Wolfsgate (16 page)

He winced and sucked in his cheeks. “Oh, not a good vintage, I think,”

Justine grinned. “No, my lord,” she said. “The good bottles are long gone, I’m afraid.”

“And yet you let me drink it?”

“I felt I required your expert opinion, Lord Graven, and your permission before I threw them away. You are the Lord of all here at Wolfsgate, after all.”

His eyes lit up. “Duplicitous fox.” He wiped his mouth with his thumb. “What happened to the girl who blushed at the mere mention of a pretense?”

“Somewhat gone.”

“Somewhat?” he asked. “I think I know how I can still make that girl blush.”

She smirked at him. “Would you like a brandy instead?”

“Please. Damn me, I do remember my father always kept a very good wine cellar. I’ll have to re-stock right away. This just won’t do.”

“You and William and your friends spent plenty of time down there educating yourselves about wine, didn’t you?”

Brandon grinned. “You knew about that, eh? We educated ourselves very well with private picnics by the creek or in the woods with quite a variety of bottles.”

Justine remembered another time in the wine cellar when she and Annie had been re-enacting ghost stories for each other in its crypt-like atmosphere one rainy afternoon. She had chanced upon Brandon and Amanda kissing in the stone corridor. It was the first time she had ever seen such a kiss between a man and a woman.

Amanda was in Brandon’s embrace, standing on her toes, her delicate hands against his chest, his fingers gripping her upper arms keeping her close. Their mouths were open, and it was obvious that their tongues were moving together. Justine had stood frozen by the wall witnessing their…hunger. That was the only way to describe it. Brandon and Amanda hungered for each other, and Justine had watched them in utter fascination.

“What is it?” Brandon’s relaxed voice broke her reverie.

“I was just remembering the games we used to play in the cellar: haunted castle, imperial spies, the ghostly dungeon.” Her teeth gnawed on the inside of her cheek.

“Hmm.” Brandon leaned his head back against the edge of the sofa and stared into the fire. Was he remembering now as well? Remembering those passionate feelings of first love with Amanda?

Amanda had certainly been upset when he’d left for Jamaica. At the time, he had only just returned from Italy. She had probably expected to marry him then. But instead his father had sent him to Jamaica for two years. Those two years had turned into four after a shipwreck and William’s fateful strategy. And now Brandon had finally returned home to find he was married to her, the little nobody, and his exquisite Amanda was married to William.

She stuffed the cork back into the brandy bottle. Fate certainly was bitter.

He had to be curious to see Amanda again. The idea pierced her sides. And when he did, how would he react? Perhaps that passion he once felt for her had never faded?

Justine couldn’t imagine being in love with Brandon and then marrying someone else. William was quite a striking and attractive man, with dark brown hair and large brown eyes, as tall as his cousin, yet with a more solid form than Brandon’s present trim frame. His handsome luster, however, was edged with a cool harshness.

Justine hadn’t really had much contact with William and Amanda since they had married. Only once had she accompanied Richard to dinner at their home. Andrew was already abroad at the time. It had been a stiff affair with William conversing mostly with his father, and Amanda finding Justine woefully uneducated about the current goings-on of London theatre and fashion. However, Amanda’s father had been most appreciative that he had a willing listener in Justine. He had set about educating her on Whig politics and then steered the conversation towards his and Lord Jeremy’s ideas about husbandry in their younger days. It had been a long evening.

Justine sank deeper into the sofa next to Brandon. She was sure Amanda would be quite curious to see Brandon again.

“Justine, have the brandy.” Brandon offered her his glass, the sweet, potent vapors of the liquor before her dissolving her daydream.

She took the glass from him and brought it to her lips. His gaze remained on her as she drank from his glass.

“Do you like it?” he asked, his voice low.

She nodded slightly, unable to tear her gaze from his.

A sharp thrill coursed through Brandon’s blood and shot straight to his cock as Justine swallowed the brandy slowly, the delicate skin on her throat moving with the action. These erotic feelings for her were coming harder and fiercer each day.

He was surprised at how at ease he felt in her company. With Justine he felt no pressure to be the Brandon Treharne he once was, the one everyone still expected him to be. He had seen that expectation at the Fang & Feather each night and in his tenants’ eyes today. He knew they had been taken aback by his aloof and withdrawn demeanor. They seemed uncomfortable in his presence and had focussed their chatter on Justine.

Justine let him be in his tangle of moods and extreme humors. If she intervened in his twisted train of thought, it was with a logical, practical purpose that he later appreciated. She wasn’t afraid of his sudden, wild tempers either. In fact, she had a temper herself and sometimes unleashed it. He liked that, too, he had to admit.

Would his jagged edges ever ease? Would he ever feel that the fragmented pieces of his self were mended or in some sort of order at the very least? In his current irregular and mercurial state Justine was becoming his touchstone.

Touchstone
.

His forehead creased with the memory of that word. His father had once used it in reference to his late mother.
“She kept me sane, my boy. It’s a rare thing. Perhaps one day you’ll be blessed and find yours,”
he had told him.

With Amanda he remembered feeling a keen excitement and a raw, boyish eagerness. She would flirt shamelessly with him one moment and then behave demurely the next. Her girlish games entertained him because he had always been beguiled by her physical beauty and itched to claim it, and he knew she was enthralled by him in turn. She was the prize of the neighborhood, and he was sure she would be his one day. How could he want anything more?

But was Amanda ever his touchstone?

No.

He really hadn’t given that much thought back then, not at that age. Although he had felt a wave of anger upon learning of her marriage to his cousin, his ego had been bruised that he’d been so easily forgotten, that life had moved on without him.

Amanda was still beautiful and alluring from what he had seen through the window that rainy night at Crestdown, however, Justine intrigued him and invaded his thoughts at every turn. Traces of the sadness and loneliness he remembered about the girl still clung to the young woman, but they only shrouded a deep, innocent delight in life and a practical inner strength. A strength on which he found he was relying more and more.

Yes, his touchstone.

His jaw tightened as he watched her finish his brandy.

A touchstone he badly wanted to taste.

His arousal was stronger than ever these days. The girl whom he had always felt protective of, he now wanted to possess—be in her, on top of her, under her—the lot of it. They were married after all, but this was Justine. Her feelings actually mattered to him.

With her beside him in bed he was finally getting quality rest. Before falling asleep they would banter about the estate, she would tell a tale about a local, the minister’s snobbish wife, the changes in the village shops, make an observation, or a joke or two. He would inquire about his friends and how their lives had changed since he had been gone. He had never had this ease and restfulness, this sort of friendship or companionship before with a woman.

Justine usually fell asleep long before he did, curling up into a ball at his side clutching a pillow. He would put his arm around her, draw her close until she released the pillow and clutched him. He had told her she wasn’t alone anymore, and he had meant it. Every night he would sink his fingers into that incredible hair of hers. Touching her relaxed him. Keeping her body close and safe from the cold pleased him somehow. Marriage had a certain appeal after all.

Last night he had woken up with another nightmare. He teased himself with the memory.

She had instantly rolled into his body, wrapped herself around his shaking frame, her hand stroking his heaving, damp chest. He took her in his arms and pressed his face against her throat. She had kissed his temple and dragged her fingers through his hair and over his shoulders. The tension in his strained muscles began to fade.

“Was it the shipwreck?”

“No, the hospital this time.”

“Did they harm you there? Did you remember something particular?” she asked him.

“No, the dream was more about how I felt there.

“Tell me.”

He sucked in air. “Desolate and abandoned. Broken. Helpless and alone. All of that laced with the ethereal effect of the opium. Quite a desperate combination. Two years of that, Justine. And just now it had me in its grip again. I couldn’t breathe. Felt as if I was drowning.”

“It’s over. You’re here now.” She rubbed her legs against his. If she did more of that, he was going to pull her under his aching body and drown inside her.

“Justine, you’re cold.” He hooked her knees with his hands and brought her legs up towards his hips. He rubbed her icy feet, then stroked a path up her bare legs. She shivered—from the cold or his touch? Her body slackened into his, and he took in a deep breath, his lips brushing her forehead. He pulled the covers around her, his hand drifting down her lower back over her nightdress, but stopped before the beautiful curve of her rear. They lay there in silence listening to the wind roaring outside the window.

“Do you think he’s out there?” she asked.

“The wolf?”

“I like to think he is, you know.”

“Really? You were always the one crying for his release from his supernatural bonds.”

“I know. But he’s been a part of your lives from the beginning, a part of Wolfsgate. Without him there would be no Barons of Graven, would there? And you have been a part of him. You are forever entwined. I like to think he needs us as we need him.”

“Do we? He’s not simply an irritation?”

“Oh no, he’s not. I don’t think he stays to haunt you. I think he stays to keep you on the straight and narrow, my Lord Graven.

“There’s a thought.” He planted another kiss on her forehead.

She snuggled into his side. “You’re naked.”

He chuckled. “I enjoy the feeling of clean, soft bedlinen against my skin and a real bed under me after so many years. Would you prefer I wore a nightdress in future?” She’d only smiled against his skin, breathed softly, and drifted back to sleep.

Now, sitting here in the parlor, both of them drinking before the fire, another memory ignited a flame inside him. That of his cock throbbing in her delicate hands while they had lain on this very floor. His hand rubbed down his torso at the recollection.

That night his uncontrollable lust, his drive for release, his need to feel her touch had been all-consuming. Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t pulled away or protested. Justine had embraced him, let him guide her hand to his salvation and shuddered in his arms when his mouth had finally found her magnificent breasts. Thankfully the next morning she hadn’t seemed embarrassed or awkward in his presence, and he found he only wanted to show her affection over the remnants of their breakfast.

Fancy that.

Yes, there was a definite current of mutual desire between them. With every laugh, smile, casual touch or graze of their hands, arms, and legs in their early morning tangle of sheets or her fabulous hair on his pillow, it was there, charging through his veins, heating his blood, filling him with need. Flashes of the same tension were obvious in her eyes, in the sound of her irregular breathing when she’d first climb into bed with him. Even in the dark he could sense it, smell it.

“More brandy?” Her rich brown eyes swept over him. Brandon exhaled, but it didn’t help. That brutal need only coiled tighter inside him.

“Bring the bottle.”

THEY HAD FINISHED THE BOTTLE
.

Holding onto each other, they managed to climb that interminable staircase and get to Justine’s room. She wrestled with her stays and her corset and skirts as the cold settled on her skin, while Brandon peeled off his clothes and belted a thin wool robe about himself. He crouched by the hearth adjusting the logs with the iron poker, making the flames blaze once again.

“What was it you used to say when we played Kings and Queens?” he asked.

“‘Thank you, m’aaaaaaaam’ in my finest northern accent.” Justine repeated it, drawing out the vowels even more this time. Brandon’s body shook with laughter. Justine fell back on the bed.

“You made a fine lady-in-waiting for Queen Annie,” he said, placing the poker back in its stand.

“Yes, I did.”

“And I the finest King, I must say.”

“Oh, of course.” Justine let out a soft laugh.

“And William was some sort of Lancelot? Was that it?” He went to the basin to rinse off his hands.