To Beguile a Beast (25 page)

But the moment he entered the hotel room, he could feel the tension surrounding Helen. He paused a moment in the doorway, eyeing her. She paced by the windows, a short track between the bed and the wall, her brows furrowed and one hand rubbing the other at her waist.

He sighed and shut the door behind him. She’d been anxious when he’d left her here earlier, but not this anxious. What was working her up now?

“I thought I’d order a simple supper to eat in the room if that’s agreeable to you,” he said as he crossed to a dresser. On the top were a basin and a jug of fresh water. He poured some water into the basin.

Behind him there was silence save for her pacing footsteps.

“Is it?” he asked.

“What?” Her voice was distracted.

“Is it agreeable to you to eat here?” He splashed water on his face.

“I… I suppose.”

He took a towel and dried his face, turning to watch her. She’d halted by the window, staring down at her feet.

He threw aside the towel. “What did you do this afternoon?”

“Oh, nothing much.” Her fair skin blushed, the pretty pink moving up her throat and to her cheeks. She looked quite lovely, but she was lying.

He strolled toward her, examining her. “You didn’t go out?”

Her eyes dropped.

And he knew, suddenly and without any doubt. “You saw Lister.”

She jerked her head up, her gaze meeting his defiantly. “Yes. I had to at least try to make him see reason.”

Scalding hot rage bubbled in his veins, but he held it in check—barely.

“And did he?” he asked gently.

“No,” she said. “He’s determined to keep the children.”

He cocked his head, angling his good eye at her. “And he just let you go, tripping down his front steps and away without so much as an attempt to stay you? Perhaps he even waved his handkerchief in farewell as you left?”

Her blush deepened. “He didn’t try to keep me—”

“No, of course not. Why would he when he’s gone to all the trouble of kidnapping your children to get you back?”

Her head jerked as if he’d slapped her. “How did you know he wants me back?”

He laughed, the sound harsh and quick. “Don’t take me for a fool. A man doesn’t kidnap his bastard children when he already has three sons and heirs. I know him. I know his game. He’s using them as hostages to get you to return, isn’t he?”

“He said I’d never see them again unless I returned as his mistress.”

Something inside of him erupted. He felt the release, overflowing the edge of reason into insanity.

“Did you agree?” Somehow he’d crossed the room and seized her arms. “Tell me, Helen. Did you agree to return to him? To let him into your bed? To be his whore? Did you?”

She stared up at him with those damned drowning harebell eyes. “He says I’ll never see Abigail and Jamie again unless I return to him. They’re all I have, Alistair. My children. My babies.”

He shook her once. “Did you agree?”

“I can’t never see them again.”

“Goddamn you, Helen.” His chest was tight with horror.
“Did you agree?”

“No.” She closed her eyes. “No. I told him no.”

“Thank God.” He pulled her into his arms and brought his mouth down on hers, crushing her soft lips. The thought of her with Lister was driving him beyond control. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she gasped. “He… he gripped my hand, but—”

He grabbed both her hands and saw red welts on the right. Abruptly, he stilled, cradling her delicate fingers in his larger hand. “He hurt you.”

“It’s nothing.” She pulled her hand gently away.

“Did he hurt you—
touch
you—anywhere else?”

“No, Alistair, no.”

“He wanted to touch you, I know,” he said as he rubbed his hands over her shoulders and to her arms. “He wanted to touch and taste and feel you.”

“But he didn’t.” She placed her palms, cool and soft, on either side of his face. “He didn’t touch me.”

“Thank God.” He took her mouth savagely, thrusting his tongue into her, wanting to blot the image of Lister from both their minds.

Her acceptance calmed him until he could once again pull away.

“I’m sorry.” He closed his eye in disgust at himself. “You must think me a ravening beast.”

“No,” she said quietly. He felt her soft lips brush over the scarred side of his face. “I think you a man. Only that. A man.”

And when she brought her lips back to his, he was able to kiss her gently this time. Sweetly. Worshipping her.

His eye was still closed—perhaps he no longer wanted to see the reality of their situation—so he only felt when she ran her hands over his chest, the pressure light through the layers of his clothing. Her hands descended down toward his breeches, and a primal male part of him waited, breathless, to see what she would do. Her fingers moved over the buttons of his fall, loosening, freeing him.

He reached for her then. “Helen.”

“No,” she said, quite firmly. “No, let me.”

And his hands fell away, because although he was a man of honor, he was by no means a saint. He heard the rustle of her skirts as she knelt, felt her fingers on his throbbing cock, and then the brush of her breath.

He made a heroic effort and tried one more time to dissuade her. “You don’t have to.”

Her whisper blew across the swollen head of his cock as she said, “I know.”

Then her hot wet mouth enveloped him, and he could only groan and brace his legs so he wouldn’t fall. God! He’d paid a whore for this once, long ago, but it’d been a disappointment. Then, there had been rough sucking and pulling and he’d barely been able to finish. Now… Now there was gentle pressure, the velvet touch of her tongue, and most of all, the knowledge that
she
was doing this to him. He couldn’t help himself. He opened his eye and looked down and nearly came on the spot. Her golden head was bent over him, his reddened prick sliding in between her pink lips, her fingers delicate and white against his rude flesh.

She looked up at him, his cock still in her stretched mouth, and her harebell-blue eyes were dark now. Mysterious, feminine, and the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in his life.

And there was something else. She liked the taste of him, liked licking his smooth head. Liked stroking the soft skin of his shaft and feeling the steely hardness beneath. This was erotic. Primal, and just a little bit naughty. Her breasts were swollen beneath her bodice and stays, her nipples sensitive and pointed. She could feel wetness at the juncture of her thighs, and she pressed them together and sucked strongly on him at the same time.

“God!” he rasped above her.

She felt like the most alluring woman in England at that moment. She reached carefully, tenderly, into his breeches and found his stones, heavy in their sac. They were like eggs in the softest of leather bags, and she rolled them gently in her hand. She sucked again.

He growled.

She looked up. His head was back, his hands clenched by his sides, and she could feel his thighs, hard and tensed by her head. She could continue this, sucking him until he lost control and spewed his seed into her mouth. The idea was wickedly seductive, and she pursed her lips to draw strongly on him.

But she’d misjudged him. He bent suddenly, scooping her up in his arms so fast she squeaked in alarm. He threw her on the bed, and she hadn’t finished bouncing when he landed beside her.

“Enough,” he snapped.

He tore at her laces, ripping her bodice from her and flinging it halfway across the room.

“Enough playing. Enough cock teasing. Enough drawing this out.”

He pulled her skirts from her and flipped her before she had time to react. He pushed and pulled her until she was on her knees, braced on her elbows, and threw up the skirt of her chemise. He entered her from behind without warning, and she gasped.

Hot and hard. Long and full.

She bit her lip, trying not to cry out at the sensation. He was so right, so perfect. He withdrew a bit, adjusting his hold on her bare hips before slamming back into her. Thrusting fast, thrusting deep. Her arms slid forward under his hard lovemaking, until she caught herself and braced again. Then she closed her eyes and simply felt. His strong slide against her wet, soft flesh. The heat building at her center.

He stopped suddenly, and she did cry out this time—in disappointment. But he reached beneath her, still sheathed to the hilt in her body, and ran his hands over the tops of her breasts. He pulled a bit, and her nipples popped over the top of her stays, hard and abraded. He pinched them roughly, and she bit her lip, pushing back at his hips.

He laughed, a breathless growling sound, and resumed pounding into her, one hand holding her firm to receive him, the other still teasing her nipples. She groaned and looked down, watching his big, tanned hand playing over her white breasts. The sight made her clench internally, and she exploded suddenly, wrenchingly, her arms giving out from beneath her at the force. Light flew from her center, blinding her and making her limbs weak from pleasure. She collapsed flat on the bed, and he followed her down, still thrusting powerfully, his cock a live thing within her, demanding submission, demanding pleasure.

And she gave it. Without volition. Without conscious thought. Her belly rippling with the orgasm that continued unabated. She panted into the sheets, filling her mouth with the corner of a pillow to keep from screaming aloud.

She felt his upper body lift away from her, causing his pelvis to press into her more heavily. She saw out of the corner of her eye one of his arms braced beside her shoulder. He withdrew. Slowly. In this position, beneath him, with her legs only hip-width apart, the pressure was intense. He was crammed so tightly within her. His cock dragged against her as it retreated from her soft flesh. She closed her eyes, lost in the intense feeling. He pushed back in, just as slowly, and she felt his entire hard length reenter her. This was bliss. This was sensation beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. She could lie like this and submit to him forever, reveling in his hard flesh, his male scent all around her.

“Helen,” he rasped. “Helen.”

And she felt him jerk against her. He thrust one more time, shoving his entire length into her, and she came again, a sweet, warm, washing wave of pleasure after the intensity of before. He withdrew suddenly, and hot semen splashed her thigh. He was immobile above her, his breath coming harshly, his weight still holding her lower body pinned to the bed. She wished he could stay like this, with his hard body pressing her into the bed, but it was inevitable that he roll to the side.

He slid away from her and stood beside the bed, taking off his clothing, moving slowly as if terribly wearied. He climbed in beside her, nude, and drew her close, and that was better. Wordlessly he fitted her body against his larger, harder one, and tucked her head into the crook of his arm.

She watched sleepily as his chest rose and fell, the beat of his heart slow and steady under her cheek. She wondered what they would do if they got the children back. If he loved her and if they could ever have a life together.

And finally she decided it was all too much to think about right now. So she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

His hands, buttoning the fall of his breeches, stilled at her voice and then resumed their work. “I told you. I went to the docks to see about a ship.”

She propped her head in her hand, lying on her side. “I’ve told you my secrets. Isn’t it time you told me yours?”

It was a gamble based on their recent lovemaking. He might still retreat into that hard anger he’d borne toward her for the last week. He might simply pretend he didn’t know what she spoke about.

He did neither. Instead he bent and picked up his shirt, holding it in his hands and staring down at it as if he’d never seen white linen before. “Nearly seven years ago, I was in the American Colonies. You know that. It’s how I came to write my book. It’s also how I lost my eye.”

“Tell me,” she whispered, not daring to move or breathe lest she break his narration.

He nodded. “My purpose in the Colonies was to discover new plants and animals. The best place to look for undiscovered things is where men haven’t already explored—the edges of civilization. But because it’s the edge of civilization and because we are at war with France, that was also the most dangerous place to be. Naturally, then, I found it expedient to attach myself to various army regiments. I spent three years thus, tramping where they tramped, collecting samples and making notes when they camped.”

He was silent a moment, still staring at the shirt in his hands until he shook his head and looked up at her. “Forgive me; I’m delaying the crux of my story.” He inhaled deeply. “In the fall of 1758, I was with a small regiment of men, the 28th Regiment of Foot. We were marching through a thick forest, our destination Fort Edward, where the regiment intended to barrack for the winter. The trail was narrow, the trees oppressively close when we came to a falls.…”

His voice broke and trailed away, and a look crossed his face that she’d never seen on him before. Despair. She nearly cried out.

But his face smoothed and he cleared his throat. “Spinner’s Falls it was called as I found out later. We were attacked from both sides by the French and a band of their Indian allies. Suffice it to say that we lost.” A corner of his mouth twitched in something that might’ve been a smile. “I say ‘we’ quite deliberately. In the midst of battle, one is never a bystander. Though I was a civilian, I fought just as hard as the soldiers standing next to me. We fought for the same thing, after all: our lives.”

“Alistair,” she whispered. She’d seen how he’d touched Lady Grey’s dead body, seen him patiently teach Abigail to fish. He wasn’t a man who would commit or recover from violence easily.

“No.” He waved away her sympathy. “I’m prevaricating again. I survived the battle relatively unscathed with several others, and the Indians rounded us up as captives. We marched for many days through the woods and then we made their camp.”

He frowned down at the shirt and carefully folded it. The muscles of his bare arms shifted in the fading light. “The native peoples in that part of the world have a sort of custom when they win a battle. They take captive the enemy who survives and they torture them; the object is part celebration, part demonstration of the enemy’s cowardice. At least that’s what I believe the object is. Of course, there may not be a reason at all for the torture. Certainly, there’s ample evidence in our own history of peoples delighting in inflicting pain purely for the pleasure of it.”

His voice was even, almost cool, but his fingers folded and refolded the shirt he held, and Helen knew that tears were coursing down her face. Had he thought like this as they’d tortured him? Tried to take his mind away from the pain and horror by noting and analyzing the people who had captured him? The thought was too awful to bear, but bear it she must. If he could survive what had been done to him, the least she could do was hear what had happened.

“I’ll come to the point.” He took a deep breath as if to steady himself. “They took us and stripped us naked. They tied our hands behind our backs and then strung a rope from our bound hands to a stake so that we could stand and move a bit but not go far. They played with a man named Coleman first. They beat him and cut off his ears and threw burning embers on him. And when he collapsed to the ground, they scalped him and heaped burning coals on his still-live body.”

She made a sound of protest, but he didn’t seem to hear.

He gazed blindly down at his hands. “It took Coleman two days to die, and all the while, we watched and knew we would be next. Fear…” He cleared his throat. “Fear does ugly things to a man, makes him less human.”

“Alistair,” she whispered again, no longer wanting to hear this tale.

But he continued. “Another man—an officer—they crucified and set alight. He made high, terrible screams like an animal as he died. I’ve never heard the like before or since. When they started on me, it was almost a relief, if you can credit it. I knew I would die; my chore was simply to die with what bravery I could. I never cried out when they pressed burning brands to my face, nor when they cut me. But when they took a knife to my eye…”

His hand drifted to that side of his face, and his fingers delicately traced the scars. “I think I lost my mind a little. I can’t remember exactly. I don’t remember anything before I woke again in the Fort Edward infirmary. I was surprised to be alive.”

“I’m glad.”

He looked at her. “For what?”

She swiped at her cheeks. “That you survived. That God took away your memory.”

He smiled then, a horrible twisting of his lips. “But God had nothing to do with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It made no sense.” He waved his hand in a broad sweep. “Don’t you see? None of it had any order or reason. Some of us survived and some did not. Some were scarred and some were not. And it mattered not whether a man was good or brave or weak or strong. It was pure chance.”

“But you survived,” she whispered.

“Did I?” His eye glittered. “Did I? I’m alive, but I’m not the man I was before. Did I truly survive?”

“Yes.” She stood and came to him, placing her palm on his scarred cheek. “You’re alive and I’m glad.”

He covered her hand with his own, and for a moment they stood thus. His gaze searched hers, intent and confused.

Then he turned his head away, and her hand dropped. She felt as if she’d missed something in that moment, but she didn’t know what. Bereft, she sat back down on the bed.

He resumed dressing. “As soon as I was well enough to travel, I sailed for England. You know the rest, I think.”

She nodded.

“Yes, well. I’ve lived since that time very much as you first saw me when you came to the castle. I’ve avoided the company of others for obvious reasons.” He touched the patch over his eye. “But a month ago, Viscount Vale and his wife, your friend, Lady Vale…”

He trailed away, frowning. “I say, how did you become acquainted with Lady Vale? Was that part of your story made up as well?”

“No, that was true enough.” Helen grimaced. “I suppose it does look odd, a mistress like me friends with a respectable woman like Lady Vale. I confess that I know her only slightly. We met several times in the park, but when I fled Lister, she helped me. We are friends, truly.”

Alistair seemed to accept that explanation. “Anyway, Vale was one of the men taken captive at Spinner’s Falls. When Vale came to visit, he had this odd story. Rumors that the 28th Regiment of Foot had in fact been betrayed at Spinner’s Falls by a British soldier.”

Helen straightened. “What?”

“Yes.” He shrugged and finally laid the shirt aside. “It makes sense. We were in the middle of the forest, and yet we were attacked by an overwhelming force of Frenchmen and Indians. Why else would they be there save that they knew we were to pass that way?”

She drew a sharp breath. Somehow the knowledge that such destruction of life had been
planned
—and by a fellow countryman—made it all the more horrible.

She looked at him with wonder. “I would think that you’d be wild with the desire for revenge.”

He smiled, fully and sadly. “Even if we catch this man, bring him to trial and hang him, it’ll not restore my eye or the lives of the men lost at Spinner’s Falls.”

“No, it won’t,” she agreed gently. “But you do want him caught, don’t you? Might it not bring you some peace?”

He looked away. “I have as much peace now as I’ll ever have, I think. But I suppose it would be appropriate for the traitor to be punished.”

“And the Frenchman, the friend you want to meet, is somehow connected to all this?”

He went to the fire and kindled a taper. With it he lit several candles in the room. “Etienne says there are rumors in the French government, but he does not want to commit them to paper—for his safety and for mine. He has accepted a position on an exploratory ship, though. It docks in London the day after tomorrow before leaving to sail around the Horn of Africa.”

He threw the remainder of the taper into the fire. “If I can talk to Etienne, then perhaps this mystery will be solved.”

“I see.” She watched him a moment more, then sighed. “Do you want to go down for supper?”

He blinked and looked at her. “I’d hoped to have something brought up.”

She began unlacing her stays, and his gaze immediately dropped to her bosom. “I had some food and wine delivered earlier.” She nodded to a covered basket on a chair. “It’s over there. If you think it’ll do, we can stay here and not bother with anyone else.”

He crossed to the basket and raised the cloth that covered it, peering inside. “A feast.”

Helen straightened the bodice of her chemise over her breasts, rose from the bed, and crossed to him. “Sit here, before the fire, and I’ll serve you.”

He frowned quickly. “There’s no need.”

“You didn’t object to my service when I was your housekeeper.” She rummaged in the basket and found a small plum. She offered it to him in the palm of her hand. “Why demure now?”

He took the plum, his fingers brushing against her palm and sending shivers down her arm. “Because you’re no longer my servant; you’re my…” He shook his head and bit into the plum.

“What?” She knelt at his feet. “What am I to you?”

He swallowed and said gruffly, “I don’t know.”

She nodded and turned her face to the basket so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. That was the problem, wasn’t it? They didn’t quite know anymore what they were to each other.