Lord Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

“For another.”

  Durling gave her a quizzical look. “Is it possible you’re the only one who doesn’t know for whom?”

  “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  Henry came to close the door. “Home, Madam Duchess?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Home.”

  He touched the brim of his hat and closed the door. Home. When, she wondered, had Cyrwthorn become home? The moment she walked into the grand foyer, she knew her husband wasn’t home. Something in the air tingled when he was in residence, and she felt nothing now. Upstairs she changed from her damp things and went to the library to fetch a book. A comfortable sofa by the fireplace invited her to sit, which she did, curling up in one corner.

  Sometime later, a shiver of awareness sped along her spine, breaking the pleasant concentration of reading. Cynssyr. Without doubt, she knew it was him. Hardly a moment later, in he walked. Hickenson stood behind him, holding a heavy leather case and looking anxious. Anne was beginning to think anxiety was Hickenson’s perpetual state.

  “Good evening, Anne.”

  “Cynssyr.” The sound of his voice, deep and smooth as silk, sent liquid heat flowing through her veins. Seeing him had much the same effect. “Mr. Hickenson.” The short man bowed.

  “Please.” Cynssyr lifted a hand to stop her from rising. “Don’t disturb yourself. Hickenson.” Turning, he addressed his secretary. “We’ll finish up tomorrow.”

  “The Livingstone brief, your grace?”

  “Put the writ in my study. I’ll read it later tonight.”

  Hickenson bowed. “Your grace.”

  Once Hickenson made his exit, Cynssyr walked to the sofa where Anne sat. “I’m surprised to see you home. I thought you’d be at Portman Square.” Sighing deeply, he sat beside her.

  “I wanted to rest. Something you don’t do often enough.”

  “Surely, that’s the truth. This Livingstone matter has everyone all worked up. Quite the legal knot. The hearing is in three days, and I’ve a stack of papers as high as you are tall to digest before then.” She lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. “Mm.” He bent his neck to give her better access. “The Cabinet is making noises about sending someone to Belgium. Every time Eldon looks at me now, I fear he’ll ask me to go.” Anne gently kneaded up the side of his neck and got a soft groan for her trouble. Even that small sound contained an undercurrent of silk. “Thrale won’t see reason on the Pensions bill, I’ve lost Norfolk entirely, and I’ve no support but from Canning on reform, and little enough from that quarter.”

  “Lie down.”

  “I’ve no time.” But he stretched out his legs and rested his head on her lap. His eyes closed in ecstasy when she pressed her fingers to his temples with a gentle circling motion.

  “Stop worrying for just five minutes. Hickenson will survive five minutes, and probably a good deal longer, alone with the Livingstone brief.”

  “It’s heavenly, Anne, but my beard is growing,” he said, eyes still closed. “It must feel like sandpaper on your fingers.”

  “Hush.” Since his eyes remained closed, she drank her fill of him. The strong lines of his face, vital even at rest. She liked his mouth best of all. Firm, and he would never admit to it, with more than a hint of sensitivity. He really was too lovely for words. A furrow remained between his eyebrows, and she circled a finger there until that at last smoothed out.

  “Keep that up, and I’ll fall asleep.” He moved one hand between her back and the sofa so that she fit into the curve of his arm.

  “You should. I know you didn’t sleep last night. You had another nightmare.”

  “Did I wake you?” His eyebrow arched. “I’m sorry if I did.”

  “You didn’t.” After a bit, when she realized he wasn’t going to fall asleep, she said, “I saw John Martin tonight.” Cynssyr’s eyes opened. “He was with Julian Durling. Mr. Martin said they’d been friends for some time.”

  “Durling keeps worse company than I thought.”

  “I like Mr. Durling.”

  “Really?” Which sounded a good deal more like Why?

  “He’s amusing. But I don’t like Mr. Martin at all.”

  He turned a little, pulling her toward him so that his face was nearly hidden by her gown. Her pulse jumped. “I don’t wish to discuss any of the men who admire you more than I like. I have been cradled here on your lap, Anne, thinking that just this once I will keep my hands off you. Just once I will demonstrate some restraint. Turn around.” He moved them both to face the rear of the room. “This way. Hold onto the back of the sofa.” Anne’s body responded so quickly she would have been ashamed had she the wits to think of anything but his hands stealing beneath her skirts. His front pressed against her back and then she felt the whisper of air on her lower parts. “Let’s give these books a tale to tell, shall we?”

  Anne laughed, she couldn’t help herself, even though she was nearly out of her mind with the sensation of him slipping inside her.

  He drew in a breath, running his hands from high above her stockings to her garters, then upward along the back of her thighs until their joined bodies forced his hands over her hips. “Anne. Lovely, lovely, Anne.” His voice dropped lower and softer, to a drugged whisper that somehow worked its way inside her. “I want you to love me. Will you? Will you, please?”

  She pressed her hips backward. “Like this?”

  After a moment’s silence, he said in that same low, drugged whisper, “That will do for now.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Ruan came awake with a start. He sat, taking in deep breaths of air against the pounding of his heart, disoriented because he had no idea where he was. His skin felt slick and fever hot.

  A woman’s hand touched his bare shoulder, cool and comforting. But this was not Katie’s familiar room. Her room he knew like his own. Nor was it Katie next to him in the bed and that panicked him. She said something, but he heard only the sound. A foreign language perhaps. If not Katie, then who? If not Herriot Street, then where? The woman’s hand left his shoulder.

  Eyes squeezed tight shut, he heard linens rustling, felt the mattress shift and guessed she’d wrapped the duvet around her then slipped off the bed. With her leaving, a sense of loss smothered him, a haunting, drowning bleakness that shook him worse even than not knowing where he was. A moment later, she was at his side of the bed, holding a cup.

  “Here. Cold tea, but it’s something.”

  His bearings returned. He was in his wife’s room. She was naked under that duvet because he’d all ready made love to her once. As he had every night since she’d come to London. Not so long ago that was, yet the time when she hadn’t been with him seemed ages ago, another, bleaker lifetime. “Thank you.” He took the cup and tossed back the contents in one swallow. A chill shook him.

  “You’ll catch your death.” Anne leaned in to straighten what remained of the bed covers, pulling them up and over his waist, then padded to the fireplace. “You were shouting in French,” she said as she stirred the embers. “Too fast for me to understand much. You’re more than fluent.”

  “I’ve a facility for language.” If he’d shouted in French, then he’d dreamed of Quatre Bras.

  She poured half a bucket of fresh coal on the fire. The duvet draped down in the back, exposing a length of delicate shoulder and mid-back. Her independence captivated him. No helpless female she. Katie would have lain shivering more and more dramatically until he rolled out of a warm bed himself. Or called a servant and been cold the meanwhile. “No doubt you speak Spanish and Portugese as well.”

  “Enough to get by.” His heartbeat was calmer now, the dream further from memory. “A smattering of Flemish, too.”

  “I have only a little French. Well, you know that.” Still clutching the duvet around her, she came back to the bed. Instead of getting in, she stood uncertainly. She bent down, momentarily disappearing from his sight. When she straightened, she had his robe. Carefully, because she insisted on a lamentable modesty, she folded it
over a chair. He held out his empty cup. She took it. “More, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”

  “Come back to bed, Anne.” He snagged a corner of the duvet and tugged. She resisted his effort to draw her to him, but eventually she had to practically hop forward. “I can’t believe I want you again.” Christ, did he want her. His need for her actually hurt. He pulled her onto the bed with him. Quatre Bras receded as he set himself the task of unwrapping his wife.

  She tried to scoot away, but he followed. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying very hard not to be a clod.”

  She slapped his hand. “Whatever are you about?”

  “Kissing you.”

  “But, it’s nearly morning.”

  “You don’t need darkness to kiss.” He had a hand beneath the duvet now. Ah, her hip, lovely. His body clenched. The way she felt against him was going to drive him mad.

  She laughed, a low sound in the back of her throat. “You don’t?”

  “No,” he murmured, bringing himself over her and sliding his hand from hip to waist. How he loved the way she laughed. “Now, open your mouth. Just a little.” He touched her lips with his. Gently. “Just so.”

  When he drew back, she said dreamily, “Your lips are soft.”

  “So are yours.” He nuzzled her cheek, breathing her scent. “You kiss well, Anne.”

  There was a very brief pause, then; “I have an excellent tutor.”

  Her wit, unexpected as it so often was, made him chuckle. He could not see her smile but he heard the lazy grin in her voice, the dreamy, sensual breathlessness. Not one inch of his body didn’t burn. “If you like,” he said in her ear, “you may kiss me now.”

  “Haven’t I been?”

  “No, my dear. I kissed you.” She hesitated, and he said, stroking a hand along her bare thigh, “It’s going to be my life’s work to thoroughly corrupt you.” He was fully aroused. By now, Anne knew enough to adjust when he sought her entrance. Her hips lifted. Most of what he did embarrassed her, but she never complained or refused, and quite frankly, by the end, he never cared if she was in agonies of shame, because there wasn’t another woman who came close to making him come apart like she did. Like he was right now, teetering on the edge of reason.

  He reared up enough to see her face. Ragged breaths parted her lips, the back of her head pressed into the mattress bared her throat and lifted her chin toward him. He circled his hips, a tight, deliberate motion intended to elicit another sharp intake of her breath, which it did. Slowly, as if her eyelids were weighted, her eyes opened and met his.

  “How does it feel when I am inside you?” he asked.

  She wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and tried to bring his head down to hers. Since she did it only to avoid the embarrassment of making him a reply, he removed her hand and pinned it to the mattress.

  “Answer me, Anne.” He moved deeper inside her and for a brief while the room had no sound but the breath entering then leaving their lungs, two bodies moving on the mattress, of skin touching skin, silk sheets sliding to the floor. The moment he felt her anxiety ease he put his mouth close to her ear and demanded, “How does it feel? Tell me.”

  A small cry of frustration escaped her. “I haven’t the words, Cynssyr.”

  “Your sex is hot and deep and tight. You have this trick—Oh, God—of closing around me with such wet and greedy eagerness I am quite taken away. Shall I give you some words? Marvelous. Astonishing. Magnificent. Sublime. Oh, hell, Anne. Christ. Bloody damned good.” He caught her other hand. “Do not do that yet. I’ll be damned if I come before you do.”

  A bit later, he lay over her, sweating, heart thumping, breathing like a man desperate for air. “I would never hurt you, Anne,” he said, holding her tight. He stroked her back, keeping her in his embrace.

  “I know.”

  “Then let go when I’ve made you come. Shout, scream. Call my name. Call on God, if you are so moved.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder, tasting their mingled sweat, then rolled so he lay on his side with her nestled in the curve of his body. She didn’t say anything in reply. He was hot and sticky for a different reason now, but he had no inclination to let her go. He needed the contact with her, couldn’t bear to let go.

  “Manly,” she softly whispered.

  After a bit, he repeated, puzzled, “Manly.”

  “You feel manly when you are inside me.”

  He gave a grin she couldn’t see. “Well thank God for that.” He waited until she fell asleep in his arms before he slipped from her bed and returned to his room. This hour of the night rarely passed with him asleep, and he did not want to wake Anne with his restlessness. He knew the dreams would be back.

  A bloodcurdling shout cleared Anne’s sleep-fogged mind. That horrible, anguished call came from her husband. Worse, far worse than any previous nightmare. Throwing off the bedcovers, she hurried through the connecting door and into his room. The muffled sound of limbs against bedcovers raised the hair on the back of her neck as he thrashed in the bed. He hit the drawn hangings. She dove past them and was enclosed in black. The air swirled as if with the demons that tortured Cynssyr.

  “To me, men!” One flailing arm tangled in the covers.

  “Sir? Cynssyr?” She grabbed his free arm, trapped the other with her body and did her best to hold him. Steel-hard muscles contracted with the effort of his dream.

  He sat bolt upright, Anne sprawled across his lap, and thundered, “Hold your fire!”

  “Sir,” she cried, falling head-over-teakettle off the bed to land, thud, on the carpet. From the floor, she said, “It’s all right. You’ve had a dream. Another dream. That’s all.” She climbed up again and just missed an elbow to the forehead. His open eyes stared, a gaze so stark and true she wanted to weep. Sweat slickened his skin and made her fingers slip on his wrist. “Cynssyr.”

  “No. No. No, damn you.” With chilling abruptness, he fell against the pillows, his voice low and anguished. “It isn’t so.”

  “Hush.”

  “All dead,” he whispered. “All of them.”

  The desolate whisper told her he remained in the grip of his dream. “It’s all right, Ruan. My love.”

  He gasped once, and the tension went out of him. He was awake.

  “It’s all right,” she repeated, touching a hand to his cheek. “I am here. It’s all right.” His arms went around her, holding tight. “You are safe,” she soothed. “No one will hurt you now.”

  Ruan clung to his wife as he emerged from the bleakness. He was safe in her arms. Whatever he felt for her, whatever he did or had done in all his long empty years without her, he could trust her with his soul and know he was safe. “Anne.”

  Strange, she thought, for the low, breathy sound of her name to have such an effect on her. The word sent a shiver coursing up her spine.

  He released her and sat up. Shaken by the lingering immediacy of his dream, he wasn’t sure where he was. His bed. Yes, despite Anne’s presence. Cocooned in bed with his wife whose breath warmed his shoulder she was that close.

  “Did you dream about the women again?”

  He thought of the cold, dank place inside him. “Belgium.” She stroked him softly, tenderly, a gesture of which he was certain she was unaware.

  “When you almost died? I heard,” she hastened to add, “that you were nearly killed in the war.” The fire in his room had burned to little but tiny red orange eyes glowing in the darkness.

  “In Spain.” Where he had lain wounded, sweltering in the heat, frenzied with thirst, nearly insane with the relentless pain of a bullet wound and a broken collarbone. Absolutely certain of his death. “I came through Belgium without a scratch.”

  Curious, Anne thought, how he spoke casually of Spain yet the way he said the word ‘Belgium’ fairly froze her blood. Just as her whispered name resonated with undercurrents she did not comprehend, Belgium was a word fraught with dark and terrible meaning. “B
ut you dreamed of Belgium.”

  “Yes,” he said. Not exactly curtly, rather, choked off.

  “What sort of dream makes a man cry out like that?”

  “Not a dream.” His words made a soft confession. “Memories. I don’t admit them during the day, so they haunt me at night.” In the dark, his fingers curled around hers. When she didn’t object to the contact, he pulled her hand onto his lap. “Stay awhile, Anne.”

  “Was it awful? Belgium, I mean.”

  “I never talk about the war.” Long habit shut down his emotions, and he welcomed the blessed lack.

  She held his hand and waited. Inexorably, the accepting silence drew him past the wall he’d constructed between himself and feeling. She did it easily. Gently. Effortlessly. Without a shred of remorse. She stripped him to nothing just as he had known, he thought, that she would. If he spoke, he would tell her what he had not told anyone else. If he let this woman inside him where not even he dared go, everything would change. Irrevocably. Her fingers tightened around his hand. She would never love him if he did not share himself, his inmost thoughts and fears. The pity was he had so damn many private fears.

  “You were in the thick of it, weren’t you?”

  “The very. Were I to be killed—” His throat closed. Go slowly. Not all at once or she might refuse to listen. That she should listen to him and really hear him, seemed terrifyingly important. “Were I to be killed, I wanted to die from a clean shot. Quick. Through the head or the heart. I didn’t want to linger for days like some of them did.” He lifted her hand onto his lap as insurance against her escape. “Belgium, Quatre Bras, that is, was different, but in Spain I tried to kill cleanly. Sometimes I couldn’t. Combat in close quarters means bayonets. It’s a rotten thing to do to another man. You’re damn lucky to stop a man on the first thrust. Generally it takes a few, all the while someone else is trying to gut you himself. I ought to have insisted on a command from the bloody start.”

  Once begun, he could not stop. Every awful memory poured from him. The heat, the smell of blood and dust and sweat and rotting men. Gaping wounds, the look in a soldier’s eye just before he died. Swirling, churning lust for death and survival. Screaming men and horses. The God-awful sound of swords and guns and cannon booming. Metal piercing flesh. Quicksilver judgments and near instantaneous reactions that meant a man’s life or yours. Winning or losing. Life or death.