This Perfect Kiss (24 page)

He made love to her with exquisite slowness. It was a softer coming the second time for them than it had been earlier, no longer rushed, as if the world would end tomorrow. Their whispers like the brush of soft blankets were hushed and mixed with the occasional squeak of the ropes beneath her mattress.

Later, even as she lay quiescent in his arms, he was too aware of her to do more than fitfully doze. He felt every small movement of her muscles and he sensed she was likewise aware of him. Every time she moved, his arm tightened as if to keep her near him.

Camden must have finally slept, for he came awake with a start, his senses alert. The squeak of a floorboard came from outside the door. He felt Christel stir in his arms. She remained spooned against his chest, and he smoothed her hair from his face as he looked over her head.

No candlelight wavered beneath the door. A light tap sounded. The doorknob turned slightly. He had locked the door earlier.

Camden eased his arm out from beneath Christel's head and slipped out of bed. He fumbled on the floor for his clothes. He was as practiced at dressing in the dark as he was at dressing in the middle of a hurricane, and he did so now with economical ease.

When he opened the door, only the acrid smell of a recently extinguished candle marked the intruder's passing. Tension remained tight in his body as he checked on Anna, and it wasn't until he returned to Christel's room to have her lock the door behind him that his foot brushed a letter that must have been slipped beneath the door. He walked to the window and held it in the waning moonlight. After reading it, he refolded the letter and stuffed it in his frock.

A quiet dangerousness touched, then filled, him as he found himself sitting on the edge of the bed looking down at Christel. His gaze fell on the pale curve of her profile, the bow of her full mouth, the gentle wing of an eyebrow. His palm cupped her cheek, turning her face toward him. She was a conflicting blend of virtue and vice. And not for the first time as he found himself staring at her did he know that in some indelible way, she was dangerous to him. Jacob did not trust her.

When was the last time Camden had trusted another human being?

She stirred and smiled into his palm. “What is it?”

He sank his hands into the mattress on either side of her shoulders. “Nothing that cannot wait until the morning.”

And then he laid claim to her lips.

She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. His blood raced through his veins like a potent aphrodisiac. His mouth trailed down her neck and lingered on her collarbone.

Somewhere in the tempest of his mind that separated her pleasure from his, reason failed to rear its head. And he didn't care. He slid the blankets down her body so that he could lift her, and with his other hand he loosened his breeches. She was already wrapping her palm around his erection and guiding him between her thighs.

Chapter 13

T
he next morning, Camden was gone from the room when Christel awakened. Gone but not absent. His scent remained on her sheets. He'd left his mark on her body in the way his stubble had rasped her breasts, and her insides were tender in more places than where he had touched, every inch bearing some mark of his possession. Pulling the sheet to her chin, Christel smiled at the play of light on the ceiling. For the first time in so long, she was almost afraid
not
to be happy.

After washing, she took extra care with her appearance, dressing in a practical soft gray linen gown with a white collar befitting her station but far nicer than the gowns she had originally brought here. Her fingers smoothed with a conscious gesture over her skirt.

She walked to the classroom and gathered up the canvas and watercolors to take Anna outside to paint the sea. Normally, Christel ate upstairs with Mrs. Gables and Anna. But today no tray had been brought, and Mrs. Gables and Anna were not in their rooms. Nor was Anna in the dining room or the ballroom.

Christel finally found Mrs. Gables below stairs, sitting at the table with four servants and the butler, the staid bewigged Mr. Smolich, who had come upstairs last night. Upon her entrance into the servant's dining room, her smile slipped as everyone stopped talking. Smolich diligently dispensed with a glass of chilled milk, then took his dishes and utensils to the scullery. In similar silence, the upstairs chambermaid and underbutler followed.

Christel set her hands on the back of a spindle chair and caught them trembling as she turned aside and watched them leave. The elderly housekeeper remained at the back of the room, brushing out a jacket. “Did he force ye, lass?” the housekeeper asked when the others left.

“Hush, Mrs. Redding,” Mrs. Gables snapped before Christel could think past her shock to reply. “When has his lordship ever
forced
anyone to do his . . . bidding?” She was also gathering up her teacup and plate.

Christel hadn't known what to expect today. In a house filled with servants, she had never been under the illusion that she could keep everything secret, but the ignominy of feeling unwelcome by those who had been friendly to her these past weeks stung. Coming from Mrs. Gables, it made her ache with embarrassment and regret.

Christel helped clear the dishes and take them to the scullery. “I have been searching for Anna,” she said. “We are late for our lessons. I thought she would be with you.”

“His lordship brought home a saddle for her pony. He came upstairs this morning and asked if she wanted to learn to ride. They are presently at the stable.”

The saddle must have been the surprise he had told Anna about last night. “She wanted to learn to ride. I am pleased to see that he is endeavoring to teach her.” She set the dishes in the wash bucket. “Have his lordship's guests departed?”

“I was told Sir Jacob was called away last night just after supper. The dowager and Doctor White will be off to the orphanage later today. His lordship's grandmother asked if Anna would be permitted to come and go with them to Rosecliffe for a few days. He agreed and will take us this afternoon. Lady Anna and I are to be packed to leave after lunch.”

Mrs. Gables walked past her. Christel folded her fingers into her skirt in an attempt not to stop her from leaving. “Mrs. Gables . . . ?”

The woman turned. “His lordship's affairs are his own, mum. I have no doubt he will be generous with you. But you will understand that Lady Anna is my only concern. I do not want to see her hurt.”

“Neither do I,” she said and wondered how the day could go downhill so quickly.

Sadly, Christel watched Mrs. Gables go.

“M
iss Douglas is here to see you, my lord.” Camden's valet set aside the boots he had been polishing. “Shall I tell her . . . ?”

“Nay.” Gripping a towel around his neck, Camden left his valet behind him in the dressing room. Having just come from the stable, Camden was neither presentable nor amenable to visitors, especially this particular one, when he was required to be downstairs in less than an hour.

Christel stood in front of the large picture window overlooking the drive, her hands clasped in front of her. He watched her with a strange sort of possessive energy as she turned and her blue eyes went over his bed and the deep blue velvet curtains that draped the canopy before her gaze fell on him standing in the doorway.

“I knocked,” she said when he didn't move any farther into the room. “The door was open.”

He shut the door to the dressing room behind him. “I can see that you took care to fix the oversight, as the door is now shut.”

“Why am I not going with Anna?” she asked, visibly upset.

“I think she can survive a few days with Mrs. Gables. Anna has thus far done so for almost nine years.”

“Does this have to do with . . . last night? Us? Have I done something wrong?”

“I do not own you, Christel,” he said softly. “If you wish to visit Rosecliffe, I am not stopping you. But Anna does not need both you and Mrs. Gables escorting her to an orphanage tomorrow. Take a holiday.”

“A holiday?”

“Grandmamma has told me you have spent nearly every day the last two months with Anna or Doctor White, working on Blackthorn's new surgery, and every Wednesday at Seastone Cottage renovating your home. You have been tireless. Do whatever you wish for the day,” he suggested. “Borrow a horse if you want. The stable is at your convenience.”

Shaking her head, she backed away. “I do not need a horse to go home. Nor do I need a holiday.”

Even with his lame leg, he managed to beat her to the door. “ 'Tis not my intent to be standoffish,” he said quietly, aware of the high color in her cheeks, aware that he had hurt her. He used his index finger to raise her chin. “ 'Tis merely that I am due downstairs.”

She peered over her shoulder at the large, mostly unused bedchamber. His own gaze took in the Chinese hand-painted wallpaper that brightened the walls in a gilded production of exotic vines and flowers, and he knew he had found no pleasure here in years.

“I am sorry, Christel.” This was all new to him. This wanting.

Her smile was a mixture of compassion and affection. Unexpected. “I do understand that this is your personal sanctuary and you wish to keep it separate from me.”

Perhaps. “I have not
shared
anything personal in years.”
My private sanctuary most especially.
“My heart,” he wanted to add. “My life,” he said instead.

She stepped against him and laid her cheek against his heart. “Strangely . . . I understand that sentiment most of all, my lord.”

Her touch gilded his senses in fortitude-melting heat and blew his self-control all to hell. “Do you?”

“This is new to me as well.”

He stepped aside and opened the door.

“I will see you this evening,” he said.

Nodding, she stepped past him and turned. He slowly shut the door. Turning back into the room, he leaned against the door and momentarily shut his eyes.

That morning after leaving her chambers, he had taken his daughter to the stables to clear his head and to rid himself of the anger he had felt after realizing that it had been Leighton outside her door last night. If he could not trust her then he might as well send her away now, for there would never be a tomorrow between them.

“Shall I have her followed, my lord?” he heard Smolich say.

Smolich stood next to the panel door in the wall. Earlier that morning, he had come to Camden with more letters that Leighton had written to Anna and information that Smolich had intercepted after seeing Christel in the library. He'd pulled the letters from the basket where invitations were delivered and placed on his desk for his grandmother's attention; the letters had been placed there as if they had been delivered in the same way.

Letters that had been written on paper from Camden's own library. Camden had read them. They were benign enough, clearly written to assuage a little girl's feelings. Camden had elected not to confront Christel, though it was obvious she was involved in his brother's subterfuge, especially when he suspected the culprit might also include his grandmother.

No, he would not have her followed.

T
he sun had nearly gone from the bloodred sky by the time Christel passed beneath the weathered arch that separated the cemetery from the old stone kirk. Leaving Dog outside the back gate next to the horse she had borrowed from the Carrick stable, she found her way among rows of lonely, lichen-blotched gravestones as she walked toward the enclosure at the far end of the hallowed grounds. A low mist lay thick beneath the boughs of two huge oaks. Stopping to find her bearings, she clutched her cloak tightly beneath her chin, as if that alone could ward off the chill. The land sloped and curved so that some of the stones lay toppled or bent sideways in a hollow.

Christel meandered through the markers looking for one that was not yet stained green by age or rounded by weather. A few early spring flowers mingled with grass and twigs, giving shape and muted color to the shadows. This patch of consecrated land belonged to the Carrick earls, their wives, sons and daughters who had lived and died in Scotland for the last two hundred years. With the exception of the unfortunate earl beheaded for serving on the wrong side at Culloden some fifty years ago, all of them were buried here.

Since her return to Scotland, Christel had not visited Saundra. As a rule, she disliked cemeteries. She was not one of those romantic figures of lore who, with sword raised aloft, could march courageously into the jaws of death. She was not Lord Carrick.

She found Saundra's headstone just then, a tall obelisk barren of angels or hearts or any of the other sentimental carvings that marked the other stones. It read simply:

IN MEMORY OF

SAUNDRA ETHERTON ST. GILES, COUNTESS CARRICK

MOTHER OF ANNA

JANUARY 9, 1756-APRIL 30, 1782

A sudden gust lifted dead leaves around her half boots. Only the wind and a crow sitting in the tree above her were her companions as she stood in the silence of a fading day.

“They say no one comes to a graveyard after dark,” Christel said.

Unable to fight the tightness within her chest, she tucked the cloak beneath her and sat on the ground with her back to the headstone. “I imagine 'tis what we cannot see that we fear the most.”

She let the sounds of the approaching dusk fill her. The
caw
of a crow. The wind in the grass.

“How could you climb to the top of a tower and leave this world as you did? How could you leave your husband and daughter?”

She closed her eyes. “How could you, Saundra? You, who did not like heights and could not even take the goat path down to the beach. Oh, Saundra. I want to understand,” her mind whispered. She pulled her legs to her chest and leaned against her knees. “Camden is a good man, Saundra. He is battle-scarred like the men and boys I used to read to at the field hospital. But he is a good father. I cannot believe he was not a good husband.”

Leaning her head against the cold stone obelisk, Christel felt her anger fade as quickly as it had come, and she let her heart move elsewhere for now. Her gaze riveted to the darkening sky.

“Tia and I still have not spoken,” she said after a moment. “Perhaps I have not tried hard enough. It was different when you were alive. You always knew how to buff away the scrapes and edges. You were good with people. What happened to you?”

Christel shut her eyes
.
“I wish I could understand everything you did. I wish I knew if you were trying to tell me something with the gold coin you sent me. I wish I could find the answers. I wish you would give me a place to start.”

Somewhere a door slammed.

Christel's eyes popped open. Her cloak was damp from the mist. The moon was higher in the sky. Realizing she must have drifted asleep, she turned her head toward the kirk. Headstones protruded from the rising mist. The vicar's house sat behind the copse of trees.

She climbed to her feet and ducked into the shadow of the tree next to the shoulder-high stone wall. Pale moonlight revealed a cloaked shadow, head down as if watching for obstacles in the path. Whoever approached, either a child or a petite woman, walked directly toward Dog.

The shadowy figure stopped on the path. As if recognizing the hound, her head snapped up and her hood slid from her head.

Tia!

As Christel's half sister looked toward the Carrick family plot, Christel caught only a glimpse of her. Her hair, much darker than Christel's and no longer pulled from her face, fell in waves over her shoulders. Christel's obscure thought in the midst of her shock was that Tia was quite pretty with her hair down. Tia took a step backward, spun on her heel and ran. At once, Dog started barking furiously. Christel called sharply to him, then gave her own chase.

“Tia!”

Giving up, her sister turned. Her hood having fallen to her shoulders, she stood in the open between the stone kirk and the vicar's residence, with the thatch-roofed stable some distance behind her. Her breath steamed with small puffs in the chill night air.

Out of habit, Christel made a study of the surrounding shadows.

“What are
you
doing here?” Tia demanded, as if Christel had been the one running like a mad banshee across the mist-shrouded graveyard.

“I am visiting Saundra. Fancy that we both had the idea at the exact same time. Unless you were walking someplace else.”

Though Rosecliffe sat only three miles northeast of Blackthorn property, Christel could not believe Tia had walked here, though her muddy half boots told a different story. Nor did she believe Tia was here to visit the cemetery, certainly not at night and alone. And weren't Anna and the dowager at Rosecliffe this evening? Lord Carrick had escorted them earlier and had not yet returned when Christel had left Blackthorn.