Untouched (22 page)

gasped and jerked back against the couch.

“Strike her and you’ll regret it,” Matthew snarled, leaning forward so his height dwarfed the older man.

Violence surged close in the overheated room. In eleven years, the simmering hatred between uncle and nephew had

never exploded into physical confrontation. Now the anger boiling in Matthew’s blood blinded him to everything but the

urge to kill. He could almost feel his hands squeeze the last poisonous breath from his enemy’s throat. Rage was a searing,

caustic taste in his mouth. His muscles bunched in readiness for action. The world shrank to a pulsing red pinpoint that

held only his uncle’s loathsome face.

Grace flattened her palm against his spine. The simple connection dragged him back from the perilous edge, reminded

him what was at stake.

Jesus, what was he doing? He couldn’t kill his uncle here. Lord John’s henchmen outnumbered him and would inevitably

overpower him afterward.

Then what would happen to Grace?

Grappling for control, he clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw ached. How he wanted to lash out, to destroy. He

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couldn’t. Not yet. Satisfaction must wait until Grace was on the other side of the polished white walls.

“Good God, restrain yourself, man!” Lord John lurched out of immediate reach. “I wouldn’t lower myself to touch the

jade.”

“See that you don’t.” Matthew fought to steady his breathing. Grace’s touch on his heaving back was his only frail

connection to reason. The warmth of that contact calmed the storm in his blood. Slowly he straightened from his

threatening slant.

“I’ve seen enough. The whore goes tonight,” Lord John growled. “I’ll get you another woman. One mare is the same as

another in the dark.”

Matthew was aware enough now to hear Grace’s shocked release of breath. “I don’t want another woman,” he said. “I

told you—Mrs. Paget stays.”

His uncle’s overweening self-assurance already showed signs of reviving. “Proving yourself with a female has given you

the mistaken impression you have some choice, nephew.”

“There’s always a choice,” Matthew said austerely. Their battle was open in a way it hadn’t been for years. Pray God he

kept his nerve long enough to win. He tamped down the remnants of fury and fixed a level stare on Lord John. “You

forget I hold ultimate power over you, Uncle.”

Lord John responded with a scoffing chuckle. “Are you mad again in truth? How long before Monks has to strap you

down and feed you like a puling baby and wipe the filth from your body while you cry and scream and babble nonsense?”

Matthew didn’t react to the humiliating description. Instead, he spoke with a calmness grounded in absolute confidence.

A confidence he’d never felt before when he confronted his uncle. Grace had made him a stronger, surer man. Her hand

dropped away from his back but the warmth lingered, much as her image would linger in his heart till the day he died.

“If you harm Mrs. Paget, Uncle, I swear on my parents’ graves you’ll lose control of the Lansdowne fortune.”

His uncle’s scorn was palpable in the suffocating room. “Just how do you plan to achieve that, boy?”

Lord John could call himboy andlad a thousand times, but it didn’t change the fact that the power balance had

permanently shifted. With Grace at his side, Matthew was invincible. His uncle had made a fatal error when he’d sent his

bullies to Bristol and they’d snatched this particular woman.

Matthew allowed himself a small, superior smile. “Why, with my life, Uncle. Your power hangs by one slender thread—

that I stay this side of heaven. I die and you lose all chance to dip your greedy paws into the family money.” His voice

hardened. “Touch Grace Paget, steal her from me, injure her, and my days are numbered.”

“No,” Grace protested frantically from behind him. “This is wrong.”

His heart ached for her distress but he didn’t look at her. All his strength, his mind, his determination focused on

vanquishing his uncle.

“Idle words from a useless popinjay.” Lord John tried for a careless laugh but the blood had receded from his cheeks,

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leaving him even more pasty-faced than usual.

Matthew forced himself to shrug with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “That is my final power, Uncle. There are a hundred

ways I could kill myself in this room alone. Then my cousin becomes Marquess of Sheene. Your access to the Lansdowne

coffers ends unless you intend to bribe doctors to say he’s mad too. I doubt you’d get away with this scheme twice.”

“Cease your melodramatic drivel,” Lord John snapped, although his effortless air of command noticeably frayed.

“Matthew, I’m not worth it,” Grace breathed. “Don’t do this. I beg of you.”

He turned to meet her troubled eyes. “It’s the only way, my darling.”

“You offer to lay down your life for this whore?” Lord John said with disgusted incomprehension. “She’s nothing but a

cheap harlot. You’d buy her equal for twopence in any alley.”

Matthew swung back to his uncle and bared his teeth in unconcealed threat. “Speak of this lady with disrespect once

more and I’ll ram your words down your throat.”

“You imagine yourself in love. There’s no point trying to make you see sense,” his uncle sneered, although he took a step

backward. Clearly, he hadn’t forgotten the moment Matthew had loomed over him with murder in his eyes. “I’ll return

when you’ve regained what pass for your wits.”

He rapped his cane hard on the floor. Almost immediately, a footman opened the door. Matthew thankfully inhaled the

blast of cooler air that rushed into the room. The heat left him feeling stifled. Or perhaps it was the evil that oozed from

his uncle’s pores like the stench of rotten flesh.

“Keep your slut for the nonce. Enjoy her while you can.” Lord John stalked out without another word.

Matthew stripped his coat from his sweating body, threw it over a chair and strode across to pour himself a brandy.

Against all expectations, he’d won. He couldn’t believe it.

He downed his drink in a single gulp and poured another. He turned to offer the glass to Grace, then froze in shock.

A torrent of tears cascaded down her ashen cheeks. She stood facing him, trembling so hard that her words emerged in

staccato bursts. “I’m not worth your life, Matthew.”

“Of course you are.” He slammed the glass onto the sideboard so roughly that brandy spilled onto the richly polished

wood. “You’re heaven and earth to me.”

Couldn’t she see that? The forbidden wordsI love you surged up anew. He reached her side and wrenched her into his

arms. Immediately her sweet jasmine and sunshine scent filled his head.

“I don’t want you to die,” she sobbed, burying her head in his chest. Her hands kneaded his back through his shirt.

“Foolish girl,” he murmured into her soft hair. His arm tightened and he pressed her shaking body closer. She fitted

against him as if made for his embrace. “You can rely on my uncle’s greed if nothing else.”

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She pulled far enough away to wipe at her tears. “I hate your uncle.”

The bitter realization struck that the time for prevarication had passed. “He won’t stay defeated, Grace. You’re not safe

under his dominion. Make no mistake—everything on this estate is under his dominion.”

“I can’t help that,” she said thickly.

“Yes, you can. You can leave.”

Her gaze, dark with confusion, swimming with tears, flew to meet his. “I’m as much his prisoner as you are.”

Oh, God, could he bear to tell her?He took a deep breath of the overheated air. “I can get you out.”

She searched his face as if she suspected him of joking. “You’ve always said that’s impossible. Why has that changed?

How can we escape?”

He briefly closed his eyes in agony, although the image of her ardent, tear-stained face burned in his brain. “Just you,

Grace,” he said with difficulty. “You’re going. I’m staying.”

She withdrew slightly and frowned. He fought the urge to tug her back into his arms, if only because soon, she’d be too

far away to hold. “I don’t understand. If I can leave, why can’t you?”

“I’d give anything to make things different, but anyone who aids me is sentenced as a criminal. It happened last time.”

“I’d be with you. I can tell people what your uncle has done.”

She sounded so eager, so hopeful, he hated to deny her. “Do you think I wouldn’t sell my soul to be free and with you?

But I’m a certified lunatic. I’m confined for the public good.”

“You’re not mad,” she said vehemently. “You know you’re not mad.”

“For the past few years, no. But my doctors will swear I’m dangerous.”

“Doctors your uncle bribed. He didn’t deny your charge.”

“That doesn’t mean their diagnosis is wrong.”

“It is wrong!”

“Grace, stop!” He leaned forward and kissed her hard. Tasting tears. Tasting desperation.

Heat exploded in his head, dazzled him with light. Her mouth was voracious. Even while he sank into delight, he had the

strange idea that she argued with him even through her kiss. She ran her hands up his chest to link them behind his neck.

Through the fine shirt, her touch scorched his skin. His arms encircled her, drawing her closer.

How the hell could he ever let her go?

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Panting and distraught, she tore herself free. She was shaking violently and her face was pale with tension. She glared at

him as if she hated him, while her mouth glistened with moisture from their fierce kiss.

“I won’t go,” she said in a raw voice. “You can’t make me. I want to stay with you.”

What lunacy was this? He shook his head to clear it. Surely he’d misheard. Circumstances had forced her into a

madman’s bed. She’d been abused and attacked and insulted. Any sensible woman would grab the chance of escape and

run until she was a thousand miles from this estate and everyone on it.

Clearly Grace wasn’t a sensible woman.

His heart clenched in bewildered despair. Perhaps she didn’t understand. “I’ve worked out a way you can get away. This

is your chance. You want to be free. You must be free.”

“I don’t want to be free without you,” she said stubbornly. She lifted her chin and gave him the same defiant glower that

had stolen his heart the first time he’d seen her. He didn’t dare read the message in her eyes. Tears streaked her cheeks but

she wasn’t crying anymore. “Whatever we face, we face together.”

Matthew’s heart kicked with shock.

Could this mean what he thought it did?

Could it?

Surely he wasn’t wrong about the inevitable, life-changing truth forcing its way into mind and heart. His anguished,

adoring heart.

He sucked in a deep breath and dredged up every last ounce of courage to ask the inevitable question. “Grace…” he

began, then crashed into silence.

He drew in another lungful of air. Ridiculous, but he kept forgetting to breathe.

He steeled himself to speak. Christ, he’d confronted death and illness and torture, but forcing these few small words out

took every ounce of courage.

He met her fathomless indigo eyes and braced himself to go on. “Grace, do you love me?”

His voice sounded rusty, like an old man’s. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

The silence that followed lasted an agonizing eternity.

Still she didn’t speak.

Oh, Christ, he’d got it wrong. Somehow he’d got it disastrously wrong.

Yet for one brief, blinding second, he’d been so sure.

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Despair like slow death trawled his veins. Self-loathing clenched his belly hard and tight. As if a woman like Grace Paget

could love someone like him. Had he forgotten the cruel lessons of the last years? He was only half a man, condemned to

live half a life. Sometimes, like now, that half life was all he believed he deserved.

She looked uncertain, unhappy. Of course she did. She wouldn’t want to hurt him. He couldn’t bear her pity, but what

other response could she offer after the hellish mess he’d made of this? He cursed himself for his damned clumsiness.

These last embarrassing minutes would poison the few days remaining to them.

“I thought I loved Josiah,” she said slowly. Her eyes didn’t shift from his face.

“You were little more than a child.”

“I’m a woman now.”

“Yes.” Helplessly, his gaze ran over her body, tracing each luscious curve, each inch of creamy skin revealed by the

crimson silk. His eyes returned to meet hers.

“I know my heart, Matthew. I know what I feel won’t change.” She took a shuddering breath and extended one unsteady

hand in his direction. Her voice shook with intensity. “When I tell you I love you, that means I’ll love you forever.”

What does a man do when his dearest dream comes true?

Matthew stared at her outstretched hand. He’d never imagined this time would come. He wasn’t prepared. Her words

soaked into his soul, slowly turning the parched desert there into a verdant garden.

“You love me,” he said slowly, wonderingly. Then with greater certainty, “By God, you love me.” His astonished laugh