The Greatest Lover in All England (13 page)

This time she seemed to have got it right. His arms closed around her when she nibbled at his mouth, and
he stopped breathing when she slid her tongue between his lips. His knees collapsed; he sat against the wide rail and tried to draw her close. Her bum roll and voluminous petticoats thwarted him, and she allowed herself a moment of triumph.

Seduce her with words, would he? Well, she would seduce him right back. The women in the plays always reduced their men to quivering wrecks of passion, and she wanted to see Tony shaking like a bowl of eel jelly. She wanted him senseless with desire. She wanted him.

“I have to go in now,” she said, dismayed when her voice quavered.

“Not yet.”

“They'll be wondering—”

“So, let them.” Tony blessed his good night vision. Able to see Rosie's face in the dim light of the stars, he realized how her expression vacillated between jubilation and prudence. She hungered for the land, but her craving infuriated her. She wanted him on his knees before her, but she feared the steps that would bring him down. Her passions confused her, and he planned to utilize that confusion.

“You fit at Odyssey Manor because you were born here.” He lifted her off her feet, swung her around, and placed her on the rail where he had been sitting. “You fit in my arms because you were born for this.”

She struggled when he leaned her out into thin air, but he whispered, “Be careful. I don't want to go over the edge with you.” She froze, and he kissed her throat and smiled. “The shrubs would break our fall, but I like it better up here where we can kiss. Don't you?”

Frustration rippled through her. He'd effectively neutralized her gutter combat skills, and he chuckled when she snapped, “I do prefer the terrace to a nasty fall, so put me back on the terrace.”

“Your passion holds me in thrall,” he answered, and kissed her.

God, she kissed him as if she'd invented kissing at the beginning of time. It proved his theory; that when she fought the force that drew him to her, it retaliated by sucking her into the whirlpool. The stars whipped around them in ever tighter circles; his heart beat in ever faster rhythms.

“Rosie.” He tried to touch her all over, but her stiff stomacher inhibited his exploration. “Rosie,” he groaned in exasperation, and started grabbing great handfuls of skirt and petticoats.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Trying to get under your skirts.”

For some reason, his honesty aggravated her, and when he freed her legs she used the opportunity to kick him in the kneecap. He cursed and grabbed her ankle. “I've never had to fight a woman for her favors.”

Sarcastically, she said, “I'm fretting about the damage to your male pride.”

He paused. His pride? What about her distress? He didn't lie when he said he'd never had to fight a woman, because he'd always been the one in control. He'd prided himself on his suave protestations of devotion, his smooth methods of seduction. He'd certainly never had to hang a woman over a precipice before to gain her cooperation, nor had he ever induced a woman to violence.

What was Rosie doing to his discipline?

Swinging her off the rail, he set her on her feet.
Suave
, he told himself.
Remember your discipline. She longs for romance, just like any other girl, and perhaps deserves it more
. “My apologies, Lady Rosalyn.”

He tried to arrange her skirts, but she knocked him on the shoulder. “Leave me alone.”

“I can't.”
Suave
, he thought.
Romance
. Dropping onto one knee, he placed a hand over his heart. “Your face, your body, your sweet countenance move me to such ardor I'm no longer in control. I live for a smile, sigh for a glance, dream of your—”

“I've heard passion done better by legions of actors,” she said impatiently, “and you've made your ambitions clear to one and all. I heard it from every servant on your estate. You want to take a noble, wealthy virgin to wife, and I've destroyed your plans.”

“How so? You are noble, you are wealthy.” He caught her hand when she tried to back away from his query. “Are you not a virgin?”

“What difference does it make?” She tugged at her hand. “You wish nothing more from me than a clear title to this estate.”

“Have you convinced yourself of that?” Touching the new rings that decorated her long fingers, he said, “Do you think this finery makes any difference to me and you? We are the same people when stripped of our garments.”

“I have to go in.”

The truth alarmed her, he was pleased to see, because she didn't want to discuss it. “Do you dismiss my passion before I even knew your name? Do you remember the vows I made that day before I saw you on the stage? I begged to know your father's name. I told you we would wed.”

She glanced longingly at the doors that led to the gallery. “Nay!”

He pressed his suit. “I was going to sneak into your chamber and teach you the ways of passion.”

“You were furious when Sir Danny presented me as the heir,” she answered, sure of herself with this, at least.

“I am still furious.” Rising, he retained her hand. “I am, as you so gently reminded me, a bastard. One hundred men have insulted me, and one hundred men have I taught respect with my fists and the sharp tip of my sword. When I wed you, it will start again. The sly insinuations, the sidelong glances, the outright slander.”

“I don't understand.”

She didn't, either. He could see her confusion, and he clarified the situation as calmly as he could. “The gossips will say this estate is not mine, but my wife's, and that I live on your charity.”

She shifted away from him as if he menaced her. “You won this estate through your own efforts, so you should take comfort in what is true.”

“Truth does not always matter.” The injustice of it infuriated him, as it had always infuriated him. “For often falsehoods are more entertaining.”

“Then you should deny me my”—she gulped—“heritage.”

“It is your heritage. You are the heiress. No matter how much I wish to doubt it, I know you are the heiress, and I live by the truth.” He stepped close and smiled into her leery face. “So you see, if I owe you the right to this estate, then you owe me what I desire.”

“I owe you nothing.”

“You owe me yourself.”

She picked up her skirts and whirled to run, and he caught her by the waist and lifted her high. She kicked and shrieked; he laughed and strode toward the door. To hell with control. To hell with romance. To hell with everything except Tony and Rosie, naked on a bed until the next full moon.

Then he heard the twang of a bow, and dived for the floor.

It was a simple
arrow, made of a sharpened ash shaft and a goose feather flight. Every man in England knew how to make one. But who had made this one?

Tony stood at the window of his study and twirled the arrow in the morning sun. This arrow couldn't have killed anybody. He corrected himself. Probably couldn't have killed anybody. For the most part an arrow needed a steel tip to embed itself deep into its victim. So why fire this arrow?

Last night he'd been frantic with fear that Rosie had been hit. She'd assured him she was fine, but he'd wanted to strip her down and examine every inch of her to assure himself of her good health.

Now he looked at her, seated before his desk in a
modest gown. She had allowed her three mentors to dress her hair, and had come when he summoned her with an obedience that might have boded well for their future, except he knew the reason for her compliance. She wanted answers, and had found none last night.

No answers last night, and none this morning.

Moving to the door, he inspected the latch. It was closed firmly, and he shot the bolt into place. He wanted no repeat of the previous day's “accidental” eavesdropping. “I hope you understood when I asked that you tell no one of the incident last night. I thought it best to keep it between ourselves. We don't want to deal with a panic.”

Her eyes glinted with dour humor. “You mean—more panic than my own?”

Panicked? Aye, she'd been panicked, but not at first. First she'd been furious, demanding what madness had seized him, and why he'd thrown her—and himself—to the ground. Then, when he'd shown her the arrow, she'd acted coolly, urging him inside when he would have gone beating the bushes for a man with a weapon. Only when they were safe had she panicked. Her instinct for survival explained more about her upbringing than she would have liked, if she had realized. But she didn't. She thought everyone had experienced life-threatening situations and reacted accordingly. It infuriated him to think of Rosie in danger, yet at the same time he admired her poise. “Who taught you to fight?”

Off-balance by his question, she stammered. “What?”

“You're handy with your fists, good with a kick. Who taught you?”

“Sir Danny, mostly. He feared I'd get into a scuffle with the other…boys, and he thought I'd best know how to give them better than I got.” She lifted her chin,
and her voice grew cold. “Sometimes the fair people of the town would refuse to pay us and, as an added fillip, would try to beat us, kill us, and steal our horses.” Without inflection, she said, “If
I'd
shot that arrow, you'd be dead.”

He leaned against the door and ruffled the feathers of the flight. “You're the only one I know for sure didn't shoot it.”

“What do you mean?”

She very carefully kept expression off of her face, but he surmised she didn't like the trend of his thoughts. He didn't like it, either, but together he and Rosie had to discover the source of this threat. Together. If he had planned it, he couldn't have come up with a better scheme to force them to remain together. “We were out on the terrace, taking our pleasure, for, shall we say, an hour? Then we were out on the terrace, crawling around, trying to stay alive for another few minutes.” He grinned at his comrade-in-terror. “It only seemed like another hour, I'm sure. It couldn't have been more than five minutes.”

She grinned back at him, as grimly amused by their alarm as he. “Five minutes.”

“We limped upstairs as fast as we could, avoiding the dining room and every servant, and went into the master's antechamber, where we recovered ourselves and checked for injuries. Then you went to your bedchamber and locked yourself in, and I went downstairs to make your excuses to our guests.”

She leaned forward. “And?”

“And every one of them had left the room at one time or another.”

He watched her as she followed his logic. The dull gold of her plain dress brought out the highlights in her hair and reflected the freshness of her complexion and
the glow of her amber eyes. Whether she liked it or not, she was all woman.

Not the kind of woman he'd known before, though. His other marriage prospects would have been worthless consultants in such circumstances. Rosie would face the facts without flinching, help him deduce the scheme, and she'd want to help him deal with the culprit.

She wouldn't leave him to deal with the culprit. He ran his hands through his hair. Therein lay the rub, didn't it? How did he keep Rosie in her womanly place?

“You can't seriously suspect Sir Danny?” she asked.

He countered, “You can't seriously suspect my sisters? And Lady Honora?”

They looked at each other for a long moment, then burst into laughter.

“The thought of Lady Honora skulking through the bushes…” Rosie imitated a rigid figure drawing a bow, and he sobered.

“I've seen Lady Honora during a hunt, and she's an expert with the bow.” Rosie sobered, too, and he leaned forward. “Don't you see? Every one of them has reasons.”

“But who's in danger?”

That
was
the question, and they both knew it. The arrow had struck directly in the place he'd been standing, but without knowing the skill of the bowman, they had no way of knowing at whom he'd been aiming. The dilemma had kept Tony awake through most of the night. Somehow the thought of injury to himself seemed less worrisome than an injury to Rosie. He'd seen her in pain once when she broke her arm; he couldn't bear to see it again.

“You're a popular master. Your servants do whatever you command.” Rosie looked at her fingernails. “Could it be that one of your servants or tenants might wish to remove me and my claim on the estate?”

He'd thought of that, too, but he didn't believe it. He could handle Rosie and her claim. Surely everyone knew that. But someone had tried to separate Rosie from him in the crudest way. He suspected the simplest crime of all. The crime of passion. “Are you cursed with some inappropriate suitor?”

She blinked at his brusque query, but she didn't flinch. “Besides you?”

Insolence. She'd almost been killed, and she looked at him through clear, bright eyes and mocked him. Well, she could be insolent, but he could be intimidating. Stalking over to her chair, he stood in front of her, toe to toe, and looked down at her. “A suitor. A lover. Someone who might be jealous enough to take aim at us with a bow and arrow rather than allow you to marry me.”

“Is that the best explanation you can think of?” She spoke to his belly rather than acknowledge his height. “That someone was shooting at us out of thwarted love? You flatter me, sir.”

So he didn't intimidate her. No surprise. “So you have no suitor?” he insisted.

“How could I have a suitor when until yesterday I was an itinerant actor?” She answered well, but her gaze shifted to the arrow in his hand, and she reached out and removed it from his grasp.

“You're the kind of woman all men love.”

“They've been hiding it very well.”

Leaning over, he placed his hands on the arms of the chair, trapping her. “It's that Ludovic, isn't it?”

Her start was answer enough, and he remembered the fellow's bold visual claim during the first play Sir Danny's troupe had performed. “I knew it! He challenged me over you before I even knew I would have you.”

“You're not having me.”

She spoke with conviction, but she answered a man who'd never conceived of defeat. “I'm having you every night in my dreams, and last night I would have had you in truth, but for the arrow.” He rejoiced to see her color rise and her breath come more quickly. The stomacher bound her, and he winced when he thought about her breasts mashed against her body. He imagined an expedition to liberate them, and thought of Rosie's gratitude for his concern. She'd cup one for him, and he'd place his mouth on it and suckle until she—

Her hand grabbed his hair and jerked his head up. “Mayhap you've made someone angry enough to kill you.” Lifting the arrow in her fist, she aimed it at his heart. “From what you said last night and the way you're acting today, it's possible. More than possible—probable.”

He grinned at her threatened violence, and something in him eased. Her mind might be convinced that he wouldn't have her, but her body answered his in perfect accord. “My enemies aren't likely to use an untipped arrow to assassinate me.”

“Ah. You have a higher class of assassins.” She nodded knowingly and loosened her grip on his hair. “Perhaps I should ask if you have suitors—and of course you do. Mayhap it is not a man who shoots so well, but one of your ladies.”

“None of the ladies I know would shoot an arrow at me.”

“All of the ladies I know would.”

He glanced again at her flushed chest, then into her furious face. “Not after they got to know me.” Pulling up a short stool, again directly in front of her, he sat. With his head lower than hers, she would be less threatened. That, combined with his appeal, would surely win him some answers. “Are you sure your arm wasn't hurt when we hit the floor?”

“It was wrenched a little, that's all.” Watching him warily, she lifted the splint within her sling. “'Tis you who should be injured.”

“I have bruises up and down my side.” He tried to coax a smile from her. “Want to inspect them? I'll let you kiss them into health.”

She shook her head.

“You don't know what you're missing.”

“And not likely to find out.”

They stared at each other, then he reached out and smoothed his thumb across her lower lip. “I could kiss you and show you how it's done.”

“Ludovic wouldn't have missed.”

As a distraction, it worked well. The pleasure in him curdled, and he let his hand drop away.

“He was a soldier on the Continent, and he's the reason we escaped those places where they wanted to rob and murder us. When he fights, he makes no mistakes.” She was quite earnest, and clearly relieved that she'd diverted him.

But he could divert her, too. “I have a present for you.” He stood and walked to his desk, and she stood, too, moving away from the chair and into the middle of the room, where he had no chance of trapping her.

Foolish woman! She stood no chance against his wiles.

He kept his gaze trained on her, and fumbled for the drawer. The handgrip he sought eluded him, hidden in the intricate carvings of the desk. He had to look before he found the handle, then pulled the drawer out and held up his gift. “A purse.”

She looked less than impressed. “A purse?”

Two round pieces of tough tapestry material were sewn together. A sturdy string looped through holes at the top and formed one long strap. “Here.” He advanced on her. “Take it.”

She smiled politely. “I appreciate your kindness in all things, but I have one.” She did indeed, a large and grubby bag that ill matched her splendid attire.

He pressed his more elegant purse into her hand and let go, then grinned when she almost dropped it.

Astonished, she weighed it in her hand. “What's in here?”

“A chunk of marble.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“Keep it with you at all times.”

“Keep it with me?” She looked at him as if he were crazed. “It must weigh twenty stone!”

“You exaggerate. It doesn't weigh more than ten.” Reaching out, he ran his palm up the muscle in her arm. “It's one-half stone, and it'll build up your strength.”

“What am I supposed to do with this”—she disparaged him with her tone—“purse?”

“If you're threatened, you swing it.” He moved behind her so his chest was against her back, then took her wrist and pivoted in a circle.

The purse whipped around, a weapon of ballast, and she understood his purpose without further explanation.

Stepping back, he watched as she took a few practice swings. He'd added to his lady's arsenal, and that gave him a sense of security. With her gifts, she'd not be taken from him by force. But still she remained impassive in the face of his beguilement, and his chagrin knew no bounds. There had to be a way to keep her at his side, at least until her barriers had failed her and she languished at his feet like a proper woman. Baiting the trap with a new tidbit, he suggested, “You're going to be a very rich woman when we marry.”

The purse wavered. “I'll be very rich when Her Majesty awards me the estates,” she corrected, but two words had caught her attention. “
Very
rich?”

He could have rubbed his hands in glee at the success of his ploy. “Aye. Have you thought what you will do with so much money?”

“I had a strawberry once.” Her eyes widened. “Will I be able to afford strawberries?”

“Even in December.”

She snorted and in her gutter-girl accent, said, “Ye're chaffin' me.”

“Some very clever farmers grow strawberries within doors, with windows all around, and grow them all year long.”

Her lips parted, her eyes widened; she looked the picture of a starving waif. “Sir Danny used to buy me honey cakes.”

“I'll have the cook make them tonight.”

She touched her lower lip with her tongue. “What about…?” She concentrated, but her imagination failed her.

“Almond milk? Stuffed chicken with spiced apples and oatmeal? Oranges? Carp?”

That caught her fancy. “
Fresh
carp?”

His sense of triumph faded beneath her awe and amazement. She adored Sir Danny, and he'd done what he could for her, but there had been lean times. She had gone hungry. Had she choked down day-old fish or eaten beggar's scraps? His own stomach cramped at the thought, and he wanted to grant her every wish. “Fresh carp, certainly, and prepared any way you like.”

“Oh.” She thrust out her right hand, but her purse was still in it. Laughing at herself, she traded it to the other hand. Snatching his hand, she lifted it to her lips and kissed it. “I hadn't imagined such bounty. I'll be fat as a smokehouse wife in a year!”