“I bring a personal challenge for single combat for Lord Devon,” the footmen shouted, holding his side.
“Who sent you?” Devon demanded wearily of the out-of-breath messenger.
“Lord Chiswick, did, my lord.”
“Chinny?” Gabriel asked with a snort of disbelief. “Chinny wants to fight you?”
“He has asked for hand-to-hand combat,” the footman added in a dubious voice as he gazed up at Devon’s towering figure.
Devon groaned. “All I want to do is to remove this ridiculous costume.”
Gabriel stroked his jaw. “You could always refuse.”
Devon raised his shield and rolled his shoulders as was his habit when he went into battle. “And then I’d appear to be a bully and a coward.”
“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” Gabriel murmured. “If it were me, I’d go ahead and fight him. She’s watching, you know.”
“Yes,” Devon said drily.
“I’ve seen the way you look at her,” Gabriel added thoughtfully.
“I’ve seen the way you look at her, too.”
“But I’m not marrying her. If you crush Chinny, she might be afraid to take a brute into her bed.”
Devon had to snort at that. “Don’t worry about how I’ll fare in bed. I haven’t had a complaint yet.”
Of course he hadn’t been married yet, either, nor had he dealt with the complexities of a permanent arrangement. He had confidence in his skills as a lover, but as to love itself? He’d always wondered why a sane man would subject himself to such prolonged torture.
And yet he went ahead and accepted the challenge. To do otherwise went against his competitive Boscastle spirit. He would not demean himself by turning away from a fight.
Three minutes later he stood facing his shorter, somber-faced challenger. He felt his resolve crumble. He couldn’t harm Chinny. It would be akin to kicking an annoying pup that kept biting at one’s ankle.
After all, Adam had a right to be offended. Devon had stolen Jocelyn out of his arms, never mind that he hadn’t meant to. Adam had his honor to maintain, too.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Adam,” he said in an undertone, barely glancing at the squire who brought them their blunted swords.
Adam thrust out his enormous chin. “Well, I bloody want to kill you.”
“No, you don’t.” Devon would have laughed if poor Chinny didn’t look so determined. “We’re old friends. This is supposed to be friendly swordplay.”
“Everything is play to you and your damned brothers, Boscastle. War, women. My woman, or at least she was.”
Devon swung his sword into an arc. “I didn’t know you were capable of such passion, Chinny.”
He saw Adam’s gaze travel past him to the stands and resisted the urge to turn around. He could only imagine what Jocelyn was hoping—that her barbarian of a fiancé would not injure her heroic defender. Devon decided he was going to surprise them both.
He would be a gentleman and throw the match so that Chiswick appeared to be a hero. It really was play. It—
The solid whack of Adam’s broadsword across his shoulders jarred him to attention. He ground his jaw and straightened.
It had been a low, unchivalrous blow, but what bothered Devon more than the realization that Adam had taken advantage of his fairness was the realization of pain. He’d been whacked a good one. Unfortunately for him, it hurt. Unfortunately for Chiswick, it also unleashed Devon’s temper.
He took a breath, feinted, and swung his sword so that the flat of the blade caught Adam under his wrist and sent his sword flying to the ground. The blunt point of his blade passed through Adam’s padded chest shield to his heart. “Sorry, old friend,” he muttered, swallowing at the look of injured pride that crossed the other man’s face.
Adam nodded. “Think nothing of it. I’d never have made it through school without you defending me against the bullies. I owed you, Boscastle.”
The herald trumpeted his victory. Devon lowered his sword and shook his head in regret. “Now we’ve both made idiots of ourselves. I don’t think anyone was impressed.”
Adam straightened. “Perhaps, but at least I feel I did my duty. In fact, I feel better about this whole thing all around.”
“Then that makes one of us,” Devon said with an unwilling glance at the spectators in the stands.
God only knew what Jocelyn had made of this show. He would half-expect a lady of her sheltered background to be carried off in a faint. Or to weep openly because he had brought down her defender. He might have spared himself the trouble of wondering.
She was gone when he found her spot on the bench. He couldn’t even be sure she’d witnessed him give Adam a thrashing. Whatever she’d felt about the tournament would have to wait for a private explanation. Perhaps she would be able to make more sense of his behavior than he could.
Chapter Ten
Jocelyn stood watching from her door into the hall until at last she spied Devon returning to his room. From a glance she perceived that he looked to be in a forbidding mood, not at all his usual self. She decided to give him time to restore his temper before she approached him in private.
She thought it possible that he and Gabriel had been warring today over a certain widow. But the fact remained that he had fought for her today. She understood that it had only been a mock battle, and mockery seemed to describe the marriage that loomed before her. But all the same Devon had taken a stand and fought without hesitation. It seemed to be the Boscastle way.
She had never been much of a fighter herself, but then she’d had little to fight for. It was easy for a shy young woman to find herself shoved into a corner. Her mother had been a quiet mouse who had never dared to gainsay anyone. Her father had believed it his duty to squelch what determination dared break through his only daughter’s obedient demeanor.
For better or worse that determination was breaking through now, and Jocelyn did not have an inkling how to stop it. Apparently she was not the obedient young lady she had believed herself to be.
Emboldened by the behavior of her reluctant champion, she decided for the first time in her life that she would fight for what she wanted.
And she wanted to be Devon Boscastle’s wife, although not just in name, because that meant nothing. She wanted to become the wife of his heart so completely that it mattered not whether women like Lily Cranleigh even existed. And surely, if he could be prompted to battle a friend on Jocelyn’s behalf today, couldn’t he be made to love her? She suspected this conclusion did not derive from a rational progress in thought, but neither was it entirely beyond the realm of human reason.
The immediate problem, however, was that she possessed no idea whatsoever of how to bring a challenging man like Devon to heel. He was an uncouth male animal who’d lived as he pleased until he’d gotten caught trysting with her.
A pair of chattering maidservants bustled past her door, lugging heavy buckets of hot water down the hall. Both entered Devon’s room, but only one exited, her shoulders drooping in disappointment.
Suddenly Jocelyn found herself walking down the hall, only to hesitate outside his door. She could not simply barge into his bedchamber, engaged to the man or not. And then she reminded herself that a woman like Lily Cranleigh would have no such reservations. Besides, there was a maidservant within.
She knocked.
Devon opened one eye to see the chattering maidservant studying the broadsword he’d used to defeat Adam at the tournament. “Be careful touching that, poppet.”
“Goodness, I didn’t know blades came that big nowadays,” the cheeky maidservant announced as she glanced saucily at Devon’s naked figure. “Present company excluded.”
He laughed. “You may leave now, you impudent wench.”
“Observant is all.”
He closed his eyes. “I’d wager there’s quite a lot to observe at a party like this.”
She knelt at the side of the tub to soap his shoulder. “You aren’t half-joking. Sec
ret meetings with someone else’s spouse. Romps up and down the stairs, on the stairs—”
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard who might have sent me an invitation to tryst in the tower?”
“No one knows,” she said somberly. “And that’s the truth.”
“And the coffin?” He reached up to firmly remove her hand from his body. “I’ll manage on my own, thank you.”
She stood with a deep sigh. “Some people thought it was Sir Gabriel who brought the coffin to the castle. Isn’t that why you gave him a thrashing today?”
He frowned. “We thrashed each other, and I can only hope that he’s as sore as I am at this moment. He did not, however, have anything to do with that coffin.”
“Gives a girl the chills, a thing like that.”
Devon ground his jaw, remembering the pain in Jocelyn’s eyes when she had been confronted by that grim effigy, and how she had endured the rest of the evening with grace.
But then perhaps she was not unaccustomed to enduring at all. Growing up with Sir Gideon could not have been pleasant for a young woman whose natural inclinations would have most likely aroused his disapproval.
And if Devon learned that Jocelyn had endured anything unpleasant in her past, he would take it upon himself to erase whatever dark memories might haunt her. Once they were married, Sir Gideon would be welcome in her life only when or if she desired to see him.
He shook his head. He didn’t know what the hell had come over him.
One moment he was planning to ravish her; the next he was assuming the role of her protector. Well, he couldn’t deny his Boscastle heritage. He’d witnessed his brothers suffer the same bittersweet torment. He just hadn’t realized it was his turn to suffer.
The maidservant’s impish voice ended his musings. “I could wash you all over, if you like,” she offered. “I’d have to use the towel, though. The cloth isn’t large enough for a man your—”
She glanced around as the door gave a hesitant creak. Devon heard, but did not bestir a muscle. If the intruder proved to be his cousin Gabriel, hoping to even the score by barging in when Devon was naked, he was going to drown the bastard in the bathwater.
The maidservant edged away from the tub, noticeably silent.
Devon kept his eyes closed as he became attuned to the other presence in the room; the intruder was definitely not Gabriel, he thought in amusement. His blood stirred as he heard the evocative swish of silk drawing closer to the bath.
“Well, come on, girl,” he said impatiently, smiling to himself. “Go ahead and wash me then. The water won’t stay warm forever, and my muscles are tied in knots.”
He heard the door close quietly, and he assumed that the maidservant had slipped outside. His chest tightened in pleasant surprise as he felt the hesitant touch of another woman’s hand on his shoulder, then across the tight muscles of his chest. With arousing delicacy she soaped his well-muscled bicep.
Refined, gently questing fingers. He inhaled in anticipation and pretended not to notice the difference. His body noticed, though, with a rampant erection that broke the surface of the bathwater and tested his skills at playacting.
“Lovely,” he murmured, reaching up to grasp his silent attendant’s elbow, “but would you mind washing me a bit lower?”
He opened his eyes at her soft gasp and grinned. Jocelyn threw the cloth down on his throbbing penis and rocked back onto her heels. “You are the devil incarnate, Devon Boscastle.”
“Jocelyn!” he exclaimed in mock surprise. “It’s you. Isn’t this a surprise? You’re the last woman in the world I would expect to find washing my private parts. Is that what you came here for?”
Jocelyn had decided upon entering Devon’s bedchamber that it was time to take the bull by the horns. She received quite a shock, however, when she discovered how big her bull was, and that she had caught him unclothed but, thankfully, not in an actual indiscretion with the girl who was attending him.
The maidservant standing at the tub had glanced up at her with a startled look. Jocelyn put her finger to her lips to shush her.
The girl grinned in understanding, silently offering Jocelyn the soap ball. Devon himself appeared to be relaxing in his bath with his eyes closed. She stared for an unguarded moment at his naked form, or what she could see of it. Her skin tingled with illicit pleasure at the beauty she beheld.
His thick black hair curled wetly against his strong nape. The deeply engraved muscles of his bare shoulders shone with moisture as did the steel-hard plane of his chest. Clutching the soap, she ventured a step closer to the bath only to drop the washcloth on his turgid organ, which he’d unabashedly asked her to wash when it was obvious that he’d known it was her all the time.
Was that what she’d come here for, indeed.
He surged up suddenly like a sea deity during a storm, sending wavelets everywhere as he shook water off his long, hard body.
And stepped in front of her before she could retreat to the door. The devil lurked in the grin he gave her. He blinked, his astonishment a blatant mockery. “By God, you gave me a turn,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t hear you come in. Did you knock?”
He took three steps and threw the bolt on the door, water dripping from his thick rod onto his tautly muscled thighs. She spun blindly, throwing him the towel laid across a stool. When enough time had elapsed for him to remember modesty and cover his nakedness, she glanced at his reflection in the looking glass.
He was still disconcertingly in nature’s garb, modesty apparently not one of his priorities. The towel hung over his neck. It might have been a handkerchief for all it covered the broad contours of his chest and sculptured flanks. And that flagrant part of his lower body that protruded from a dark apex of hair…it defied description, although the adjective well-favored came to mind before she closed her eyes.
“Please put something on,” she said in a faint voice.
“Give us a minute. I wasn’t expecting company.”
She opened her eyes and frowned. “You had company.”
“She works here, darling.” He toweled himself off with exasperating slowness. Jocelyn stole a peek at his lean tight buttocks as he bent to dry off his feet. Her throat closed at the sight.
“Don’t mind me,” she said under her breath.
He came up behind her, bare-chested, his hips snugly encased in…in nothing. He was still nude, his damp body a breath from hers. “Excuse me.”
“I should think so,” she murmured, her blood thrumming alarmingly.
He smiled at her in the mirror. “Do you mind?”
“Do I mind what?” she asked, swallowing drily.
“If I reach under your leg.”
Her eyes flew to his. “Why on earth—”
“You’re standing on my shirt.”
She exhaled and quickly stepped aside for him to retrieve his shirt. He didn’t put it on, though. Instead, he slipped his arms around her shoulders and turned her toward him. Her head swam at the chiseled magnificence of his male body. She felt a sudden need to recline on a sofa with a strong vinaigrette.
“Jocelyn?” he asked in all his undraped amusement. “I’m sorry for teasing you. I couldn’t help myself. But I have to ask, what are you doing in my room?”
It was a fair question. She wondered the same thing herself before she finally recovered her wits. She had come to thank him for championing her today at the tournament, although she most certainly had not envisioned expressing her gratitude with him standing there in the raw.
“I wanted to—” She made the mistake of looking at his mouth. Those firm sensual lips that had given her her first taste of sin. And made her ache to sample more. “On second thought, what I meant to say can wait. At least until you are in a decent state.”
“What is it you wanted?” he queried softly, tracing his long fingers down her shoulder with shivering gentleness.
“This may come as a shock to you, but I’m not in the habit of conducting conversations with the other party in th
e nude.”
“I could undress you if you feel at a disadvantage.” He bent his head to bite a most sensitive spot on her neck. His tongue instantly soothed the pleasant sting she felt.
She moaned, her breasts suddenly swollen inside the bodice of her gown. “I meant that you should dress, you demon, as you are well aware.”
“Why? I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. This is my room and I’m not about to pretend I am a monk.”
She shivered as his teeth nipped a wanton trail down her shoulder. “I doubt anyone would mistake you for a holy man, Devon Boscastle.”
He raised his head and smiled. “You didn’t come here to save me, did you?”
She decided she would not let either his virility or licentious charm put her at a disadvantage. She had braved this visit to have her say, and nothing, not a promiscuous maidservant nor her husband-to-be’s utter absence of inhibitions, not to mention apparel, would distract her from that duty. If she was not going to marry the man, she would have to be able to resist him. Of course, resisting him and discouraging his behavior were two different matters.
“I came here to express my appreciation for what you did today.”
He walked her backward with the loose-hipped stride of a master horseman. “I like the sound of that.”
“Well, I can’t say I like that look in your eye.”
“What look would that be?”
She wasn’t sure if he lowered her to the bed, or if she simply collapsed from an attack of overstimulated nerves. All she knew was that she was sinking quite helplessly under the weight of his hard male body and that her breasts, perhaps the heart that raced wildly beneath them, lay crushed to his strong wet chest.
Yet when he kissed her, it seemed somehow natural, perhaps even imperative, that she submit. The imprisoning power of his position wrung the resistance from her bones. He slid his tongue deeply into her mouth and groaned as she lifted her arms to his neck.
“I came here to say…that no one has ever championed me before,” she whispered. “I was moved by the honor you paid me today.”
“I find myself rather moved at the moment, too, but I couldn’t say that it has anything to do with honor.”
The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman Page 11
