Heartless

by Anne Stuart

  “Do they indeed?” There was a silky undercurrent to his voice, and she stared at him. She was no fool. Was it possible he’d finally remembered her, and was now somehow furious with her for nursing him back from death?

  But surely if he remembered her at all it should probably be with the same affection she had felt. They had been friends. They had hovered beyond friendship. If he disliked the fact that he’d once seemed to harbor tender feelings for her, he could hardly blame her for it, could he?

  In her experience men could do all sorts of heinous, irrational things, but looking into Brandon Rohan’s cool eyes gave her no hint. There was no reason for him to dissemble—if he remembered he would say so.

  She straightened her back, keeping the shawl wrapped tightly around her. “I’m going to avail myself of a mug of warm milk and then I plan to return to bed. Doubtless you’ll have retired by then, so I wish you a good night.”

  Where had that sardonic expression come from? It was nothing she remembered from those weeks so long ago. “Are you offering me a mug of warm milk, Mrs. Cadbury?”

  “I am not. You seek out your own means of procuring sleep and I will attend to mine.”

  “I can only think of one way to ensure a good night’s sleep, and I doubt you are about to offer it to me.”

  To her absolute shock, her face warmed. When in her life had she been so missish as to blush at the suggestion of sex? She fought back the only way she knew how. “I’m not about to fuck you so you can rest comfortably. Your hand will have to suffice.”

  He looked neither shocked nor angry—in fact she thought she spied a trace of reluctant amusement before she whirled around and stormed away. She didn’t want to think about it. She slammed the kitchen door behind her, not caring if she woke the household, and leaned against it, her heart hammering. She needed to get away from the man, more desperately than she’d ever had to escape anything, even her coerced presence at Mother Howard’s establishment. Nothing had been able to tap her deeply sealed vulnerability like Brandon Rohan.

  The room was shadowed, dim light coming from the cast iron stove, and her eyes adjusted quickly. It would suffice—she was feeling admittedly low in spirits and sitting alone in the dark suited her very well indeed. She would simply wait until he left.

  She found the milk in the larder, scooped herself a tin cup of it, and set it on the warm stove. It wouldn’t take long to heat, and she found a seat nearby, her toes curling in the delicious warmth. She had no choice—she was alone in the dark with nothing but her thoughts and the object of them just beyond the door. She hated him. She truly hated that man, more than she hated her holier-than-thou father, the vicious vicar in Melisande’s parish, or the group of men who’d paid Mother Howard to take their turn with her during her first drugged night in the brothel. None of them had ever been able to touch her soul.

  Brandon had. The heart that she had managed to wall off had somehow developed cracks that first night at his bedside, when she thought he was dying, and perhaps therein lay the explanation. The young man who lay in the darkness would be gone before her sudden affection could grow troublesome.

  But he hadn’t. He’d pulled back from the abyss, and she’d found herself kissing him, the first kiss she’d ever given or taken despite her years in men’s beds, and it was too late.

  She closed her eyes in the darkness, accepting the miserable fact that she’d denied so long. She’d fallen in love with him that first night, when she’d been so certain that she had no heart. She’d loved him, and it had been her own, personal disaster.

  At least she was quit of it at long last. Each time she thought she was free something had reminded her that she wasn’t, not quite. Something kept pulling her back to him, like a homing pigeon or a faithful dog.

  That was at an end now. Tomorrow he would leave her and disappear, and whether she liked it or not, and she liked it very well indeed, she would never see him again. He would avoid her even more assiduously than she would return the favor. It was going to be just fine.

  So why wasn’t she feeling happier? Oh, there was the small problem of three attempts on her life in the last four weeks, something she’d been paying far too little attention to. Now that she could dismiss Brandon from her thoughts it shouldn’t take long to discern whether it was merely a series of unlikely coincidences or someone truly trying to harm her. Now that she would no longer be distracted, it shouldn’t take long to find out what, if anything, lay behind it all.

  She drained the milk, shuddering slightly, and then rose. He’d had to have gone up to bed by now—he had no more desire to be around her than she did, and while she hadn’t heard him leave she could be relatively certain she was safe. There was no way he could still be waiting for another confrontation with a woman he despised.

  He was tired of this. Brandon paced his small bedroom at the inn, trying to stretch his cramped and aching leg. If he were home in the Highlands, and God knows he would have given anything to be there and never to have left—he’d go swimming in the coldest water he could find, never a difficult feat in that climate, and then lie by the fire with his spaniel Tammas stretched out beside him, and by the next day he’d be capable of anything.

  But down here he had to improvise, and he’d discovered the best he could manage was to try to walk it off, ignoring the pain that sliced through his knee and thigh as he’d been ignoring it for years. And so he paced.

  He’d wanted to follow Emma into the kitchen, grab her and make her tell him why she’d lied. It was the one thing he couldn’t abide, and by doing so she’d betrayed his returning memory of the Harpy who’d saved his life.

  Then again, she’d already betrayed him when she’d disappeared. He’d waited, day after day, for her to return to his side, so that he could tease her, flirt with her, continue with that deep, soul-shaking kiss. But instead she’d run away, and the sister in charge of the ward told him that she had no idea where his Harpy had gone, or even if she would return—that was the way of things, and so finally, reluctantly, he’d told them his name.

  Of course he’d remembered it early on, remembered his adoring, ramshackle family including his tempestuous sister Miranda, stuffy Charles, and irascible, impossibly caring Benedick, not to mention his beloved parents. They didn’t need a hideous shell of a man who’d broken every law of decency, even by Rohan standards, and the more time he spent with his Harpy the less tempted he was to confess his background.

  He’d had no illusions. He knew the kind of ruined women who came and worked in the hospitals. They were soiled doves, abandoned wives, even criminals. It had been easy enough to know what she was—no man would ever be fool enough to abandon her, and with her looks she’d never have to resort to crime. She was a whore, plain and simple, though there had been nothing plain or simple about her, and he didn’t care. She had become his reason for living, and he didn’t even know her name.

  When she’d abandoned him without a word she’d taken that reason with her. He’d had foolish fantasies about carrying her off, finding a place in the countryside where no one knew them and marrying her. Everything had been hazy and completely impractical, but he’d had nothing else to do while he lay in bed but build castles in the air. Those castles tumbled into dust when she disappeared.

  Her crimes were manifest—not only had she vanished when he’d needed her, after her implicit promise of . . . what? She’d never promised him anything, and yet he couldn’t let go of his fury. She’d spent days in his company that week and never uttered a word, as if they’d never seen each other in their lives. If he hadn’t actually. . . cared for her then the betrayal wouldn’t feel as deep. Snapping at her was accomplishing nothing. He needed to confront her, have it out, and then he could abandon her once they reached London.

  Couldn’t he?

  He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard the furious muttering or the stomped footsteps on the creaky old floor, but there was no missing the way his door slammed open, and Noonan stood th
ere, his wispy gray hair straight on end, creating an unlikely halo around his face, his eyes ferocious. “What the bloody hell has got into you, if I may ask? I spend the whole bloody day in the bloody rain because you’re so bloody determined to get away from that place and then when I try to get even an hour’s sleep you bloody well stomp around your room, muttering to yourself! What’s gotten into you, you bloody pissant?”

  It was enough to startle Brandon out of his brooding, and he even cracked a smile. “That’s more ‘bloodies’ than I’ve ever heard in one speech. I’m impressed, old man.”

  “I’ll impress me bloody boot into your bloody backside,” Noonan snarled. “It’s that woman, isn’t it? She’s leading you around by the cock hairs and you’re like a randy boy with his first taste of quim. Get over it! Take her or don’t—I don’t give a royal fuck. Just get it out of your system so life can get back to normal. No piece of scrumhole is worth this much fuss.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that!” Brandon snapped before he could stop himself.

  Noonan looked at him with a combination of affronted dignity and pure pity. “By the cock hairs,” he repeated. “I’m sleeping in the stable.” The door slammed behind him.

  Brandon stood in the center of the room, frozen. He’d actually considered hitting Noonan at his coarse term for Emma. The old man was right—he had lost his bloody mind.

  He stalked back across the room, looking out into the courtyard. The moon had set, and everything was dark and deserted. He was alone in the main part of the inn with the woman he’d wanted so badly it had kept him alive.

  He still wanted her.

  He tried to remember the aphorisms his nanny had drilled into him. Beauty is only skin deep, pretty is as pretty does, looks fade but character persists. Nanny had had to deal with the way-too-beautiful Rohans, whose looks and wildness touched every generation. Emma’s loveliness hadn’t faded in the years since he’d last seen her—if anything she looked even more luminous, and she would be beautiful, to him at least, when she was seventy years old.

  He heard her soft footsteps on the stairs. She’d been barefoot again, he’d noticed, despising the fact that he found her long, perfect toes erotic. She was as quiet as a mouse creeping around, but she was far from mouse like. She would be hoping he would be in bed by now, and that was exactly where he should be. He should let her float silently by his door, up the narrow stairs to her bedroom. It would be best for both of them.

  It wasn’t going to happen. He moved to the door.

  Chapter 20

  Emma didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath as she tiptoed past Brandon’s bedroom. She’d almost made it when the door was shoved open, into her. She let out a panicked squawk, jumping backward, and if he hadn’t caught her arm she would have gone tumbling backward down the stairs.

  He yanked her up, then released her with unflattering speed, and she put an instinctive hand to her breast, trying to catch her breath. He was watching her with that same, cynical expression, the one she had learned to hate so much in just one short day.

  “You scared me,” she said crossly. “Now I’ve probably gone and woken the household.”

  “I doubt it. Noonan went to join Tillerson in the stable, and the Bosomworths live in a wing off the back of the kitchen. No one would hear you if you scream.”

  Her eyes shot up to his cool face. “That sounds like a threat, my lord. Is it, by any chance?”

  “No. I was thinking about making you scream in pleasure.”

  She glared at him. “You don’t know me very well, then, do you?”

  She didn’t like that small, sardonic smile that twisted his face, the ruined half as well as the beautiful one, the face that once held such a different smile. “Oh, rather better than you might expect,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She wanted to edge away from him—he hadn’t moved any closer since he’d released her, but he was too big in the small, shadowy hallway. If she moved backward she’d hit the stairs, and this time he might not stop her from falling. The door to his room was between her and the small stairway that led to the upper floor, and she wasn’t going to count on latent manners to get him out of the way. Most gentlemen didn’t consider manners necessary for women with her past, no matter how punctilious they were with their friends and wives and daughters.

  “Take it however you want it. I’m very good at reading women. I’ve had a great deal of experience.” Oddly enough it didn’t sound boastful—more a simple statement of fact.

  “I’m not an ordinary woman,” she shot back.

  “On that we’re agreed.”

  Thank God he couldn’t see the flush that had risen to her face. Another veiled insult—why wouldn’t he leave her alone? She drew herself up to her full height, usually imposing enough, but little defense against Brandon Rohan’s. “Did you open your door for a reason, my lord?” She used the title deliberately. “Or did you simply not want to miss a chance to insult me?”

  She could see the look of frustration twist his face, and for an odd moment she wanted to reach up and touch the scarred side, to stroke him gently, and it must have shown in her eyes.

  Of course he misread it. “Feeling sorry for me, Mrs. Cadbury? If I’m with a woman I do my best to keep the good side of my face in the forefront. I know people have delicate constitutions and they’re not interested in the souvenirs of war.”

  His words distracted her from her need to escape. She wrinkled her brow, remembering. “You do keep your face turned, don’t you?” she said. “I don’t think I noticed.” Indeed, he was a man of two sides, and she saw both of them equally, accepting both.

  “Again, we’re agreed that you’re no ordinary woman. My fiancée can’t bear to be in the same room with me, much less be forced to look at my scars. I don’t imagine she’ll find my body any more reassuring once she’s in my bed.”

  A host of emotions swept through her, anger at Frances Bonham, sorrow at the burden he bore, and sheer, unadulterated pain at the thought of him, stripping off his clothes and taking that cold little girl to bed with his big, strong body.

  She was far from an idiot—she had a very good idea where her own pain was coming from. Later, alone, she’d take it out and examine it like a laboratory specimen, looking for signs that she could cut out. For now she could do nothing but ache.

  “Then she’s a fool,” she said flatly, before her customary good sense could interfere. “You’re a strong, beautiful young man whose scars are a badge of honor. If she can’t see that then perhaps you shouldn’t marry her.”

  There was an arrested look in his eyes. “I’m far from young.”

  “Younger than I am.”

  “Not by much,” he said. “I hardly think that makes a difference.”

  “I’ve seen more of pain and. . .” The words failed her as she remembered his confessions in the chill light of dawn as he was fighting off death. He had been through much worse than she had, she realized suddenly.

  “And if I’m so strong and beautiful why don’t you come into my room and demonstrate your appreciation?”

  The words were a shock, another blow, as clear an insult as he could have offered, and the pain was searing. “You’re joking!”

  “I never joke about fucking. I need release and you’re the only one who’s available.”

  This had taken on the air of unreality. During that first, endless night when together they had kept death at bay, he had confessed to all sorts of things, including the torture he and his fellow soldiers had inflicted, tying the victims by the ankles and hauling them up, in order to lash them with canes and whips and batons. And swords. Emma felt like one of them—helpless, hit by blows from every angle.

  She let out a soft, silvery laugh, the sound bizarre in the shadows. “Now I understand you, my lord,” she said lightly, finding just the right tone. After all, she’d had years of experience playing a part—this would be her finest performance. “You’re one of those people wh
o derive sexual pleasure from pain. Do you like to receive it as well as deliver it? Or do you simply need to debase and insult and torture your partner in order for you to get it up?” She used the word “torture” deliberately. Mrs. Cadbury wouldn’t have known what he’d done, but of course he would, and reel from the memory, unless he was too far gone in his own darkness to care.

  It hadn’t been a good idea to give in to the temptation to taunt him. His eyes were black, inimical as he looked at her. “I have absolutely no interest in those particular variations, though I imagine you’re well versed. And I have no problem in getting it up.” Before she realized what he was doing, he caught her hand and pressed it against the front of his breeches.

  She froze. She wasn’t sure what she should do. The smart, hard woman she wanted to be would give him a laugh and a stroke, turning the tables on him, and then there was the odd need to let her fingers touch him, explore that rigidity. He was very hard, and very big, and she just stood there, her hands pressed against his erection, doing nothing to pull away.

  It seemed like ages, though it was probably no more than a few moments, until she was able to say, “Release my wrist or I’ll scream loud enough to wake London.”

  He did just that. In fact, he’d barely been holding her in place, his fingers loose, and she could have pulled free at any time.

  She did, and without thinking she slapped him.

  He blinked. “I take it that’s a no?”

  Her hand was tingling, her heart was pounding, and in the cool night air she felt blisteringly hot. She couldn’t feel the cold outline of his face against her hand—instead she could still feel the shape of his cock—hard, insistent. “No?” she echoed. “What are you talking about?” She was getting angry now, really angry. “You seriously want to bed me?”

  He just watched her, though the imprint of her hand was clear on his face. The only time she ever slapped anyone was during her first year at Mother Howard’s establishment, the time when her veil of oblivion had fallen and she’d realized what was being done to her. Mother Howard had been a relatively kind abbess, but there was no room for disobedient whores, and the men . . . she didn’t want to think about that.