Julia Justiss

by Wicked Wager

  It took two attempts before he could get his voice to function. “Are you unhurt?” he was finally able to demand.

  “I’m fine!” Jenna said, trying to wriggle out from under him. “But how careless of the hunter to discharge his weapon so close to the main highway. ’Tis a wonder—”

  “’Twas no hunter,” Tony said, instantly convinced in the wake of Jenna’s fall that this had not been a random shot. When Jenna tried to rise, he pushed her back down. “Please, Jenna, not yet.” A hand on her shoulder to keep her from moving, he rapidly surveyed the area.

  “Pack up everything and return to the coach,” he directed Sancha and the footmen, “then have the coachman drive you and my horse back down the hill to that small inn we passed. I’ll conceal Lady Fairchild in the copse and make sure whoever fired that bullet is no longer in the vicinity. Once I’m sure it’s safe, we’ll make our way to the inn under the cover of the trees.”

  “Should you not take her in the coach?” Sancha asked in a low, urgent voice.

  “Too much open ground between here and there.” He gestured to where the vehicle was drawn up some two hundred yards away. “I’ll not give whoever might be watching a clear field of fire while she crosses this meadow.”

  “Aye, my lord. Keep her safe. We do as you say.”

  “Oh, really, Sancha, there’s no need…” Jenna’s words trailed off as, swiftly following Tony’s instructions, the maid piled dishes in one of the baskets and set off with it at a trot. Her eyes widening, Jenna’s gaze followed the girl, obviously surprised by her instant compliance.

  She looked back at Tony, eyebrows raised. “You certainly succeeded in spooking Sancha,” she said, amusement mingled with aggravation in her tone. “But at the risk of stating the obvious, my lord, this isn’t Spain, nor are there likely to be French sharpshooters trying to use us for target practice.”

  “That bullet was entirely too close, Jenna. I’ll not risk allowing whoever fired it another shot. Now, while I remain in front of you, back quickly into the trees.”

  “Nelthorpe, this is ridiculous!”

  “Just do it, Jenna! I’ll explain later.” Uttering a quick prayer of thanks that the thick blanket on which they’d been picnicking was a dull brown, he gathered it up. “James,” he called to the footman who was completing the packing of the crockery, “a hand up, if you please.”

  Jenna looked for a moment as if she would protest further, but by the time the footman had hauled Tony back to his feet, she evidently had decided to cooperate—at least for the moment. Cautiously, as he’d instructed her, she began to back toward the thick stand of evergreens.

  “Thank you,” he said as he covered her movements, a trace of humor in his voice. “I was afraid for a moment you were going to make me carry you.”

  As soon as they’d penetrated within the thick cloak of greenery, Tony came to her side and seized her hand, half-dragging her across a small clearing to a large fir tree. Pulling her beneath its sheltering branches, he threw the blanket over her, leaving only her face free.

  With a soft exclamation of annoyance, she whispered, “Now I’m to be swaddled like a bandit? This delusion has gone far enough! Why would anyone shoot at us?”

  “Trust me a bit longer, Jenna,” he whispered back. “I’m not hallucinating that I’m back on some Peninsular battlefield. Stay here and don’t move, speak, or do more than breathe until I get back.”

  “There’d better be a good explanation for all this when you do,” she muttered.

  “There will be. Do you still carry that knife?” When she nodded, he continued, “Take it out. And if anyone but me comes near, use it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HOPING HE’D CONVINCED JENNA to remain under cover, Tony limped back to the edge of the copse. Was he making too much of the incident?

  But after peering out over the meadow in the direction from which the bullet had been fired, his soldier’s instinct, which had saved his neck on several occasions, still warned him the shot had been deliberate.

  For one, except for the dense grove in which he’d hidden Jenna, the area was relatively open, not prime territory for hunting game of any sort, particularly not with its position adjacent to a major thoroughfare. Across the road beyond the meadow, the ground rose under a scattering of trees, barren now of leaves but numerous enough to offer cover and a vantage point to an attacker.

  The same open ground that had led him to conceal Jenna rather than send her back to the carriage would now prove useful. Knowing that no one could cross the meadow to hunt for her without Tony seeing him, he would be able to search the hillock from which the shot had been fired.

  Of course, to do so, he would first have to cross that same field, leaving himself open to a second shot, should an attacker still be lurking. But given how relatively useless his war injuries had left him, he couldn’t see why anyone would go to the bother of putting a bullet in him. ’Twas far more likely that Jenna had been the target. To protect her, he needed to find out as much as possible about this attack.

  A slow, deadly rage coiling in his gut, he limped from behind the sheltering evergreens. Bad knee or no, he’d welcome the opportunity to confront anyone who would target a defenseless, unarmed woman.

  Pausing first by the tree in which the bullet had lodged, Tony estimated its approximate trajectory, then loped awkwardly across the meadow and into the trees.

  After a bit of searching, he found a wide oak with a clear view over the meadow, behind which the greenery had been matted down. From the spot, boot prints in the soft earth led to fresh horse droppings and a set of arriving and departing hoof prints. Concluding from those that whoever had ambushed them had already departed, Tony retraced his steps to the copse.

  That it had been an ambush, he was now virtually certain.

  Which meant, like it or not, he would have to share his suspicions with Jenna.

  Shouldering his way back into the thicket, Tony was pleased to note that not only had Jenna stayed hidden, so well was she concealed that, even knowing she was somewhere under the fir tree, he could not locate her. At his call, she pulled back the branches, gesturing for him to follow her through a narrow tunnel of greenery to a spot beneath another fir where she’d spread the blanket over a cushion of pine straw. “Sit,” she said, pointing to the makeshift couch, “and tell me what this is all about.”

  Grateful he wouldn’t have to try to haul himself up from flat ground, Tony lowered himself to the wool-cushioned surface.

  “Quite a bower you’ve created,” he said.

  “I’ve had a bit of practice over the years. But tell me, what did you find, and why did you think someone would fire on us?”

  Briefly he described the scene on the hillock and then reluctantly related the questions that troubled him about her accident.

  He saw on her expressive face the moment incredulity progressed to doubt. “You—you actually think,” she cried, interrupting his narrative, “that someone deliberately set out to rob me of my child?”

  “All I have are suspicions. Before I can draw any intelligent conclusions, I’ll need to question the groom involved.”

  “Who was conveniently turned off,” she muttered. Then she straightened, her eyes widening as the full implications of his doubts penetrated. “B-but that would mean,” she gasped, “that Garrett’s own cousin conspired to injure me? The man under whose roof I’ve been living for nearly two months? No, I cannot believe it!”

  “If the accident was deliberate—and mind, I’m not claiming that yet—’twas not necessarily Bayard who arranged it. Can you think of others who might wish you ill?”

  Understanding flashed in her eyes. “The widow at Garrett’s reception who accosted me—And…and Lucinda Blaine, too, I suppose. Perhaps even Aunt Hetty, who seems to resent my presence so fiercely. Though I don’t know how any but my husband’s aunt could have known I was with child.”

  “If your relations knew, their servants did. Such news travels.”
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  “But how could any woman be vicious, monstrous enough to plan and execute such a thing?”

  He sighed. “Despite living with an army, you’re still such an innocent. Venality exists in the world, Jenna.” Pushing away memories he had no desire to examine, he said, “I’ve seen its face.”

  She studied him. “While you were earning your tarnished reputation?”

  All his life, he thought, but he didn’t want to talk about his father. Besides, they needed to concentrate on the problem at hand. “Grief could, I suspect, be as effective as a lust for power in driving someone beyond the restraint of reason. As could jealousy.”

  “But if making me lose the child were the goal, why would someone be firing on me now?”

  That was the question that troubled him. “I don’t know. Without the child, you are no longer a threat to Bayard and the succession. Perhaps the widow’s grief-maddened rage would not be satisfied unless you too are dead, like her husband? Or did Lucinda Blaine find having you in the midst of the ton, still carrying Garrett’s name and recognized as his wife, too much to tolerate?” He sighed. “I admit, it all seems rather far-fetched.”

  Her face troubled, she nodded agreement. “Perhaps the fall and the shot are just coincidence.”

  “Perhaps,” he conceded. “But that bullet in the tree out there is real. We can’t afford to underestimate the gravity of the incident until I’ve had time to investigate more thoroughly.”

  He frowned, the implications of this new attack, if it had been planned as an attack on her, suddenly crystallizing. “However, if this is not some odd coincidence, you are still in danger. You really should leave Fairchild House.”

  She laughed shortly. “And go where?”

  “Could you not arrange to stay with Lady Charlotte for a time?”

  She shook her head. “If I am in danger, I would not wish to put someone else at risk. Besides, I’m my father’s daughter, and cannot stomach running from a threat. If someone deliberately caused the accident that cost me my child, I want to find out. I want to deal with the person or persons responsible. And if there is a plot to discover, I am more likely to find it if I remain at Fairchild House, going on as normal.”

  “Do you really think you can go back to Fairchild House with the doubts you now harbor and ‘go on as normal’? You’ve never been one to dissemble. For your own safety, as well as to further the investigation, you should leave. Inform the Fairchilds you wish to visit old friends, or—”

  She held up a hand. “Don’t try to tell me I should stay away while you search for the truth. This is my life, my child who was lost, and I cannot sit by idly doing nothing!”

  “Even if remaining might place your life in greater danger? That’s not a risk I’m prepared to accept.”

  “’Tis not your risk to accept. Besides, of what great value is my life? Oh, I go through the motions of doing something useful. But beneath the surface…”

  She paused and took a deep breath, her eyes filling with tears and on her face that expression of numb anguish he’d seen that night on the bridge over the Serpentine.

  “Beneath the surface,” she continued, her voice hardly above a whisper, “there is…nothing.”

  “Nonsense,” he countered, alarm prickling his nerves. “You have your work, your friends—”

  “I have nothing, nothing that truly matters!” she cried. “Don’t you see that? The only life I’ve ever known, everyone I’ve ever loved—my mother and father, Garrett, and now his child—all of it is gone.”

  She looked up, accusation in her face and raw agony in her eyes. “Why? Why did he have to die, and you lived?”

  No sooner had the words left her lips than she gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth, shaking her head as if to deny what she’d just uttered. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t you think I ask myself that every day?” he interrupted, her outrage touching some deep answering chord within him. “Why I was spared when so many other men—worthier men, braver men, were taken?”

  Perhaps it was delayed reaction to the shock of being shot at, or perhaps her grief, too rigidly restrained for too long, just overcame her. Whatever the reason, she put her head in her hands and began to weep.

  The deep, wrenching sobs shook her slim body and clawed at his heart. Unable to bear watching, he leaned over and pulled her into his arms.

  “Please, querida, don’t cry,” he whispered into her hair while she clung, weeping, to his chest. “Don’t you know I would have died in his place, to make you happy?”

  Rocking her in his arms, stroking her hair and muttering endearments, he held her until the gasping sobs slowed and her breathing quieted. Finally she lifted her head from his chest.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered again. “For—for saying that. For—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered back fiercely. Tipping up her chin, he kissed her.

  ’Twas a gentle caress, meant to comfort and reassure—at least, he thought he’d meant to begin thus. But as he kissed her, the pressure of her lips—or was it his?—grew more intense, his grip on her—or was it hers on him?—tightened. And at some point, his lips parted at the urging of her tongue.

  He had no time to puzzle it out, for almost before he realized what was happening, her hands were stroking his shoulders, her mouth urgent, her tongue aggressively exploring his, and tenderness had dissolved into a fire that seared him to the marrow.

  Before prudence melted completely and all the blood in his brain rushed to his nether regions, he made himself break the kiss and pull away. “Jenna, don’t! I want this—Lord knows how much I want it—but you will hate yourself for it. You know that!”

  She looked up at him, her eyes dark with desire and anguish. “Please, Tony, don’t push me away. Don’t leave me all alone!”

  Please, Tony… When she seemed to need him so badly and called him by name, how could he not heed her plea?

  Were he a better man, he might have summoned the wit to find a safer way. As it was, when she reached up and pulled his head down, captured his lips and delved into his mouth, his rioting senses rejoiced. Only the last, tiny functioning bit of his brain wondered despairingly whether, after this voyage to heaven was done, she would ever forgive him.

  His final conscious thought before he gave himself up to the long-anticipated pleasure of her arms was if he must face hell’s wrath later, he would savor every taste of paradise now.

  He tried, he really did try, to hold himself back, slow the pace, but Jenna was having none of it. Her tongue scouring his, she nibbled and sucked at his mouth while her impatient fingers pulled at his garments. Swiftly dispensing with the fastenings of his greatcoat, she tugged aside his coat and waistcoat, yanked at his shirt. He heard the protesting rent of fabric and then, in an electrifying slide that made him gasp, felt the soft warmth of her hands against the bare skin of his chest.

  He tried to pull her closer, but she fended him off, mimicking with her fingers on his nipples the glancing caresses of her tongue against his. Groaning, he stilled, allowing her this pas de deux of tongue and fingertip, pleasure coursing through him and bringing him very close to the limits of his control.

  He would like to have returned the favor, but her pelisse and gown were protected by an army of tiny fastenings his lust-clumsy fingers could not conquer. While he fumbled at her neckline, she caught his hands, moved them down to her skirts.

  Comprehending the request, he began pulling the fabric upwards, hungry for the feel of her bare skin under his hands. At last he worked the material up high enough to be able to stroke the glorious roundness of her calves.

  Intent on his goal, he’d just blessed his woolen trousers, whose muffling thickness might allow him to stave off completion long enough to bare and caress and taste her essence, when her clever fingers suddenly transferred themselves to his trouser flap. His hands, any remaining thought and all movement stilled as she plucked open the first straining button.

>   With a fumbling, disjointed movement he tried to resume his own quest, but she caught his hand. Still nibbling and teasing his tongue, she popped open two more buttons.

  Much as he wanted to taste her, knowing instinctively what she intended, he could not bring himself to stop her, even though her touch there might well catapult him beyond control. Clever torturess that she was, she seemed to sense he would not try to prevent what her swift, deliberate actions promised.

  He sucked in a breath at the feel of chill air against his overheated member, then stopped breathing altogether when she grasped him and took his measure in one firm stroke of his shaft. Her tongue still working his, she feathered her fingers up and down his length, caressed with her thumbs the taut throbbing skin at his tip.

  Well beyond words or caution, immobilized by her touch, he didn’t think the sensations could get more intense without driving him over the edge—until in one swift motion, she bent and tasted him. After laving the head of his erection with quick, glancing strokes, she paused to suckle, sending scorching waves of pleasure radiating throughout his body and wrenching a cry from his throat.

  Seeming to sense just how close to the precipice she’d driven him, she released him and moved away. Before the guttural exclamation of protest left his lips, she’d guided him back against the pinestraw cushioning, pulled up her skirts, and straddled him.

  For a moment the sheer wonder of finding himself enclosed within her warm flesh paralyzed him, swelled his chest with a sweetness as piercingly intense as his desire. But before he had a chance to savor it, to pull her face to his and cover it with kisses, she began to rock her hips, driving him deeper.

  Wanting desperately for the loving to be as rapturous for her as it was for him, he bit his lip, knowing he wouldn’t be able to last much longer under that exquisite onslaught. But suddenly she tensed, her fingers biting into his shoulders as she uttered a fierce cry.

  Caught off guard by the swiftness of her climax, he exterminated the protest of his thwarted body and simply held her, drinking in the sound of her gasping breaths as they eased and steadied. Relieved to have pleased her, loath as he was to have passion ended, he was about to make himself pull gently away when, hugging him close, she once again rocked her hips.