The Love Affair of an English Lord (4 page)

Chapter 3

The door opened before Dominic could twist the tarnished knob. It took him several moments to assess the woman's face, heart-shaped, pretty, the refined features reflecting total disbelief. The odd thing was that she had been speaking in a low, worried voice. She had been whispering a man's name as she opened the door. The concern in her midnight-blue eyes had rapidly darkened to horror.

Had she been expecting to find her lover, instead of the Stratfield Ghost, on the other side? The butterflies embroidered on her silk robe blurred before his eyes.

It was impossible to tell which one of them had suffered the strongest shock, the woman or himself.

He knew her, didn't he? He felt a prickle of recognition before self-preservation took over. Now that she realized he was not the man she expected, she was reacting as would any normal female in her place.

She turned in panic to escape.

He would lay odds she'd start to scream before she reached the outer door. It felt like torture to force his abused body into action. It even hurt to breathe. But he could have been dead a hundred times over and still have been able to overpower a woman of her build.

He caught her by the waist and was surprised by the strength of her resistance. She swung her body back at him in reaction. His shoulder burned like hell, aggravated by the movement, but he hadn't held a woman in a month, and his natural instincts ran to inflicting pleasure, not pain. As a general rule, when Dominic wrestled a woman to the floor, she was in for the experience of her life.

Not that such a pleasurable activity was even a remote possibility.

She was half his size, but more than his match in determination. His fingers tangled in her short raven-black hair as he brought his hand up to cover her mouth. It didn't help either of them that she had been caught half undressed, her bottom pressed into his groin. Her soft flesh beckoned him to forget what he must do. He knew what she must be thinking, what he wanted. He felt a fleeting stab of desire as her robe fell open. How easily he could take her. How vulnerable she was, for all her struggling.

He also knew suddenly who she was, the blue-eyed woman in the rain. He remembered the day he'd met her, how angry he had been that she had interfered with his plans. It was the same day he had discovered that someone wanted to kill him. The day he had been shot at while walking in the woods. He had been hunting the would-be assassin when this young woman intruded, tempting him for a few moments to ignore how ugly his life had become.

He'd suspected he had been stalked for weeks. Why? Perhaps because he'd been about to reveal that the deaths of Samuel Breckland and Brandon Boscastle last year had not been the result of an ambush by Gurkha warriors at all.

Perhaps because he had been gathering evidence that the murder of the two young soldiers had been arranged by their own commanding officer. Dominic had been on the verge of a discovery. He'd sensed it. So had the man who had murdered Samuel and Brandon.

Would a young woman as frivolous and beautiful as Chloe Boscastle have wanted to kiss him in the rain if she knew his life was being threatened? No. Not for a minute. And he would not have wanted her to either. As desirable as he found her, he dared not endanger her. Even his mistress had hinted that she intended to leave him at the end of the month to seek a new protector.

The best he'd been able to do at the time, all he could offer, was to rescue her from a puddle, steal a kiss.

He almost laughed aloud at the irony of it. He had been more than rude and distracted, not giving the exiled daughter of a marquess the attention to which she was accustomed. At any other time he might have flirted at length with her, formally escorted her home. Perhaps turned his charms on her to see if that electrifying kiss he'd stolen developed into something even more interesting.

Well, he was certainly going to make up for that lack of attention now. In fact, he thought as he half carried her struggling form toward the bed, he was going to spend more time with her than any woman he had ever met, whether she liked it or not.

 

Chloe caught a horrifying glimpse of their shadowy figures in the cheval glass across the room. She was almost grateful for the darkness; it blurred the details of what was happening to her. She'd been so prepared to find her brother hiding in the closet that she hadn't known how to react. Now there was no choice. She was at the mercy of the intruder. She had to rely on instinct to save herself.

A grip like a steel belt squeezed the breath from her body. She stared down at the muscular forearm that held her in a cruel vise. His other hand covered her entire mouth, muffling her angry cries.

She was terrified by his strength, submerged in shock, determined to make subduing her a struggle. But even so, she realized that he was holding back from hurting her. He could have effortlessly snapped her in half. She had wrestled her brothers enough during their childhood to know how easily a man could overpower a woman. She had no idea what he wanted with her, but none of the possibilities that ran through her mind were pleasant.

The pistol in his waistband felt cold and ominous against her lower back. She began to battle in panic again as he moved her toward the bed.

“Stop it,” he growled in her ear. “You're hurting me.”

She—hurting
him
? she wondered in indignation, then gave his shoulder another good thump with the back of her head. It was a mistake. His hold of her midsection tightened until she had no choice but to go utterly limp, allowing him to lower her onto her own bed. When he leaned over her, his features unmerciful and intense, she lowered her eyes and prepared herself for the worst. Then slowly, as several uneventful moments passed, she found the courage to look up at him.

Their gazes connected in mutual recognition, his gray eyes glittering with irony and something that might even have been pain, her own blue eyes wide with astonishment.

The Stratfield Ghost, she realized with a mixture of relief and anxiety. The terror of the village. The delight of the lonely ladies of Chistlebury. The man whose kiss had haunted, heated her private dreams. He whom she and half the ladies of Chistlebury had secretly mourned. Her Galahad of the soulful gray eyes. But how different he seemed.

He was no more a dead man than she; his body was flushed and hot against hers, his breathing shallow and irregular. The plain fact was that the arrogant man who held Chistlebury in thrall looked ghastly—yes, ghostly, too—almost a stone thinner than the day she had seen him. His skin had taken on an unhealthy ashen tint. A thin stubble of beard gave his angular features a lean, dangerous look.

His expression was hard and unforgiving. Even though she knew his identity, knew he was a nobleman and a neighbor, she wasn't reassured. This incarnation of Dominic Breckland looked like a man driven to the brink of desperation. A man capable of anything.

“Do you remember me?” he demanded in a gruff whisper.

She nodded, realized she was still shaking. His voice wasn't the least bit reassuring either, gravely and raw.

“You—you rescued me from the rain. Yes, I remember.”

“I rescued you. From the rain.”

He paused a heartbeat. His gray eyes narrowing, he glanced around the room as if to take stock of his surroundings. Chloe was so aware of him, of his heavy male body, that she felt as though her breathing were synchronized with his. And when he spoke to her again, she was so startled that she almost missed the ironic amusement in his voice.

“It seems to be your turn now.”

She bit the inner flesh of her lip. “My turn?”

“To rescue me.”

“To—” Before she could finish, he lost consciousness, dropping onto her tense body with the impact of an oaken beam, his dark face pressed to hers like a lover in the night. Chloe lay beneath him in a paralysis of horror, wondering in detached anxiety what would happen to her tarnished reputation if she were caught in bed with the Stratfield Ghost.

 

For the longest time she lay immobilized in that peculiar position, half hoping, half terrified that she was trapped under a dead man. When her nerves finally settled down enough for her to function again in a rational manner, she realized he was still alive. At least she could hear the rasp of his breath in her hair. She made an attempt to slide her hand out from under his hip bone. He gave a low warning growl in his throat.

The weak pulse of his heart beat against her crushed breasts, a counterpoint to the blood rushing through her veins. His fingers were still tangled in her hair. Her body was pressed into the bed. Even if he was half dead, she could feel the latent strength in the muscular torso and thighs that imprisoned her.

“Please get off of me,” she whispered, swallowing over the knot that swelled in her throat.

She gave his shoulder a tentative push, only to prod him into rising up with a restrained roar of pain. Observing his reaction, she felt a temporary swell of pity overcome her own fear. He reared back and rolled onto his side, cradling his left arm in a protective gesture.

She stared disbelievingly at her hand, up at his wrinkled linen shirt, back down again at the shiny smear of dark crimson blood on the bed where he had collapsed.

“Oh, dear God,” she said, so appalled at the sight that she forgot the danger to herself. “You're hurt. I'll fetch help. . . .” Yes, help. An excuse to escape, to think how to handle this. Helping him perhaps to save herself. With any luck he'd jump out the window before she returned.

“Don't you dare.”

He caught the sleeve of her robe and hauled her back roughly between his legs, growling, “Don't you breathe a word to anyone that I am here. Or that you've even seen me.”

She felt a little sick, shuddering at the menace in his voice, aware of his breath burning against her neck, the hard, unyielding body that imprisoned her. Was this the same man who had kissed her in the rain? Who had teased and gently tormented her, leaving her aching to meet him again? “But—why must my seeing you be a secret?”

“Because I am dead, my dear, and have no desire to rejoin the living yet.”

She drew a breath. He sounded chillingly calm, deliberate, rational even, although his behavior was not. “Well, I have no desire for you to be here, dead or not,” she burst out. “What are you doing in my room?”

He hesitated, his deep voice stark in the darkness. “I was chased here. Chased through the woods.”

“Chased?” It didn't make sense to her. He was supposed to be dead. He'd hinted that no one knew he had survived the vicious attack. It dawned on her suddenly that there was far more to his murder than anyone in Chistlebury had realized. And now she was caught in his deadly mystery.

 

Dominic stared back at her, reading the bewilderment on her face. What the hell had he gotten into? Why her, of all people?

He nudged her back against the carved rosewood headboard, his gray eyes pensive. God, what a coil. Now that she knew he was alive, he would be forced to trust her, a complication that could ruin his plans. If she were a man, he would take care of her without a qualm, and in not a very nice way, either.

But Lady Chloe Boscastle, Heath's young wildling sister. A woman a little too bright and beautiful for her own good. The lady appeared to have inherited the family penchant for passion and scandal. Heath would calmly tear him apart with his bare hands if Dominic harmed her, even though in the past he had counted Heath as a friend. In fact, when their two younger brothers Brandon and Samuel had been killed together in Nepal, Dominic had begun corresponding with Heath over their mutual suspicions about the ambush. Yes, Heath was a man to be trusted, not crossed.

But more to the point was whether he could trust Heath's sister. Could the nicely built young lady keep a secret? Could she possibly become his ally? He studied her in silence, suddenly noticing the provocative French corset that sat between them on the bed.

A devious contraption designed to emphasize a lush body that in his hasty appraisal appeared to need little enhancement. An ill-timed distraction if ever Dominic had seen or needed one. Why the devil had such a decent young lady worn it? he wondered in fascination, welcoming the diversion from the dark turn of his previous thoughts.

“This is yours?” he asked quietly.

She hesitated, a dark curl falling forward against her face. He wondered if she was blushing. His own body felt feverish enough without imagining how she would look in this provocative costume.

“I asked you if this was yours.”

“What—oh, oh, well, it was sent to me.”

“And you've worn it?”

“Umm. I think maybe once. Or maybe not.”

He raised his gaze, searching her face for something he had not expected. What had he overheard from the closet? Was Heath's little sister involved in a love affair? Not that he gave a damn one way or the other. But it hadn't been so long ago that he might have thrown himself into a contest for her favor.