Thief of Hearts (37 page)

She stamped her foot, infuriated. "It's
my
reputation, I'll do with it what I want. Besides," she went on illogically, "no one would ever know. And
anyway
, everyone will think we've been intimate whether we have or not, so I might as well hang for a wolf as for a sheep!"

He let go of the sill and came toward her. He stopped when he saw in the relative brightness of moonlight that what he'd thought was her cream-colored dress was really her nightgown. "Oh, sweet Jesus," he murmured inaudibly, rooted to the spot six feet away from her. "Annie, love, the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt your feelings," he got out through his teeth. "But this isn't the way it should be. You're in pain because of Jenny and you think this will take some of it away. I can't let you do it."

He meant it, he was going to send her away. Her throat was so thick, she could hardly whisper. "This is not about Nicholas."
It's you
. But that she couldn't say; it would not come out of her mouth.

She waited ten more seconds. Then she reached down with crossed arms, seized two handfuls of cloth at the knees, pulled her nightgown over her head, and threw it on the floor between them, inside out.

The shaking started immediately. She wanted to look seductive, but it was impossible to keep from clasping her arms across her breasts, both to cover herself and to camouflage her trembling. She made herself look at him, even though the intensity of his pale blue gaze was scorching her. If he rejected her now, she would die.

He tried to look away, but he couldn't. Jesus God, he was only a man, and Annie was so beautiful. Once before he'd seen her naked, but he'd been too wrought up to appreciate it. She was so small and perfect, and her skin glowed like pearls in the light of the moon. Her hair was still damp from her bath; she'd pinned it up, but soft wisps had come down to touch the gracious curve of her neck. Her crossed arms flattened her pretty breasts in an unspeakably seductive way. Still, somehow he might have found the strength to resist if she hadn't turned her head just then, so that the moonlight picked out the two silver tear-trails on her cheeks. That was his undoing, and in two long strides he was beside her.

Instinctively, she shrank back. He froze. She smiled, but her eyes were fierce with panic. He didn't tell her to trust him, or that he would make it good; his body was burning, but he wouldn't entice her. The moment stretched into forever. At the last second, just before he opened his mouth to soothe her, to lie and say it didn't matter, she uncrossed her arms and stretched one small hand out across the foot of space that separated them.

It came to rest on his shirt and stayed there, warm and tentative, until she found the courage to move it to the side of his neck. With a quick sigh, she pressed into him lightly, letting her breasts brush against his hard, hair-rough chest. He embraced her, hard at first, then more gently as he recollected what he must do, how he must behave. Above all, he mustn't frighten her. But her nipples against his chest were like twin spots of hard heat branding him, and soon he wasn't sure who was trembling, she or he.

They kissed. A sliver of sound escaped her when he slipped his tongue into her mouth. Hers was shy at first, then curious, then brave, sliding across his lips like smooth, hot glass. Her fingers tangled in his hair and brought him closer. Her eyes were tightly shut, her muscles tender, alert.

"Annie," he murmured, caressing her, "slow down, Annie." It crossed his mind that she wanted it over soon because she was afraid. He backed her toward the bed as he placed little sipping kisses along her cheeks and her eyelids. "It's better," he whispered, pressing her against the high mattress with his hips, "when you go slow." If you can, he added to himself, then pushed her over backwards and lay on top of her.

Anna gasped. He opened her thighs and settled himself between them. In a flash, all her fear returned. She remembered how it had been before when he'd kissed her like this and...ah! used his mouth on her breasts like this! and then he'd hurt her and made her cry. She stiffened, even as she acknowledged the peculiar part of herself that wanted him anyway, needed to have him, painful or not, in exactly the way she had before.

But he had other plans. He gentled her with soft, soft kisses while he moved lower, lower, until the dire inevitability of what he intended burst on her. She tried to sit up, but he pressed her back firmly, almost roughly, and then knelt between her legs. She fought his hands, opening her, but the first touch of his mouth finished her. She cried out in surprise, then gladness. She heard her own echo, shockingly loud, and cupped her hand to her mouth, muttering into it, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Brodie stopped what he was doing and loomed over her. "You're sorry?" he said, shaking his head at her. "Annie, I don't care if you yell the house down."

She felt a wild laugh rising in her throat. It stopped when he put his lips on her again, and turned into a long, tortured groan. This couldn't be natural, this was some terrible perversion he'd learned in some wild, godless, uncivilized… She forgot what the noun was supposed to be, lost her whole train of thought. She was melting, her flesh was turning into fire and water, she was a hot puddle of inarticulate wanting and the brink was nearing, nearing…

Gauging her perfectly, he stood up and pulled her against him, holding her.

Shocked speechless, she could only clutch at him, shaking, whimpering, mad and bewildered. He let her go and started to unbutton his trousers. She felt a cooling sensation in her stomach and looked away. In her peripheral vision she watched him shove his pants down and kick them off. Now he was in front of her again, standing quietly. She wasn't a coward. She looked at him.

"Dear God." She might have said it out loud. The room was silvery-dim, but even in the soft darkness she saw more than she wanted to see of his white hardness, upright, aggressive, daunting. He took one of her fluttering hands, then the other, and brought them to his lips. She suspected what he would do next, and she was right. But he was quick. Before she could react he closed her fingers around his thick maleness and held them there. Both of them stopped breathing. Within seconds Anna discovered he wasn't repulsive, he was hard and warm and exquisitely soft. When he took his hands away to hold her shoulders, she left hers where they were. Gentle, exploring. Utterly fascinated. Then she saw his face, so open and vulnerable and aroused, and the last of her fear evaporated. The lines of power shifted. In the passing of seconds, they became equals.

"Let's get in bed," he suggested.

They lay beside each other, kissing and touching, sighing softly, murmuring. "I want to kiss you everywhere," he whispered, making her quiver with excitement. "Do you like this, Annie?" He had his fingers tangled in her pubic hair, one knee nudging her thighs farther apart.

"I do, yes...ah! Ah!"

He'd slid his wet fingers into her and now he was stroking her, until she ground her teeth and clamped her hand down on his shoulder.

In a trice he was on her, easing into her, watching her face. She felt like buttered silk. "Annie," he murmured, over and over. He went slowly. "Am I hurting you?"

She just laughed. He put his lips on her throat and felt the vibrations, tongued them. Her heart was soaring. Hurt her? She wrapped her body around him and let the joy and relief envelop them both. Ah, the sweet closeness of this!

"Why did you come back?" he breathed against her mouth. "Tonight, in the library, after you left. Why did you come back?"

"To see you, just to see you. I had to see you."

They kissed passionately, and then they forgot to kiss. And Brodie forgot everything about timing and waiting and carefulness as he felt her tighten and burgeon around him. His heart opened. They reached their peak together, so natural, and for her it was an answer, perfect, the loveliest solution she could imagine.

"My mother's name was Elizabeth Brodie. She was Irish. When I was little, I thought she was very beautiful. Her hair was almost the same color as yours, Annie. But later, she looked like an old lady. She was thirty-six when she died."

"How did she die?"

Brodie's fingers tightened fractionally around the handful of Anna's hair he was stroking against his chest. "She worked herself to death. So Nick and I wouldn't starve."

She felt cold, and pulled the sheet up to cover them. She lay in the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder, hand on his stomach. "Tell me about her."

"I've never talked about her to anyone before." He put his lips on her forehead. "I want to tell you."

She closed her eyes and waited.

"Her family wasn't wealthy, but they educated her as well as they could. She left home when she was eighteen and went to Wales to be a governess. The man who hired her was Regis Gunne, the Earl of Battiscombe. He lived in an old Tudor mansion in the river valley of the Clwydd. His wife was dead; he had a little girl. He was lonely. My mother fell in love with him, and he made her his mistress."

Anna's gentle, stroking hand went still. "Was he your father?"

"Yes. His daughter died soon, of a fever, and not long after that my mother became pregnant. She had twins, Nick and me, and we lived like a family in that big house until I was six. The earl would be gone for about half the year, to London to take care of his business affairs. He told everyone she was his housekeeper. There were no gentry neighbors around, no one to gossip about them except the servants. She lived as much like a wife to him as possible, with every comfort, and she brought Nick and me up to be gentlemen."

"And then?" she prodded when he stopped.

"And then everything changed. I didn't know why until years later, when she was dying. She told me, but she never told Nick."

Anna sat up on one elbow, watching him.

"She got a letter from Regis one day, from London. It said he'd be coming back in a fortnight with his new wife. He'd made arrangements for us to move to a house in the village. Nothing would change, she'd still be his mistress, we'd still have everything we wanted. He'd visit as often as he could."

She looked away, hurting for him. "What did she do?"

"She left. That day she packed what we had and moved us out of the house. She tried to make it a game for us, an adventure. We were only six, but we knew how sad she was. We never saw her cry, but we knew."

"Where did you go?"

"To Llanuwchllyn. It's a little village at the end of Bala Lake. She got work as a spinner, and we lived in a cottage that was falling down and hardly big enough for one." He rubbed the back of her neck absently, combing her hair with his fingers. "It wasn't a good life," he said simply.

"Why didn't she go back to Ireland?"

"Because her family wouldn't have her."

"Oh God, John. And the earl never found you, never came—"

"He came once. I don't remember it; it's one of the things she told me later. He ordered her to come back. She refused. They had a bitter fight. He went away, and they never spoke again. Whenever he sent money, she sent it back. Then he had a son by his wife, a legitimate heir, and after that the money and the letters stopped."

Anna put her head on Brodie's shoulder again and held him, blinking tears from her eyes. "It must have been so hard."

"It was. It killed her. I've hated my father ever since."

She shivered, as if his body had chilled her. She drew him closer, to warm him, and put her lips on his throat. "Why didn't she tell Nicholas the things she told you?"

Now it was he who comforted her. His arms tightened around her; he chose his words carefully. "My father's abandonment hurt Nick more, hit him harder than me, Annie. We went so quickly from having everything to having nothing at all. My mother would never talk about it, never explain what had happened, even though he pestered her about it constantly. He hated the way we had to live, really suffered from it. He wanted so much. He wanted us to have everything again." He tilted her chin up gently. "I think she never told him who his father was because she was afraid he would go to him and ask him for things. Money. And she was proud, she couldn't have stood that."

Anna's eyes clouded; he was right, she knew Nicholas would have wanted his father's money, regardless of what had happened between his parents. She bent her head to hide the pain she felt and didn't speak.

He held her while the silence expanded. "Are you sorry for him?" he asked at last. "Are you angry?"

"Yes," she answered, her voice muffled against his chest. "I'm angry and I'm sorry for him."

"But he turned himself into a gentleman, Annie, and I—"

She raised her head, cutting him off; her light brown eyes flashed fire. "You are more of a gentleman, John, than 'Nicholas Balfour' could ever have been if he'd lived to be a hundred."

"But he—"

"He was a thief and a cheat. His whole life was a lie. My love for him was childish and self-deluding, and his for me nonexistent."

"I can't judge him. I'm sorry he hurt you." He let his breath out in a weary sigh. "I miss him."

She lay quiet, feeling the thud of his heart under her hand. When she lifted her face again, there was no more anger in it. "Then I forgive him, with all my heart. For your sake."

Brodie pulled her close and kissed her. "You take all the pain away, Annie. You make me happy."

"I want to make you happy." She shut her eyes tight and whispered so he wouldn't know she was crying. Her heart felt swollen. She drew him down and kissed him again and again until they were both burning. His lovemaking was gentle at first, hers desperate. Then it consumed them. They forgot everything, past and future, as time and separateness ended. Afterward, humbled, he asked her for only one thing, that she be there beside him when he woke in the morning. She promised.