glory be to God and all the angels. She was going to go to the hell she no longer believed in. Her hands clenched into fists lest she reach out to touch him, to discover that he indeed was real and not some overwrought figment of her imagination. His silver-blond hair swept over his broad, muscled shoulders, dancing over pectorals she’d only ever seen the like in the British Museum.

Perfection.

She’d been certain she preferred the whipcord strength of a tall, lithe man and not the broad Herculean body before her, but she’d been so wrong. His muscles were packed one atop the other, hard, straining against burnished skin, rippling down his abdomen to a waist so defined at his hips she could have cut herself on the bands of flesh that directed the eye down . . .

She couldn’t help it. Her mouth opened involuntarily to exude a small sigh of awe. His thick . . . penis? She couldn’t call it that. Somehow that anatomical word seemed too sterile for this wickedly virile man. The word “cock,” a word she had for so long hated, suddenly blazed through her mind. Yes. It was the only word to describe it. His cock was thick; if she wrapped her fingers about it, her thumb and middle finger likely wouldn’t meet.

Oh yes. Cock. Something proud, strong.

“You’re overheated, my dear?”

She snapped her attention back up to his face. Her cheeks indeed were smoldering, and her gown suddenly seemed altogether too tight, her high neck cutting into her sensitive skin. “’Tis the steam from the bath.”

“Of course.” He proceeded to turn and give her a good view of a hard ass and a back so wide and so strong she could have laid all her worldly cares upon it and it wouldn’t have cracked. Or was that it? His back was so strong that so many people had laid their cares upon him until one day he could bear it no more. A tragic Greek hero cast from grace.

As soon as he bent ever so slightly, a groan mumbled from his lips and he began to tilt. A great oak felling. Her heart slammed in her chest as she realized he was collapsing. She darted forward and grabbed him. Her arms circled around his waist, her hands grabbing, her legs bending and straining to take his weight.

Her face pressed against his long hair, and heat radiated off his skin, blasting her with his discomfort.

“Powers,” she said sharply at his silence, praying to God he hadn’t passed out. If he truly gave way, she wouldn’t be able to hold him.

“Mm.”

“I need you to brace your hands on the tub.”

“Don’t be so . . . bossy.”

“God, save me from men.”

“Keep that tongue and He shall.”

“I thought you quite liked my tongue.”

He let out a ragged guffaw, and then his hands slowly inched out and grabbed hold of the porcelain rim.

Bent over, her leaning behind him, she held with all her might, her feet splaying lest he go face forward into the bath and conk his head like the great mule of a man he was.

Panting slightly, he glanced back over his shoulder. “This . . . is a most unique experience.”

She stared at him, not understanding, and then he wiggled his arse a little against her groin. She gasped, half of a mind to let him fly and accept the consequences. “You’d be thinking of sex even with your limbs blown off, wouldn’t you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I wouldn’t be thinking about it.”

She paused. “Oh, no?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. I’d find a way to be doing it. With you.”

“Faith. And you’ve the devil’s own soul.”

“But you haven’t let me go.”

“Pardon?”

“If you’re so enraged, why are you still holding on?”

“Because I don’t wish you any more brain damaged than you clearly are.”

“Very kind.”

Thank the angels he couldn’t see her face. Her cheeks had to be the color of her hair, and frankly, if she were to strip off her gown, she wouldn’t be surprised if her entire body was one lick of shock and color. But if she stripped off her gown, they’d be naked body to naked body, and she could climb in that bath with him and wash the fever from his skin and satisfy her growing curiosity about this strange man. She lowered her forehead to his back for one moment, closed her eyes, and wished the world was very different.

“Have you got a good grip?”

“Mm.”

“Right. I’m letting go.”

“Must you?”

“Don’t be daft.”

“I thought I was supposed to be.”

“You claim you’re not. So stop acting it.” For someone suffering from opium withdrawal, he was remarkably lucid. Perhaps it was his size. Big as an ox, his body could take so much more than the average person, but it was a matter of time. And then she’d need his man and his footmen. But she’d save him the indignity of knowing that.

“I’ve got hold.”

“Good.”

Slowly, she eased her grip and started to slip away, and her traitorous hands, didn’t they move just a bit more slowly than they ought as they slid back over his velvet skin? She’d never touched the like. Living stone, heated from within.

“Do you mind not letting go entirely?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My legs are shaking.”

She looked down. “So they are.”

“I—I—”

“Need help.” She let out a mocking gasp. “And the world is coming to end; the mighty Powers needs a bit of help.”

A low sort of growl rumbled from his chest, a sound that sent a thrill racing straight to the pit of her stomach, but one that also raised a hint of alarm. He was a man who could be pushed and pushed, except for when he was vulnerable. “I’ve got you,” she whispered gently.

•   •   •

The hot water bit into his skin, massaging his aching muscles, and a low moan of unbearable relief mustered past his lips. Carefully, with her arms braced under his and his hands still planted on the rim of the tub, they lowered him together into the deep, steaming water.

It was the closest thing he’d known to heaven since he’d first set eyes on his Irish harpy. He hadn’t realized just how tight each and every one of his muscles was; they’d seemed the consistency of marmalade jam. He dropped his head back and caught her staring down at his face.

It was the most interesting view—her staring down at him—one he’d become accustomed to in the asylum but had never liked. But now there was such infinite care on her face that he felt his chest tightening in a most alarming manner. He jerked his gaze away, focusing on the cream-colored wall on the other side of the room.

“Just relax now.”

He was tempted to splash her with a large wave of water. Telling him to relax was like asking a rhino to march through a keyhole. His body was one great tight, angry band. And . . . and . . . the shaking was growing worse, to the point it seemed as if he’d created a wave system within the bath. “Is this . . . normal?”

She inched back away from the tub and averted her gaze. “Indeed, it is.”

Very interesting, his angel. How she was so innocent . . . and not. “Y-you said it would get worse?”

She folded her arms under her bosom, the black bombazine glistening like its own mourning stone as she slowly swayed a good few feet off the side. “So it will.”

He twisted his neck, trying for a better look at her. He didn’t know why, but just her very presence made this somehow bearable. Which made no sense at all, considering a few moments ago all he’d wanted was her departure. Unease gripped his gut. He’d never experienced anything like this and was heading out into the wilds, no compass, no map, and no provisions. “How much worse?”

“Don’t think about it.”

He splashed his hands down on the water, voicing his frustration. He was always in control of everything, and suddenly he was losing that control hour by hour, day by day. All he wanted was to get it back. “How the hell am I not to think about it?”

She began to pace, a slow, easy walk down the length of his dressing room. Once she reached the end, she turned, her skirts dancing about her. For one moment, he could have sworn she had no legs at all, that her pearl skin glowed opalescent and that her strange blue eyes burned straight through him with a heavenly power. What he wouldn’t give for her to take down her hair. To see its fire coil down her back and over her shoulders. “Let loose your hair.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Please. Let loose your hair.” At first he expected her to slam him with ridicule and her usual sense of high moral disdain. Instead her fingers tightened on her arms, the flesh going even whiter around the nail beds.

She kept her eyes locked on his face, clearly determined not to let her gaze capture too much of him. “Why?”

“Comfort.”

Her hands fluttered down to her sides as her mouth opened ever so slightly. “You’re an astonishing man.” Her fingers inched up through the air until they rested on the pins at her chignon.

His skin tightened and he waited. Waited desperately to see it uncoil.

Then she dropped her hands, her hair still in place. “I’m sorry. I cannot.”

He turned his head away. The anticipation of such a strangely not erotic thing leaching away from him. It was remarkable the way she contained herself, for all her teasing. She was a woman who didn’t know how to be free.

He sighed slowly, letting the breath ease from his chest with the tension of the day. “I understand.”

“But I’ll tell you a story.” Her voice shook slightly. “For comfort.”

“Do I look three?”

“On occasion.”

He sank down deeper into the tub, allowing the water to soak his hair, and he closed his eyes tightly. “Fine, then. A story.”

“Glad I am to oblige.”

He snorted, but it was a weak attempt at his usually emphatically derisive sound. And he waited for her rapturously beautiful voice to fill the room.

“Once in the land of Tir Na Nog—”

He snapped his eyes open. “The land of bloody what?”

“Shh. ’Tis a story.”

He sighed and forced himself to let his head relax against the porcelain tub. His hands floated in the water, and he offered himself up to her voice, which he prayed to God would indeed distract him from the sudden and uncontrollable jerking going on in his limbs. She ignored it, so it couldn’t be too bad as of yet. “Are you going to continue?”

“Ahem. Once in the land of Tir Na Nog, there lived a young god and a young goddess who loved each other with all the powers of the universe.”

“A fairy story then.”

She paused before correcting, “An epic story.”

“You don’t believe in love. Said as much.”

“But I do believe in stories. Now, hold your
wheesht
.”

My God, it was never clearer than at this moment that she was a foreigner. An un-English person. “My . . . what?”

“Shut your piehole.”

And he did, because he was too weak to formulate a suitable reply and too shocked to even attempt one. No one told him such things.