The innkeeper scratched the white tuft of hair at his chin. “Can’t say as I’ve seen any newlyweds like you two. But you should ask Mrs. Braithwaite.” He chuckled and tapped his temple. “She keeps good records of all who pass through her property to see the falls. She’s considering charging a tariff, I daresay.”
They thanked him again and headed out the back door of the inn. Past the stables, a cottage appeared through the dense wood, and as they approached, a lawn and flower garden bracketed by trees appeared beyond the cottage. The sound of rushing water was a touch louder out here.
“We’re very close to the waterfall now,” she said.
Sam shrugged. “We don’t need to see it at all, really. All we need to do is find out if this Mrs. Braithwaite has any information—”
“Oh, you are very wrong! We must go to the falls. Not only to keep up appearances, but because I have never seen a waterfall.”
He raised a brow at that. “Never?”
“Not once in my life.”
He took her hand and pressed it onto his arm, and the comforting pleasure of his touch washed over her once again. “Then you shall see this one.”
Sam knocked on the door to Mrs. Braithwaite’s cottage, and when the old woman answered, he introduced them and said they had traveled from Birmingham for their honeymoon and that his wife had never seen a waterfall.
The woman had a kind face and clear blue eyes that seemed to take everything in. When she smiled, her face collapsed in a sea of wrinkles. “Oh, my dear. How lovely. Your first waterfall? We must make it special for you. Come in. Come in …”
It was as if Mrs. Braithwaite had prepared for their arrival. She packed them a picnic of a pigeon pie, berries, and wine, gave them a blanket, and told them exact directions to a place where they could lay down the blanket and have a beautiful and romantic prospect of the falls as they ate their luncheon.
The woman was such a chatterbox that Sam and Élise could hardly get a word in edgewise. But when she paused for a brief moment to draw in a breath, Élise jumped in. “Are there many couples that come to see your falls, Mrs. Braithwaite?”
Mrs. Braithwaite’s forehead dissolved into deep wrinkles as she attempted to recall. She was very lovely, Élise decided. She wished she could live in Ambleside and be this woman’s friend. The innkeeper’s comment about her planning to charge a tariff for crossing her property was completely ridiculous, because Sam had already offered her money, and she’d declined.
“Well, there was a couple of a more advanced age about a week past. A gypsy couple.”
Élise felt Sam go stiff beside her.
“A gypsy couple?” Élise infused just the right amount of mild curiosity into her voice.
Mrs. Braithwaite beamed, and her blue eyes glimmered. “They were on their honeymoon, too. Or at least, that is what the wife told me. I don’t rightly know if the gypsies have the same traditions we do when they marry, but”—she waved her hand airily—“that’s not of import. They seemed like rather English gypsies, if you catch my meaning. Maybe they were part English, but then again, I am not an expert of the race.
“Anyhow, they came here, and they were sweet as peaches. They said they, too, wished to explore the waterfall to begin their tour of the cascades all over the district. I could tell right away that they were very much in love. So I made them a picnic luncheon, too!”
“Did they stay in town?” Sam asked.
“Oh, no, they made off straightaway after returning from the waterfall. In their gypsy way.” Mrs. Braithwaite laughed.
“Did they say where they were going next?” Élise’s heart thrummed with excitement.
“Well, yes, they did. They had quite the itinerary, and I helped them with it, of course. I told them about Skelwith Force, which is quite a lovely cascade, and not far from here. Then I said they needed to walk up Tom Gill—oh, and you two mustn’t miss that one, either! After that, I think they planned to ride up to Lake Ullswater and see a few falls there.”
“And then?” Sam pressed.
Mrs. Braithwaite gave him a playful frown. “You are rather serious about your waterfall explorations, son. I think they mentioned Derwent Water, but I cannot be sure.” She threw up her hands. “By then my poor old mind was near drowning in lakes and falls. So many locations had been tossed about that I couldn’t keep up.”
She handed Sam the picnic basket and patted him on the arm. “Now, go. Your wife looks hungry, so feed her well.”
“I intend to.” Sam thanked her for the basket, and they left the cottage.
It took only a few minutes. They followed the sound of water and Mrs. Braithwaite’s directions, and it was easy to find the flat, grassy plateau where she’d said to spread the blanket.
Élise stood on the edge of the plateau and gazed at the cascade as Sam laid out the picnic. It was so lovely. And it wasn’t one waterfall, but two. Two lines of frothing, pouring water, separated by a moss-covered, rocky island in the center and tapering into one large fall below, where the water crashed into a placid pool at the bottom. Trees and ivy and ferns grew densely around the cascade, feeding off its nutritional waters, no doubt.
Sam came to stand beside her. “What do you think?”
She sighed. “It is so beautiful.”
“It is.”
They watched in silence for a long moment. The water never stopped—an endless flow. And while she knew that water constantly trickled down from the earth into the streams that fed the falls, something about it felt magical. That if it were of this world, it should slow, then eventually stop. But no. The water kept coming, endlessly falling with foamy power into that pool.
“Come,” Sam said softly. “You need to eat.”
She sighed. That had been the most difficult part of her recovery. She hadn’t really regained her appetite. But when she sat and smelled the savory pigeon pie, she managed to eat half a piece.
Sam scowled down at her plate. “That’s all?”
“I am very full.”
He sighed. Then he popped a blueberry into her mouth.
It was a burst of sweet flavor on her tongue, and she gasped with pleasure. “Bon Dieu, I could eat every single one of those!”
“Then you shall.”
And she did, one by one, as Sam fed them to her with implacable patience. At one point, she tried to push his hand away, saying she could feed herself, but he scowled at her and wouldn’t hand her the bowl of berries when she demanded it. So she relented. She snuggled up against the hard body of her more-than-lover and watched the waterfall as he fed her blueberries.
And even though all kinds of terrible things might happen to her tomorrow, in this small, beautiful slice of the world, she was with Sam, and she was safe and content.
Chapter Eighteen
Sam and Élise forewent Mrs. Braithwaite’s recommendations of Skelwith Force and Tom Gill because Sam assumed his mother and Steven Lowell would have gone to see those cascades days ago.
Instead, that very afternoon, after Sam had procured two horses and a cart, they headed north. Soon they entered the village of Rydal, and while there’d been no sign of Dunthorpe, Sam learned that his mother and Lowell had been seen here as well—they had visited the two waterfalls to the northeast of the village the day before yesterday.
People tended to notice gypsies, and after having left their band of traveling players, the dowager duchess and Steven Lowell seemed to have abandoned caution. Once again, Sam and Élise were told of how “English” the two of them seemed, though they were clearly not, given their colorful gypsy dress and flamboyant ways, and how very much in love they were.
Sam knew his mother well. She’d had many lovers, and when she loved, she loved fiercely and openly. But this situation—it was beyond odd.
When the dowager duchess had vanished from Ironwood Park a year ago, she’d left no trace of where she’d gone. Sam and his siblings had thought the worst—that she’d been kidnapped and held for ransom, or that she had been murdered in a robbery
.
She’d vanished with two of her servants, and Trent and Sarah had made the first significant strides in finding her when they’d managed to locate one of them. The man had informed the family that the duchess and her servants had been taken to Wales by a man driving a cart drawn by asses. Further investigation on Luke’s part had revealed that that man, Roger Morton, had been employed to deliver her to Steven Lowell.
The dowager duchess hadn’t been taken from her house by force. But the questions still swarmed in Sam’s head. What had prompted her to disappear like that? To leave her life and her family in such panic and upheaval? Could it be just another affair? This was not how their mother had handled her affairs in the past. But perhaps since this one was a gypsy …
A duchess engaging in a romance with a gypsy from a troupe of traveling players—hell, it was almost unthinkable.
Sam wanted—needed—to find his mother and this man. He needed to close the book on this past year of grief and fear. He and his siblings deserved answers.
He and Élise found the low falls near Rydal Hall, where they ate a warm dinner he’d had wrapped at the inn in the village. Then they walked uphill for a few hundred yards and stopped at the high falls. The place was deserted, and dusk was rolling in slowly. The days were growing longer, the nights warmer as they inched toward summer.
If Sam were alone, he’d press on, but Élise was still recovering from a serious illness. Procuring a room at the inn would be too conspicuous with Dunthorpe hunting for them. Instead he found a flat, dry area with a good view at the base of the falls and told her they were stopping for the night. She looked at him, brows raised.
“No! We cannot! Your mother and her … gypsy man are very close. We must keep going.”
In response, he merely unrolled the bedroll and went to gather wood for a fire. As he turned away, he heard her make a frustrated growling noise, and he smiled.
Élise tried to help him set up camp, but he waved off her assistance. When he finally got the fire going, he looked up to find her seated on the grass a few paces away, hugging her knees against her chest as she gazed at the waterfall.
He watched her for a long moment, and something in his chest constricted.
His feelings for her cut straight to his core. They were so intense he knew they could destroy him.
But how could he tell her that? How could he wish for her to feel the same way when he’d promised himself never to encourage any woman’s affections?
He’d chosen a life that wasn’t at all conducive to loving or being loved. He’d made that choice for a reason.
If something happened to her …
By choosing to protect her, he’d made another choice. He’d avoided thinking about the repercussions of that choice on purpose. Because it was impossible to ignore the fact that the only escape from the Agency was death. And it was also impossible to ignore that until Élise had come into his life, the Agency had been everything to him.
Pushing those thoughts aside, he went over to Élise, and bending down, he touched her shoulder. She looked up at him, a faint smile playing about her lips. But her eyes were shining.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
She shrugged and gave him a soft smile. “Some things.”
He cocked a brow. “What things?”
She reached a hand up. “Sit with me.”
“Come closer to the fire. It’s getting cooler.”
She glanced wistfully back at the waterfall. “Soon I will not be able to see it.”
“But you will hear it all night long.”
That made her smile. “Yes. That will be good.”
She took his proffered hand, and he pulled her up and led her to the blanket he’d laid beside the fire.
She sat and removed her leather gloves to warm her hands.
Her hands. They were pale and long-fingered. Delicate. Unscarred and uncallused. They were the hands of an aristocratic lady. Lately, he often forgot about her aristocratic connections. Her past associations and history had fallen away to reveal Élise as she really was—a complex, fascinating, beautiful woman.
She gave him a wry look. “And now you are thinking. About what?”
“About you,” he said softly.
“Good things, I hope.”
“Very good.”
She smiled and laid her head on his shoulder.
“Now you tell me what you were thinking,” he said.
She sighed. “Just that today has been a dream. Everything is so lovely and wonderful. I wish I could forget that the world outside all this wishes for me to be dead.”
“Not the whole world,” he corrected.
She made a scoffing noise. “Besides Marie, nobody cares.” His heart squeezed, but she continued. “I realized long ago that I am not the sort of woman who is welcomed into English society with open arms. I have accepted that truth.”
And now she believed that if Dunthorpe or Adams killed her, no one would mourn her.
“I care,” he said softly.
She looked up at him through her long lashes. “That is very odd, don’t you think?”
“Why?” he asked in surprise.
“No one has cared for many, many years. Then you came to kidnap me and hold me against my will. I have deliberately frustrated you at every turn. And yet you insist that you care.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do,” she murmured. “And that is the oddest part of all.”
He watched the fire and the fading waterfall beyond, wondering how it had come to this. He was in love with this woman.
He couldn’t love her. He couldn’t love anyone.
Too late.
“Sam?”
“Yes?”
“Make love to me. Here, in front of the waterfall. Before it is too dark and we cannot see it anymore.”
His breath caught as he stared at her. He’d never known a woman as forward as this one. She was a woman who was clear about what she wanted. He loved her for that, and for so many other reasons.
He turned to her slowly, raising his hand and pressing a finger under her chin to tilt her face up to his. He kissed her long and languidly as the water crashed just a few yards away.
He pressed her down until she lay on the blanket in front of the fire. He pulled back and commanded, “Look at it.”
She turned her head to gaze at the cascading water, then looked back up at him. “I cannot decide which is more beautiful. You or the waterfall.”
He laughed. The way her mind worked never ceased to charm him. “The waterfall, Élise. Keep watching it until you can’t anymore. You’ve only a few minutes of daylight left.”
She wrapped her hands around his neck and dragged him down for a quick kiss, then capitulated with a sigh, turning her head so she could watch the falls.
“Good girl,” he murmured. “Watch. And feel.”
He moved down her body, pressing kisses over her clothes. When he reached her feet, he took off her shoes. Then he untied her garter and removed her stocking, rolling it down her calf, kissing her skin as it was exposed, gentling over the new scar on her knee. He rolled the stocking off her heel, the arch of her foot, then her toes, pressing firmly with his fingers as he did so.
She moaned with pleasure. “I will be your captive forever, my scoundrel, if you continue to seduce me like this.”
He smiled, kissing the top of her foot, then her toes, trailing down from the biggest to the smallest.
He repeated the treatment on the other side, pressing her flesh until she was as moldable as putty in his hands. Then he moved back up her leg, stroking her inner thigh beneath her skirts until he found the drawstring of her drawers. He untied it and pulled the waistband. She lifted her bottom so he could pull the garment all the way down her legs and off, leaving her completely bare beneath her skirts.
He glanced at her as he laid her drawers aside to see that she was gazing at him again.
“The waterfall,” he reminded he
r.
“I know,” she said, “but I cannot help but imagine what you have planned next for me.”
Pleasure, he thought. He wanted to bring her unimaginable pleasure. He wanted to brand himself in every part of her.
“The falls, Élise,” he said sternly.
With a smile playing about her lips, she turned to look at the cascading water once more. He turned her to her side so he could unbutton her dress and petticoats. Then he went to work on her stays, touching her whenever he could as he loosened the laces. Finally, she was dressed only in her chemise, and he went behind her, pulling her back until her body molded against his front.
“Are you cold?”
“Non. It is a warm night.”
Good. But he still worried about her growing too cool, so he covered them with one of the woolen blankets he’d brought for them to sleep under. When they were both situated beneath it, he ran his hand up the curve of her waist, then across her front and higher until he cupped her breast over her chemise.
God, he loved how her breast fit in his hand. Not too big, not too small. Utterly feminine.
He took his time, exploring her breasts one at a time, teasing her nipples into taut peaks as she gasped and wiggled against him. She followed his order, though, never taking her eyes from the falls.
He bent down to kiss the shell of her ear, nuzzling and licking as he removed his own coat, then his trousers and drawers, keeping his shirt on. He withdrew the pins from her hair, setting them in a neat pile beside the blanket this time. He unwound her hair and fanned it out in golden glory over the blanket.
Then he moved her hair off her neck and kissed the slim column, traveling down, kissing the backs of her shoulders and trailing his lips down her spine over the fabric of her chemise.
“You are a tease.” Her voice had grown husky with desire.
When he reached the top curve of her buttocks, he nudged her onto her back and pulled the skirt of her chemise up, situating his body between her legs.
He dragged his tongue against her inner thigh. She went stiff—the higher he licked her thigh, the more ticklish she was, and he tortured her, kissing and nipping the insides of her legs until she shook and made gasping, complaining noises above him.
The Scoundrel’s Seduction Page 22
