And Then She Fell

by Stephanie Laurens

  Lord Ellsmere paled and fell back in his chair. “Good Lord!”

  “But that’s not the worst of it.” James drained his glass. Aware of the look Lord Ellsmere bent on him, as if unable to believe that there could possibly be anything worse, James lowered the glass, met his lordship’s gaze, and disabused him of that comfortable notion. “Someone—most likely a gentleman in riding boots—deliberately pushed the stone off the wall. And he had to have known Henrietta was beneath it—we’d been talking just before.”

  Lord Ellsmere stared, then looked at Rafe, who confirmed James’s words with a grim nod. “But,” his lordship all but sputtered, “you’re not saying it was anyone here?”

  James met Rafe’s eyes, then, frowning, slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t seem likely. We were all in groups.”

  “Thank heaven for that.” After a long moment of silence, Lord Ellsmere said, speaking slowly and carefully as if trying out the words, “There has to be some explanation. No one would want to kill Henrietta, so . . . it must have been something else. Perhaps . . . a prank gone wrong, or . . .” His lordship looked from James to Rafe and back again, but neither came to his rescue. “Well,” his lordship asked, “what else could it be?”

  Another long moment of silence ensued, then James set down his glass, met Rafe’s gaze, and rose. “I doubt there’s anything anyone can do—there was plenty of time for whoever it was to simply walk away. We just thought you should know.”

  Lord Ellsmere looked up at them as if wishing they hadn’t thought anything of the sort, but on meeting James’s eyes, he nodded. “Yes, well . . . as you say, nothing to be done.”

  With polite, if somewhat stiff, nods, James and Rafe parted from their host and left the library.

  They paused in the front hall.

  James glanced at Rafe, who looked back at him, then James sighed and reached for the banister. “We’d better get changed.”

  They climbed the stairs and walked to their rooms.

  While he stripped and quickly washed, then shrugged into his evening clothes, James heard Lord Ellsmere’s observation and resulting question repeating endlessly in his mind.

  No one would want to kill Henrietta, so . . . what else could it be?

  James was starting to have a bad feeling about that. A very bad feeling indeed.

  For James, the dinner and ball passed in a bland blur of faces and polite conversations. Briefly meeting in the drawing room before the company had gone into dinner, he, Henrietta, Rafe, and Millicent had agreed that there was nothing to be gained by creating a sensation among the other guests by spreading the tale of Henrietta’s near brush with death.

  In a private aside, Rafe had baldly asked, and James had confirmed that he would be sticking to Henrietta’s side throughout the night. Later, during the ball, Rafe had paused beside James to quietly report that he’d discreetly checked with the others from the house party who had been at the ruins that afternoon, and none of the gentlemen had been unaccounted for over the critical minutes.

  “So it had to have been someone from outside,” James had concluded.

  Rafe had nodded. “And ‘outside’ could mean anywhere. There’s a decent lane on the other side of the woods that joins the road to London.”

  A waltz had started up, and Rafe had left to whirl Millicent down the floor. James had watched Henrietta waltz with Channing, then had reclaimed her, and thereafter hadn’t let her go.

  But finally the ball ended, and after dallying in the front hall, on the stairs, and in the gallery until all the other guests had gone ahead, James escorted Henrietta down the corridor to her room.

  Pausing outside the door, he opened it and waved her through.

  Glancing at him, faintly puzzled, she went.

  Swiftly glancing around and confirming that the corridor was empty, he quickly followed her and closed the door behind him.

  Expecting to bid him good night, Henrietta swung to face the door; she fell back a step, brows arching in surprise. She met his eyes, a clear question in hers.

  He met her gaze, then surveyed the room. An armchair stood by the fireplace. Stepping past Henrietta, he walked to the armchair and dropped into it.

  She followed. Halting beside his boots, she looked down at him; the question in her eyes had grown even more pronounced.

  He sighed, leaned back, and held her gaze. “I’m staying here tonight. All night.”

  Head tipping slightly, she studied him. “Why?”

  “Because I can’t leave you alone.” When she frowned at him, he reached out, caught her hand, and tugged her down to sit on the broad arm of the chair.

  Henrietta obliged, leaving her hand in his, lightly returning the pressure of his fingers. “I can see that you’re worried, but . . . I don’t quite understand why, at least not to this extent.” She drew breath, then added, “I haven’t thought—haven’t allowed myself to think—too much about what happened today, but . . . even so, I can’t see what we can possibly make of it. I don’t know of anyone who might wish me dead, much less act on that wish.”

  “But someone did.” He looked up at her, meeting her eyes, his concern on open display. “Henrietta, someone tried to kill you today—we can’t overlook that. But”—his lips twisted—“there’s more. I learned something I haven’t yet told you, about your horse. I checked with your stableman. He’s convinced, and so am I, that someone darted your mare.”

  When she blinked uncomprehendingly, he explained, “Someone threw a dart at her rump. That was why she screamed, reared, and then bolted.” He paused, then added, “Someone hoped you’d fall to the cobbles and die.”

  She stared into his eyes, searched, but saw nothing but absolute conviction. She quelled a shiver. “But . . . why?”

  Lips grimly set, he shook his head. “I can’t begin to guess, but . . .” He tightened his grip on her fingers. “That wasn’t the start of it, if you recall.”

  When, too shocked by what he was implying, she remained silent, he continued, his eyes steady on hers, “You fell off the bridge into the stream at Lady Marchmain’s rout. We assumed it was an accident—but what if it wasn’t? Anyone who was there might have seen the opportunity—you were by the side of the bridge, and all of us were distracted by the fireworks. A stumble, a quick, anonymous push, and the stream was running swiftly and it was dark . . .”

  Held trapped in his gaze, reluctantly, she added, “And not many young ladies of the ton know how to swim, not even a little.”

  “Exactly. And the Thames was close, only yards away.” He paused, then after a moment continued, “So we have three near-fatal accidents—the bridge, your horse, and now the falling stone. Any of those incidents might have seen you dead, and all of them, even the last, might well have passed for accidents. If it wasn’t for the dampness of the moss by the wall, we wouldn’t have seen your would-be murderer’s boot prints. We would simply have been left wondering how the stone had come to fall, but meanwhile, you would have been dead.”

  “But . . .” The first shock of realization was fading; annoyance, spiced with a definite dollop of belligerence, swelled, and she embraced the strength it offered. She frowned. “Who the devil could it be?”

  James was relieved by her reaction; he’d worried she wouldn’t want to see, to acknowledge that someone might wish her ill. That much ill. “I think we can be sure it’s a man, and that he’s a member of the ton. He would have to be to have been on the bridge at Marchmain House. Anyone with a purpose in Brook Street that morning, from a street sweeper, a delivery boy, a costermonger, to a strolling gentleman, could have darted your horse, and the falling stone could have been any man who wears decent riding boots, but the incident on the bridge could only have been caused by a gentleman of the haut ton.”

  “Or a lady.” Henrietta wrinkled her nose. “But no lady pushed that stone, so I concede your point.” She blew out a breath. “So some gentleman of the haut ton is trying to kill me.” Brows knitting, she tilted her head. “Which brings u
s back to why.”

  He studied her face, her expression. “Could it have anything to do with some past activity of yours as The Matchbreaker?”

  She gave the suggestion serious thought but ultimately shook her head. “Other than you, no gentleman has ever protested my findings, and”—she met his eyes—“if they had wished to, I would think they would have protested to my face, at least at first, as you did, but none have.”

  He conceded the point with a tip of his head. “True enough.” After a moment of studying her eyes—and her studying his—he sighed and sat back, fingers gently caressing the back of the hand he still held. “So that’s why I have to stay with you tonight. This would-be murderer is a gentleman. He’s not at the house party, but he knows you’re here. He’s familiar with our world. It’s perfectly possible he’s familiar with this house, and he’ll certainly know that few doors will be locked, just in case guests wish to wander.”

  For a long moment, she stared at his face, then said, “I can see your reasoning. More, I don’t dispute it—I agree.” She paused, then drew breath and said, “Yet I ask again: Why?”

  Looking into her eyes, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Instead, very conscious of her fingers beneath his, in the simplest, most direct words he could find, he gave her the truth. “Because you’re mine.”

  She held his gaze for a heartbeat, then nodded decisively. “Yes, I am.”

  Then she swiveled on the chair’s arm, leaned over him, framed his face, and tipped it to hers—paused to look into his eyes as if to confirm that he was following her reasoning—then she bent her head, set her lips to his, and kissed him.

  From that first touch of her lips, there was never any doubt what she intended or where this would end; the kiss went from definite, to scorching, to incendiary in mere seconds. Hardly surprising then, she being her and he being him, that thereafter matters rapidly spiraled out of control.

  Or, more correctly, were with ruthless determination and unwavering will driven forcefully toward one paramount goal.

  Mutually ravenous, mutually greedy, the kiss ignited a conflagration that spread flames beneath their skins, that incited, razed and burned. Heat surged in a wave of molten hunger, of fiery yearning.

  On a muted gasp, she shifted, and then her hands were everywhere, racing over him, tugging at his coat, urging him up out of the chair so she could strip the restricting garment away.

  Engaged himself, absorbed and caught, distracted and enthralled, his tongue dueling with hers, his lips rapaciously devouring hers while his hands shaped and weighed her sumptuous breasts, he had to haul sufficient awareness from those all-consuming, senses-stealing tasks to oblige—to bodily lift her to her feet and rise to his, and release her long enough to shrug his coat and waistcoat off—and once he had, nothing could hold her.

  Nothing he did seemed capable of reining her in, of reining her back—of reestablishing any degree of supremacy in a world fired by unexpectedly rampant need, and flooded with burgeoning passions, with violently surging desires that only had to rise to be given full expression, only to be offered—in the next heartbeat—immediate gratification.

  He felt giddy—as reckless and unrestrained as she as they wrestled each other free of their clothes, as silk whispered over flushed and dewed skin, as palms and fingers flagrantly explored, sculpted, traced. As the cool caress of the night air was banished by the first touch of heated skin to heated skin, naked and burning, and sensation, sharp and potent, rocked them.

  Jolted them into a new level of fiery flames, into a new level of consuming awareness.

  Of utterly consuming passion.

  He closed his arms about her and locked her tight against him, evocatively molding her body to his. And still she didn’t pause, not for thought or modesty; she wriggled and urged him on, seemingly hell-bent on plunging into the act—one she’d never indulged in before—with a reckless enthusiasm that left him reeling.

  His problem was that her wishes were his; everything she wanted—to do, to feel, to explore—precisely coincided with his own ravenous hungers.

  As she desired, so, too, did he; everything she demanded with such flagrant abandon, he was eager and aching to give her.

  To lavish on her, to pleasure and delight her.

  The only disagreement they might have had, had he been able to summon his wits from the whirling maelstrom she’d engineered, lay in the tempo, the timing; he would have gone slowly, easing her through each step, but she wanted to race, and rush, and fling herself through each stage.

  And straight into the next.

  Henrietta had never felt so free, so powerfully sure of herself and her destiny. Realization of the faceless threat and her brush with near death had forged a honed edge to her desire. To her consuming need to step forward and seize and reach for all she could be, to stake her claim to the role she now knew to her soul was her birthright.

  She wanted him. Yes, she was his, but, to her mind, that translated to he being hers. Hers to engage with as she wished, to the swirling depths of passion and the giddy heights of desire.

  And she’d never been one to do anything by halves.

  So she let herself free, free to be as she wished to be, to do as she wanted, to desire and explore and demand as she would, to yearn and seek satisfaction.

  To take all she would, to give all she could, and find the holy grail she was sure was there for the finding.

  Yet despite the compulsion, beneath her driven purpose she was fascinated, intrigued, and enthralled. By him. With him. With the physical reality and the ephemeral connection, with how he, his body, felt, to her, against her, about her, and the emotions she sensed ran like a raging river beneath his smooth surface.

  His lips, his mouth, the broad width of his chest, the heavy muscles sculpting his shoulders, all tempted and lured her closer, lured her to caress, to touch and possess, to taste . . . which much to her delight made him shudder.

  That, she discovered, was a potent joy, reducing him to the point where he had to close his eyes and ride out the pleasure she lavished on him . . . only for her to be forced to close her eyes and do the same as he returned the delight in full measure.

  His touch, the evocative sweep of his fingers over her skin, the hot brand of his mouth on her naked breasts, the possessiveness that drove his more ardent caresses, threatened more than once to sweep her away, to leave her gasping and reeling, awash on a surging tide of sensation, but each time she found her anchor to the here and now in him—in the hard, muscled, irredeemably masculine, godlike beauty stripping him had revealed.

  Not just to her eyes, but to all her senses.

  Yet despite the potent allure, the intense attraction, she didn’t have time to spend on further exploration. Not tonight, not while the driving need to reach the culmination of their mutual desire had already sunk its spurs so very deep, and need beyond bearing, awakened and stirred, provoked and incited, thundered, a heavy compulsive beat in her veins.

  She might be twenty-nine, but she hadn’t wasted her time. What whispered confidences and overheard gossip hadn’t told her, books had. So she palmed his rigid erection and went to her knees. Stroked slowly, then bent and caressed the broad head with her lips, then with her tongue.

  And gloried in the taste, and even more in his reaction, the sharp, intense, searing response she provoked.

  She set herself to reduce any lingering resistance he might have felt to ash.

  Succeeded well enough that he groaned, a guttural sound that sent pleasure cascading through her, that drove her to experiment with touch and tongue . . . until he softly cursed, slipped a thumb between her lips, withdrew his rigid member from her mouth, then he swooped, swept her into his arms, strode to the bed, dropped her on it, and followed her down.

  The sensual wrestling match that ensued was exactly what she’d wanted. She wanted—needed—to feel his strength, to provoke it, explore it, and ultimately meet it with her own supple surrender. A surrender that was nothin
g of the sort, that was more in the nature of unadulterated incitement.

  Delicious.

  The pressures, the tension, the shifting give of her body against his was sensational in the truest sense. She grasped his head between her hands, raised her head and planted her lips on his, and showed him her delight, her unfettered appreciation.

  Enough was enough; James knew it was past time he exercised his wolfish expertise, his customary dominance, and seized—urgently regained—control.

  Yet they were already rolling, limbs tangling, naked and oh-so-heated in her bed.

  His cock was already on fire for her, yet the touch of her silken skin, of her supple limbs sliding over and against and around the muscled hardness of his, made him shiver. The dual sensations were exquisite, the urgent anticipation they fired even more so; the sexual promise she embodied as she wrestled and rolled and he finally lay back and allowed her to sit up and straddle him was beyond anything he’d previously known.

  He stared up at her in wonder.

  He’d known so many women, yet she was unique. Unique and infinitely precious, so precious he wanted to seize and devour while simultaneously worshipping and protecting her, even from himself.

  She made his head spin.

  She made him feel like he’d never felt before.

  His chest was already working like a bellows. His hands as he grasped her waist and steadied her already shook with rampant desire.

  Panting, her hands spread on his chest, fingers greedy and clutching, she unblushingly visually and tactilely possessed, then, bracing her arms, the pendant of the necklace she still wore about her throat swinging between them, she hung over him, met his eyes, and brazenly asked, “So . . . what’s next?”

  He looked into her eyes, and from somewhere found the strength to ignore the wanton invitation etched in the blue, enough to grit out, “I wanted to give you more—to take more time and court you properly.”

  She studied his eyes, then shook her head. “No need.” She dragged in a shaky breath, her breasts, swollen and full, nipples tightly furled, rising before his avaricious eyes. “For us, there’s no need for any careful wooing.”