The Runaway McBride (25 page)

Calmly, deliberately, he held her steady with one hand pressed
to the small of her back, then he used his other hand to cup her breast. As he fingered the crest, she gave a little gasp. He swallowed the sound and did it again.

When she pulled back slightly, she was breathing hard. She’d wanted the feel of his arms around her, but she’d expected him to comfort her. The intent look in his eyes told her that James had other ideas.

“We’re going to slow down,” he said. “I’m going to show you how it’s supposed to be.”

“You mean . . .” Her brows puckered. “I didn’t do it right the first time?”

He winced. God, he was never any good with words. “No,
I
didn’t do it right. I suppose I lost my head. My only excuse is that I’ve waited eight long years for you.” He winced again. Was there no end to his stupidity? This is what had caused their spat just moments ago. He tried again. “What I mean to say, Faith—”

She stopped his words by pressing her fingers to his lips. “I don’t need excuses; I don’t want protestations of love. What happened tonight with Robert, well, we’re both off balance. That won’t last.” She swallowed. “I hope to God it won’t last.” Her thoughts drifted to her dream, and she shuddered. “It’s enough for me if I can forget, at least for tonight.”

The nightmare shouldn’t affect her like this, she thought dimly. It was only a dream, wasn’t it? Then why did she still feel bereft, as though she’d truly lost James?

She must have voiced what she was thinking, because he cradled her in his arms and began to rock her. Against her hair, he murmured, “Forget about the dream, Faith. Forget about labyrinths and corridors. I won’t get lost. I won’t let you get lost.”

He meant what he said. It was
his
dream not hers. Next time they came to the gates barring entrance to that derelict house, he would lock them and throw away the key.

Even as the thought occurred to him, he knew that he was doomed to enter that house and try to rescue Faith. That was how this premonition worked.

He didn’t want to think about premonitions, or the past, or what might await them on the morrow. He hadn’t liked the sound of her voice telling him that they were two different people now. He wasn’t different, not in the things that mattered, and he didn’t think Faith had changed in any significant way, either.

That wasn’t entirely true. Distrust and misunderstanding had taken their toll. But the magnetism that had drawn them together was still there. It wasn’t lust. That could be easily satisfied. All he knew was that when Faith walked into a room, the world seemed a brighter place.

He wanted that brightness for himself, not only for today but for all their tomorrows.

Brows beetled, he focused on Faith the way he focused on every aspect of his trains. She found his scrutiny a bit unnerving, but she stood perfectly still as he fluffed out her hair and combed it with his fingers to fall in waves to her shoulders. Neither spoke, though there was a slight hiatus in their breathing. Satisfied with the disarray of her hair, he touched his fingers to the slope of her cheekbones, the lobes of her ears, sliding his hands down to her shoulders, where his fingers toyed with the collar of her robe.

“What is it about you?” he murmured as if to himself.

From the moment he’d met her in Lady Beale’s ballroom, he’d been struck by how different she was from the debutantes who vied for masculine attention. They were like Fiona. It wasn’t a particular man they wanted but the material things they would come into if they could only lead a suitable candidate to the altar. Faith knew her place as a paid companion and had not given him a second glance.

Naturally, he’d been intrigued. He hadn’t singled her out. That would have been too obvious, but he’d created opportunities to get to know her better, and the more he talked to her, the more he came to admire and like her.

There was a softness to Faith he’d found appealing, maybe because he’d never taken to the artificial characters he’d encountered in society. She was, however, too trusting for her own good. She accepted people at face value and never questioned their sincerity or their motives.

She had kept him at a distance because, he supposed, she believed that there was no future for a paid companion and a man of his substance. That was what society thought, and society was an ass. He couldn’t say his intentions were honorable, because at that point he hadn’t had any intentions toward Faith. He admired her and liked her, and he enjoyed her company.

That was how things stood before he caught her under the mistletoe. He’d almost burned to ashes in the raw emotions that one kiss had provoked. After that, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

“First love,” she quipped, when the silence became unbearable. The intensity of his stare was making her breath catch.

He’d forgotten the question evidently, so she elaborated, “The poets have written about it since the beginning of time. One always remembers one’s first love.”

He gave her the grin that could melt her heart. “You know I don’t read poetry.”

“Yes, I remember.” Her tone was dry. “Poetry to you is a railway timetable.”

“No, poetry to me is you, Faith. I don’t always understand you, but I know . . .” His voice trailed to a halt. What he left unsaid was that the world would be a darker place without her. His world would be darker.

His hands cupped her shoulders, clenched and trembled.

She saw the change in him and held her breath. A moment before, they’d been playing with words. Now his features were set in harsh lines, his mouth was flat and hard. She gasped when he suddenly scooped her into his arms and stalked with her to the bed. She scooted up to the headboard and hugged her knees. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she could see that he wasn’t himself.

“James, what’s wrong? ” she asked softly.

He lowered himself to the bed. “What’s wrong is . . .” He pulled back and looked down at her. He’d been hovering at the edge of that awful nightmare again, but he didn’t want to remind her of it, so he said instead, “What’s wrong is that I want to make this good for you, but I want you so damn much that I’m afraid my control may not be equal to my good intentions.”

His words arrested her. What could be more passionate than the way they’d come together so short a time ago? An ache started in her breasts and moved lower. Heat shimmered over her skin.

He’d told her only a small part of the truth. That he wanted her went without saying, but it was fear that was driving him. She was so small and defenseless and no match for the monster that lurked in the ruined mansion of his dream. He wanted to bind her to him so that she would never run from him again. Her life depended on it... and so did his sanity.

When he joined her on the bed, that intent look was back in his eyes. For a moment, a fraction of a moment, she felt a shiver of alarm. He seemed like a stranger. Then he whispered her name, and her fear was forgotten as anticipation for the moment he would put his hands on her tightened every muscle. The moment came, and she moaned from the sudden rise in pleasure.

He opened the edge of her dressing robe and bore her into the mattress with the press of his weight. His mouth covered hers in a lingering, wet kiss, then dipped lower, brushing with tantalizing languor her throat, her shoulders, before hovering over one painfully tight breast. He prolonged the torture, using the tip of his tongue to lave one distended nipple, then the other. When he finally took her into his mouth and sucked hard, she heaved up to give him freer access to her body. Like a sprig of ivy, she clung to him, winding her limbs around his hard length. It wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to know him as intimately as he knew her. She wanted bare skin against bare skin.

He smiled when he felt her hands trying to strip his garments from him. She needed help, and he quickly peeled out of his trousers and shirt before joining her on the bed again. He was going to take her with all the skill he should have used before. He wanted to make this perfect for her.

He might have succeeded in his noble objective if Faith had not started to buck and arch beneath him. He could feel her soft breasts rubbing against his chest, feel her hands clutching at the muscles that bunched in his arms. And those keening cries she made at the back of her throat made his ears ring with the pounding of his blood.

She could feel his control begin to slip, and it thrilled her in some deeply primitive way that she only half understood. She had never imagined she had such power over him. What made her bold was the knowledge that she had only to say the word, and he would stop. He would be angry, or sulky, or curse fluently, but she never doubted that she had the power to make him stop.

She didn’t want him to stop. She’d discovered something about herself that filled her with awe. She was a deeply passionate woman. What was it about this man, she wondered, that made him different? Many men had stolen kisses from her. It was one of the perils of her employment as a companion. But no man’s kisses had had the power to touch her as James’s kisses had. Now she was as wild to have him as he was to take her.

Shamelessly, wantonly, she guided his sex to the entrance to her body. “Now,” she said, her voice husky.

It was all he wanted to hear. Pushing her knees high, he drove into her.

She thought she was prepared for the shock of his possession, but she couldn’t help sucking in a sharp breath. She didn’t know that her nails were digging into his shoulders.

“I hurt you,” he said in a shaken voice, and he made to withdraw.

Her arms tightened convulsively around him. “Don’t you dare leave me, James Burnett.”

When she lifted her hips to draw him deeper, a muffled groan tore from his throat. “Easy,” he said, “easy.”

But she didn’t want easy. She began to move.

Every muscle in his body tensed. He tried to hold on to his control, but she’d taken it away from him. Rhythmically, rapidly they moved together till they lay shuddering and spent in each other’s arms.

 

 

It was a long time before either of them moved. James turned
his head to look at the clock. It was the middle of the night, and he was perfectly sure that his family would not travel in the dark. They would have put up at some comfortable hotel and would probably set out at first light. That gave him plenty of time to talk to Faith. Somehow, he had to find the words to put her on her guard without making her more frightened than she already was.

He was sorely tempted to kiss the pout from her mouth, but prudence won out. One kiss would lead to another, and they would never get around to having that talk. He swung out of bed, and as he began to pull on his garments, he studied her as she slept. One hand was tucked under her cheek. Her hair was spread about her pillow like a curtain of fine lace. As he watched, she sighed and rolled onto her back. From the folds of the eiderdown, one pink-crested breast peeked up at him. God only knew what had happened to her dressing robe.

There was an odd tightness in his throat. It seemed so right, so natural to be here with her like this. He wanted to wake up to her first thing every morning. He wanted to hear her voice long into the night. They should have had a troop of children by now, or at least one or two.

The old resentment began to stir, and he quickly crushed it. He hadn’t known about Fiona, but Faith was right; he wasn’t blameless, either. She had written long, newsy letters to him, which he had thoroughly enjoyed. His only excuse for neglecting her was that he’d been mired to his neck in sensitive negotiations that were too complex to explain in a letter.

They couldn’t change the past, but they could start over. In fact, they didn’t have much choice. Even now, she could be pregnant with his child.

He toyed with the idea of pointing out this truth and decided against it. Faith had enough to contend with right now. Let her come to it herself. She must see that marriage was the only solution for them.

She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, so he took the chair by the fire, which was now reduced to a heap of glowing cinders, and after making himself comfortable, he steepled his fingers and concentrated on the most worrisome aspect of the whole business: Robert Danvers’s murder.

After coming at it from all angles, the only thing he was certain of was that Danvers had been recruited to do someone else’s dirty work. Either he had failed to do what he was supposed to do, or he had become expendable.

A memory came sharply into focus. He’d sensed, when he was going through the responses to Faith’s advertisement, that he had missed something important. Had Danvers arrived before him? It made sense. Then he’d told his superior the time and place of Faith’s appointment with Lady Cowdray, and his superior had set thugs on her.

It was all speculation. What he needed was hard evidence or a dash of his granny’s insight.

He got up and stretched his cramped muscles. A movement in the bed caught his eye. Faith had pulled herself to a sitting position and had dragged the eiderdown up to her chin.

“Not another bad dream? ” he asked, crossing to her.

“No, just the usual.” She patted the bed, inviting him to sit.

“What’s the usual?” He sat beside her and took her hand.

She shrugged. “I’m standing in front of my class the first day of school, and they are all looking at me expectantly. The only thing is, I can’t find my notes, so I don’t know what to say. The headmistress is there, and I feel awful.” She stopped and gave a halfhearted laugh. “It’s not the same caliber of nightmare that I had earlier. But I think you know that.”

When she shivered, he put his arms around her.

“What happened, James?” she asked. “Why was I in that wreck of a house? Why were you there? It wasn’t only my dream, was it? It was yours as well. We were there together.”

“Now, what makes you say that?”

“Don’t try to smile your way out of this! I knew it was your dream, too, because . . . I don’t know . . . something you said? Yes. Now I remember. You mentioned being lost in a labyrinth. Well, that’s my dream, too. I’m running through a maze of corridors, trying to find you.”