The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (34 page)

To let it free.

Her hands tangling in the soft mane of his hair, as she bucked and writhed as his tongue licked and probed and his lips caressed, lightly tugged, and he tasted, eyes closed, breathing ragged, she searched for the way.

He raised his head a heartbeat from the point where it would have been too late, and rose over her.

And she reached for him. Raked her hands down his chest, and felt him shudder.

She found him, rigid and burning, and guided him to her entrance.

He pressed in, then, on a harsh groan, thrust fully home.

He hung over her, head hanging, the muscles in his braced arms quivering with the strain of control, of holding still as she adjusted to the deep penetration, to the solid intrusion, the glorious filling.

Even in extremis, her lips curved.

After the last weeks, she no longer needed that moment but nevertheless gloried in it. Took it and, tonight, used it to reach up, draw his head down to hers, meet his lips with hers, arch her body to his, and join with him.

Wholly and completely and with no reservation.

None.

No screen, no holding back.

She felt her heart open, let it happen, didn’t try to hold anything back. She’d already given him her hand, pledged her future, surrendered her body; now she gave him the last tiny part of her she hadn’t yet bestowed, the small careful piece of her heart she’d held back in case he never fully gave to her.

It was time. She sensed that in every driving thrust, in every synchronous beat of their thundering hearts. Time to risk giving her all. Time to believe in all they could be, to commit herself wholly, irrevocably, in her entirety to that, to being that, to becoming that, to sharing it all with him.

Ryder was long past thinking. Feeling had taken over and now drove him relentlessly, mercilessly on, whipping him toward a surrender he’d never thought to make, to an acknowledgment, a bending of the knee, he’d never even dreamt he might come to.

Nothing had prepared him for this, yet everything that was in him wanted it.

Roared for it.

He thrust into her body deeper and harder, and felt her rise to him, their bodies effortlessly coming together, not just in the physical sense, consumed by the friction and the heat, the slickness and the sensual glory, but driven and determined, reckless and abandoned, merging in a far more fundamental way.

On some deeper level, on some higher plane.

Giving and taking, receiving and lavishing, striving to achieve that last ultimate degree of togetherness.

Racing, urgent and intent, for the cataclysm that would bind them forever.

Sunk so deeply in the pleasure of her body, and of her openly shared pleasure in his, though his senses were reeling that fact shone clearly, glowing in his mind with crystal clarity.

This was what it meant to be as one.

To truly reach the pinnacle of togetherness. Of closeness.

Of shattering physical intimacy driven and overwhelmed by emotion.

This was what it meant to love.

To lay aside all reservation, to give without limitation.

To lose one’s heart.

No—to willingly give it into another’s keeping, to become dependent and possessive, to accept that as the price for them doing the same in return.

This was their moment, and similar as they were, they’d reached it together.

Unlocked each other’s doors, led each other to the brink.

This was the ultimate linking.

And in that fraction of an instant of lucidity as they raced, gasping and clinging, up the final peak, he recognized it as that, as an irrevocable step that once taken could never be undone—and still he wanted it.

It would link him to her, but also her to him.

And that was worth any price.

With the last gasp of his desperation, he reached for it, that ultimate gift of him to her and her to him, closed a mental fist about it and held on as, in a firestorm of passion, sensation and emotion collided and they burned.

In the furnace of their joint passion, in the conflagration of their shared love.

Acknowledged, embraced, it consumed them, transmuted them, welded and reforged them.

Made them new, made them whole. Made them more.

As the last shudders of completion racked him, as the last of her contractions faded, he slumped upon her, too wrung out to move, too exhausted and overwhelmed to think.

Even much later, when he lifted from her, slumped alongside her and gathered her into his arms, all he could manage by way of thought was that he was never going to let her go.

He couldn’t. She was his everything.

A
fter the passion of the night and their underlying new reality, Ryder had anticipated some degree of awkwardness between them, certainly a degree of wariness from him if not from her, but instead, when they’d woken they’d looked at each other. Looked into each other’s eyes—and seen—and they’d both smiled.

He’d rolled over and they’d made love, and their day had sailed on, idyllic and untroubled, from there.

The clock on the library mantelpiece chimed five times. As he tidied away the last of his calculations on the coming season’s crops, his mind continued to explore his new state. An unlooked-for, unexpected, unanticipated state—one of such contentment and promise that it constituted a very real vulnerability.

He was surprised at himself that he’d accepted it, that vulnerability, so readily, so easily, yet even now, while in full possession of his wits, had he the decision to make again, he would make it in the same way.

There were, indeed, some things worth the price. That were worth any price.

Putting off that acceptance, delaying this contented joy because of the threat hovering over them . . . neither he nor Mary was the type to play safe, much less to allow some villainous knave to rule them via fear.

No. Whatever came, they would handle it. And, if anything, courtesy of the night, they were even stronger now.

His mind shifting to the pleasures of the evening to come, he shut his desk drawer, then heard a crisp tap at the door. “Come.”

Forsythe entered, a faintly puzzled frown on his face. In one hand he held a salver on which rested several letters, the afternoon mail; offering the salver, Forsythe said, “My lord, Aggie, her ladyship’s maid, is looking for her ladyship but can’t seem to find her. Do you have any idea where her ladyship might be?”

Accepting the letters, Ryder frowned. “She said she was going to do some embroidery, but”—he glanced at the window, at the sunshine outside—“she might have gone for a stroll.” Pushing back his chair, he stood. “She won’t have gone far. Has Aggie checked the rose garden?”

Aggie had. She’d also checked the terraces and the immediate surrounds of the house, as well as their rooms upstairs.

The maid wrung her hands. “She’s usually about, m’lord, and she likes me to check round about now over what gown she wants to wear to dinner.”

It took the footmen fifteen minutes to quarter the rest of the house.

Meanwhile, Ryder sent for Dukes, the head gardener, who immediately went out to consult with his far-flung crew.

“Her ladyship is definitely not within the house, my lord.”

Forsythe looked like Ryder felt—unwilling to panic yet, but starting to feel the first nibblings of fear. “Send to the stables. She won’t have gone riding, but perhaps she walked down to see her horse.”

At this time of day, that was a long shot, and so it proved.

“We haven’t seen her ladyship at all today, my lord,” Filmore reported.

Dukes strode rapidly back in, an unusual enough action from the normally lugubrious gardener to fix all attention on him. He nodded to Ryder. “One of my lads saw her ladyship walking in the shrubbery, my lord. He was working there. She smiled, spoke a pleasant word, then turned back to the house. Far as he knows, she returned to the east terrace, but this was some time ago, hours at least, and from where he was, he couldn’t see if she actually did come all the way to the house or turned off to somewhere else.”

A chill unlike any he’d ever experienced was seeping into Ryder’s chest. He glanced at Forsythe, Filmore, then back at Dukes. “I want every able-bodied man—assemble them in the forecourt. We need to mount a search.”

“Yes, my lord.” Forsythe looked grim.

“At once.” Filmore saluted and headed for the door.

Dukes didn’t reply, just grimly nodded and followed Filmore. Forsythe sent a footman scurrying but remained to help Ryder set out maps of the estate and surrounding areas.

Somewhat to Ryder’s surprise, Aggie stopped wringing her hands and, jaw firming, whirled and rushed from the room.

In the end, it wasn’t only the men who assembled in the forecourt but all the younger women on the staff as well, recruited by Aggie, and with the approval of Mrs. Pritchard all ready to do their bit to find their missing mistress.

That gave Ryder some leeway; dispatching the women in pairs to search every inch of the grounds left him with enough men to send riders to the nearby farms as well as organize comprehensive sweeps through the surrounding woods and fields.

Even though this was Wiltshire, as calm and gentle a county as any in England, it was nevertheless possible that some accident had befallen Mary, even if she hadn’t ventured into the woods.

That was what he was hoping, what they were all thinking. A fall, a twisted ankle—anything of that sort would be preferable to the alternative.

That something more heinous had befallen her.

It was full light when they started the search, but within the first hour, the sun started to dip, and the shadows cast by the trees lengthened. But light enough remained and the search continued, with each group reporting back to the house as they finished their allotted area, only to have Ryder send them out to another as yet unsearched locale.

Raventhorne was a large estate; covering it was going to take time. Ultimately even Forsythe, born and bred on abbey lands, left to add his number to the searchers.

Dusk was insidiously closing in when a tap on the library door had Ryder lifting his head—only to have his leaping heart crash as Mrs. Pritchard looked in. “Yes?” He tried not to sound too harsh.

“My lord, I’ve Dixon’s lad here, from Axford, and I think you need to hear what he has to say.”

Frowning, Ryder straightened from the maps he’d been poring over. “Dixon?”

“The fishmonger.” Mrs. Pritchard stepped across the threshold and beckoned someone in.

Ryder tried to blank his expression—the best he could do in the circumstances—as a boy peeked around the door, then immediately ducked his head. Ryder struggled to find an unthreatening tone. “Dixon, the younger, is it?”

The boy ducked his head again. “Aye, m’lord.” He glanced up at Mrs. Pritchard, who waved him on toward the desk.

Clearly unsure, the boy advanced three steps, then halted.

Ryder looked at Mrs. Pritchard.

“Davy here brought our delivery just now and happened to mention delivering to the Dower House yesterday.”

“The Dower House.” Instantly, Ryder focused on the boy. “Who was in residence—who was there? Do you know?”

The boy shook his head. “Don’t know who. Didn’t see anyone but Cook and her two girls, but I can tell you what was ordered?”

When Ryder nodded encouragingly, the boy rattled off a list of fishes. Ryder had no way of interpreting the significance; he looked to Mrs. Pritchard for translation.

Her expression severe, his housekeeper obliged. “The turbot, my lord, wouldn’t be for the staff, nor yet the sturgeon.”

“I’ll say!” Davy Dixon snorted. “Top of the slate, they are.”

For an instant, Ryder’s mind reeled with the wild possibility whipping through it, but then he shook aside the fanciful notion and refocused on Davy Dixon. “Thank you. Mrs. Pritchard, I’m sure we should reward such a useful report.”

Mrs. Pritchard nodded. “Come along, Davy. There’s some cake and a shilling with your name on it in the kitchen.”

Steering the boy out, Mrs. Pritchard closed the door. Ryder stood staring at the panels for several moments, then he glanced at the maps, then at the deepening dusk outside, debated for a second longer, then headed for the door and the stairs.

Mrs. Pritchard was waiting in the front hall when he came quickly down, having thrown on his riding clothes and hauled on his boots. “You’re riding over there?”

Pulling on his gloves, he nodded. “At the very least, I should ask if anyone there has seen anything of her ladyship. If they haven’t . . . when Forsythe returns, tell him to take over organizing the searchers, and that I’ll work my way through the Dower House woods. We haven’t sent anyone over that way yet, and if I’m there anyway, I might as well check.”

Mrs. Pritchard grimaced. “I would say you should stay here and let someone else go, but there’s no one left but myself and Cook.”

“No point.” Ryder turned to the corridor that was the fastest way to the stables. “If my stepmother’s in residence, as it seems she is, I’m the only one here to whom she’ll consent to grant an audience.”

Mrs. Pritchard humphed and watched him go. He felt the concern in her gaze as he headed down the corridor, striding increasingly swiftly as, despite all rational arguments, premonition took hold.

Chapter Fifteen

“L
avinia wouldn’t have dared.” He muttered the words as he rode into the band of woodland that formed the eastern border of the home farm fields. There were no lanes through the woods, only the bridle path along which he was riding.

The trees there grew thickly, old stands of oak and beech shading the path and shrouding the woods in deep shadow.

The Dower House was as old as the original part of the abbey and had been one of the original ecclesiastical buildings attached to the holy house. His paternal grandmother had been living at the Dower House when he’d been born, but she’d died soon after, and subsequently the house had been lived in only by caretakers, until he’d effectively banished Lavinia there.

As none of the locals wished to work in her household, she’d been forced to seek staff from further afield. Consequently, unlike what generally occurred in the country, especially in a well-populated county like Wiltshire, the household at the Dower House had little contact and less connection with the staffs of the surrounding houses. More, although Lavinia insisted on living in the country for a decent part of the year, even while she’d reigned at the abbey, she had never put herself out to court the local gentry, had largely shunned them and their entertainments as beneath her, so she now had little truck with their neighbors.

Which meant the household at the Dower House was isolated, and something of an unknown world.

Ryder rode steadily on, Julius’s hoofbeats an echo of his own heartbeat.

His reaction to Mary’s disappearance had hardened with each passing hour. Each minute she was not by his side, within his protection, where she was supposed to be, strengthened his instinctive reaction. And increased his suspicion that she’d been abducted; nothing else could explain her continued absence. The unknown enemy who had first tried to kill him, then had shifted their sights to her, had taken her.

Whoever it was, they would pay.

Sometime over the past hours, the instincts he normally kept well leashed had come to the fore and now largely ruled him. When it came to Mary, to anyone threatening any danger, much less harm, to her, he wasn’t inclined to be anywhere near civilized.

Instinct and intellect were now wholly focused on one goal: On getting her back, safe within his keeping.

The thought that Lavinia might be the one responsible for Mary’s disappearance and all the rest . . . until now he’d dismissed the notion out of hand. Lavinia was a personal irritant, vindictive, vituperative, but essentially ineffectual; he hadn’t believed it at all likely that she would actually
act
in any concerted way. She never had. Ranting was one thing, making plans and setting them in train quite another.

Lavinia had always been a ranter, not a doer.

If she’d acted, then something had changed.

And as if signaling such a change . . . until now, whenever she’d taken up residence at the Dower House, she had sent a haughty note to the abbey, informing those on the estate that she was in the neighborhood. Often the carriages of her London friends would bowl up the abbey drive and have to be redirected out and around to the separate entrance to the Dower House drive.

This time Lavinia hadn’t sent a note.

Some might say that was because his marriage had put her nose even further out of joint, yet he would have thought she would have wanted Mary, and him, too, to know she was there, also a marchioness, and therefore a competitor in the neighborhood status stakes. That sounded more like the Lavinia he knew.

There was no competition—not between his wife and his self-absorbed stepmother—but Lavinia wouldn’t see it like that, which begged the question of why she hadn’t sent a note.

Mrs. Pritchard knew of the antipathy between him and Lavinia, as, indeed, did most of his staff. None of them had fared well under, much less liked, Lavinia, which was why they all viewed him as a savior of sorts.

So on learning that Lavinia had taken up residence at the Dower House, but this time secretly, Mrs. Pritchard had been quick to leap to the conclusion he was still resisting.

He simply couldn’t imagine Lavinia actively—and nearly successfully—arranging his murder. Of plotting and planning to have Mary abducted.

Glimpsing the steep roofs of the Dower House through the trees, he slowed Julius to a trot, then a walk. No need to advertise his arrival, not until he’d had a look around.

The bridle path joined the gravel drive fifty yards from the forecourt before the front porch. The Dower House had little by way of gardens, the woods crowding close on three sides. It was a very quiet, private place.

Registering that quietness, indeed, the pervasive silence, he reined to a halt just inside the path, within the shadows of overarching branches, and studied the house.

It appeared . . . not uninhabited but temporarily deserted, as if everyone had gone out for the day.

Leaving the front door ajar.

The sight filled him with cold dread.

All the thoughts he’d been avoiding consciously thinking spilled through his mind. Lavinia had the wherewithal to hire thugs to kill him—and to hire men to hire them, and so forth. She knew which routes he used when walking home in town. Here, in the country, despite the lack of friendship between the staffs at the abbey and the Dower House, Lavinia’s stableman or grooms would know where the abbey tack room was, would have been able to identify which saddle was Mary’s, the only newish sidesaddle there, and could easily have watched from the woods and seen him assessing her driving the gig and guessed which road they would take to Axford . . .

The scorpion he couldn’t immediately explain, but as for the adder, Lavinia’s staff would have known when the abbey staff would be gathered on the front steps greeting Mary, and would have known which bedroom would be hers, and how to reach it quickly and leave again via the servants’ stairs.

He sat on Julius’s back and considered that half-open door. It was clearly an invitation of sorts—which spoke to the caliber of the men behind this.

Unsophisticated, but effective.

They were currently watching him from somewhere in the woods on the other side of the drive.

He could feel their gazes, but he knew those woods. Chasing anyone through them was a fool’s errand, and he didn’t doubt there would be more than one of them; few men would be so foolish as to come against him unarmed, one on one.

Despite the difficulty his rational mind was having casting Lavinia—petty and spiteful with all the acuity of a turnip—in the role of arch-villainess, his instincts had no such problem but at that moment considered the point irrelevant; they were solely focused on how to rescue Mary.

That she was somewhere in the Dower House he didn’t doubt; that was the message of that half-open door. But he hadn’t come armed, and as far as he knew there weren’t any helpful crossed swords on any of the Dower House walls.

Holding back the impulse, the emotional imperative to gallop up, rush inside, and find her—to wrap her in his arms and reassure his oh-so-exposed heart that she was unharmed, that she was all right—wasn’t easy, but if he just rushed ahead . . . this wasn’t a situation he’d expected, much less foreseen, and he fully intended them both to survive.

How else could he exact his vengeance?

Even more pertinently, he wasn’t about to surrender all he and Mary had so recently claimed.

Pushing aside all emotion, he filled his chest and forced his mind to cool logic. It was unlikely they, whoever they were, would hurt Mary, not yet. It was his life Lavinia had targeted; she might have tried to scare Mary away, but at this moment his wife was . . . bait. No need to harm her yet, and every reason not to; a live lure always worked best.

Weighing up the possibilities, balancing them against his options, took time he forced himself to take, but eventually he dismounted. Shortening Julius’s reins, he wove them into one stirrup strap. Julius would wait for him untethered, but if anyone else approached and tried to grab him, the big gelding wouldn’t have it, and ultimately would return to the abbey stables.

It was the best he could do by way of a message should something go awry. More awry.

Not allowing himself to think further than that, he walked out into the drive, paused to look up at the old house, at the many-paned leaded windows, at the cool gray stone. His gaze came to rest on the half-open door; focusing on the dark section of shadowed hall beyond, he strode forward.

At his touch, the door opened further. The hall beyond lay in cool darkness. Not a sound reached his ears, not a scrape or a scuff, not any hint of human life.

He walked into the drawing room. It was unoccupied, as were the other reception rooms, all on the ground floor. He kept his ears peeled as he did the rounds, but the silence continued, heavy and unbroken.

Slowly, senses wide, he climbed the stairs. The bedrooms showed signs of occupation. In the largest, he found scent bottles and powders on the dressing table, and the gowns in the armoire confirmed all belonged to Lavinia; he recognized her style. In a bedroom further down the corridor, he discovered brushes, combs, and male attire. The particular designs of the coats and waistcoats, and the floppy silk scarves instead of cravats, told him who was also currently residing at the house.

Potherby. With icy calm, Ryder considered the fact. He’d known about Potherby for as long as he could recall knowing Lavinia; she and Potherby had been childhood friends, but despite the conclusion many leapt to, Ryder didn’t believe Potherby had been—or, indeed, was—Lavinia’s lover. There was something in the way Potherby looked at Lavinia, an expression more consistent with his being that childhood friend. But could Potherby be involved in the attacks on Ryder and Mary?

The man certainly had the intelligence Lavinia lacked, but . . . Ryder had always considered Potherby, despite his allegiance to Lavinia, to be a decent sort.

Then again, he’d never imagined Lavinia would turn her hand to murder.

Leaving the question of Potherby for later, Ryder quit that room. He paused in the corridor, listening. The house was so eerily silent that he didn’t doubt there was no one else—no other breathing being—on that floor. His senses, flaring wide, detected no hint of Mary. But there was an attic.

Walking to the end of the corridor, he opened the narrow door that gave onto the attic stairs. They rose into relative darkness, but slivers of faint twilight showed here and there between the roof slates; once his eyes adjusted, he would be able to see well enough.

Slowly, step by step, he went up the stairs.

Had he been in his opponents’ shoes, this was where he would have staged an ambush; emerging up a stairwell so narrow that he had to angle his shoulders to pass, he was at a very real disadvantage . . . but no. Even before his head cleared the level of the attic floor, he knew there was no one waiting to cosh him, to shoot him. And no Mary, either.

People, alive and awake, were simply never that still.

After one quick glance, he went back down the narrow stairs, senses alert as he emerged into the first-floor corridor, but no one had sneaked up while he’d been above.

Striding more quickly, he headed back to the main stairs. Going rapidly down, he reviewed again his certainty that Mary was somewhere there, that she was hidden somewhere in the Dower House. Despite all the evidence thus far, he remained convinced she was there; why else the open door? Why else the complete absence of staff?

Pushing through the green baize-covered door at the rear of the front hall, he went down a short corridor, past a small butler’s pantry, then down three shallow steps to the kitchen. Like the house above, it was devoid of life, but utensils were lined up on the cook’s table, selected plates and cutlery were stacked on a sideboard, along with folded napkins, and a tea tray was set ready on a bench by the stove.

The staff were still living there but had been sent out for the day . . . or perhaps for several days. A glance through the windows confirmed it was growing steadily darker outside, but as it was just past midsummer, full dark was still hours away.

Walking further into the kitchen, he looked around—and saw the basement door had also been left ajar.

He considered the sight, then noticed several lanterns ready and waiting on a nearby shelf. Picking up one, he saw there was a mark where another, currently absent, normally sat. Hunting up tinder, he lit the lamp; after adjusting the wick, he pushed the door to the basement wider. It was the only place within the house he’d yet to search, and while there was a smallish stables, with rooms for coachman and groom above, to hide Mary somewhere secure, somewhere they could trap him as he came for her . . .

With his senses still confirming no one else had come past the green baize door, that no enemy was yet creeping up close behind him, he stepped onto the landing at the top of the basement steps and shone the lantern into the darkness.

The beam played over bins of apples, potatoes, and onions, barrels of various stuffs, shelves of dry goods in boxes and sacks, and lots of glass jars, but the shelves inhibited his view of the further reaches of the room.

He couldn’t see anyone, see any evidence that Mary was there, still could not sense her presence.

Yet, once again, why had the door been left ajar?

Stepping back into the kitchen, he looked at the shallow steps from the front of the house, glanced across at the kitchen door. His would-be attackers could come from either direction, but they hadn’t dared show themselves yet.

A moment’s consideration was all it took to convince him that, if they had any choice, they wouldn’t appear until he’d found Mary; that was when he would be at his most vulnerable, with her to protect and his attention divided.

They might not know he was unarmed, but few men carried pistols or swords these days, and not when searching for missing ladies on their own damned estates.

His gaze fell on the utensils lined up on the cook’s table. Setting the lamp down, he swiftly searched. No knives. Not there or anywhere else; he went through the drawers and cupboards, but there wasn’t a single decent knife left. His would-be attackers might be unsophisticated; they weren’t stupid.