His lips curled with such mocking sensuality that Emily's heart tripped. She wanted to scoop up her sewing and leave the room, but she didn't dare. It was too important for her to finish her business in this house and leave it forever.
Leave the child who could never be hers. Leave this man whose eyes brimmed with a thousand contradictions—anger and hunger, heated desire and a hidden, anguished yearning. This man who could be such a bastard but who made her want to look beyond what he had said, to find the meanings she sensed were hidden beneath that mocking smile.
Mustering all her will, Emily turned away from him and went to the settee, taking up her stitchery. She bent over it, replacing the stitches she had ripped out with even clumsier ones.
"What?" Blackheath demanded. "You have nothing to say about the fact that I find you beautiful, Emily Rose? You have nothing to say about the fact that I want you? Want you in the way a man wants a woman—naked, needing..."
"I believe that you are the one who is needing, Mr. Blackheath. But I don't think you know what it is that you need so badly."
He paced toward her, an almost feral look in his face—wild, pagan. "Shall I show you what I need, Emily Rose? Shall I?" He towered over, his hand curving under her chin. His callused palm was hot, so hot, the scent of liquor clinging to his breath.
"Give me your mouth, Emily. Those lips that are so damned soft. Open them under mine and let me taste you with my tongue. Let my hands untie the lacings of your bodice."
She stared back at him, knowing how a soldier in deadly combat must feel. She didn't dare show him how his touch was affecting her... that tingling, hateful need his rough-edged words were starting in her most secret places.
"I am no different from any other woman to you," she said.
"Aren't you?" Raw emotion flickered across those devastatingly handsome features. His laugh was almost tortured. "By God, I wish I could believe that. But then I look into your eyes, taste your lips, and I know that there has never been another woman like you. No, never, since the dawn of time."
For a heartbeat, Emily feared that he would take her as he'd threatened to do. Kiss her... and far more.
And if he did, she feared what her own response to his demands might be. But at that instant Blackheath swore, yanking his fingers away from her.
"Don't look at me like that!" he roared. "It's too late, damn you! Can't you see, it's too late!"
With a sound that was stark despair, Ian wheeled around and stalked from the room.
Chapter 12
It's too late....
Emily sank back against the settee, those tortured words roiling inside her. The look on Ian's face had been that of a damned soul peering through the gates into heaven, locked out, the way Lucy had described, banished... abandoned.
But Ian had not been abandoned by someone else like his little niece. The tragedy of Ian Blackheath, Emily knew with a sudden certainty, was that he had abandoned himself.
Somewhere he had made a conscious choice, taken roads that would lead him here—to this empty house filled only with a glittering throng of acquaintances with artificial smiles, all of them attempting to outdo one another in their depravity.
He had hidden his feelings beneath his arrogance, giving the impression that he didn't give a damn about anything, anyone—especially himself.
But none of these debauched friends had come to linger around Blackheath's forbidden east wing since Emily had arrived here. No one but Tony Gray had been here—and there was an inherent goodness about Gray's face that made it impossible for Emily to imagine the man strutting about in a toga while lewd women fawned over him.
Of course, Flavia Varden had made no secret that she was anticipating the fete with great relish. Then why was it that Emily couldn't imagine Ian in that passion-greedy woman's arms? Why couldn't she imagine a woman of Flavia's kind delving past the sheen of roguery in Ian's eyes to touch what lay beneath?
Secrets. So many secrets...
Secrets that Emily sensed because she had so many of her own.
Secrets, like the reason she had come to this room that first night.
The thought drove back the unwelcome tide of empathy she felt for the dark-haired rakehell who had stared at her with such hopeless longing and kissed her with such untamable fire.
And she knew that her instincts had been right. She must finish what she had come here for and leave because the Ian Blackheath who had come to her tonight was far more dangerous than the debauched satyr who had tried to frighten her before.
This Ian, who revealed those startling glimpses of vulnerability and loneliness, was far too enticing, too compelling.
Save me from myself...
She was certain he had whispered those words in the garden to tease her. But they had been colored with an emotion that was far from lightsome.
To save a rakehell from himself. To calm a maelstrom of pain and guide a man like Ian away from the path to destruction. It was a scene all too tempting to picture. One Emily had seen countless women embark upon in England. But in the end their dreams had been trampled beneath a rogue's impulses. Reckless impulses far too strong for mere love to conquer.
Love?
Emily stiffened. Where had that word come from? She would never trust a man like Ian with that sort of emotion. No doubt it would repel him and send him racing to a woman like Flavia at breakneck speed. Because a woman like Flavia would not expect him to give her anything except the use of his powerful body and the skill in those sun-darkened hands.
Flavia would not expect him to reveal any of the secrets locked inside him. She would not want to heal him.
Sweet heaven, not that! Emily brought herself up ruthlessly. She must never, never think that she could somehow reach Ian Blackheath, somehow help him.
She couldn't even help herself.
She stood, restless, and paced to the window where the Virginia countryside was spread out like a velvet blanket beneath the night.
In the darkness the numerous outbuildings of the plantation slept—the stables, the kitchen, the dovecote that was tucked beneath a spreading oak.
There were countless places on Blackheath land where Lucy could have hidden the doll, Emily thought a little desperately. Yet there had to be some way to reason out where the child had hidden it. If she were Lucy, where would she tuck away something treasured, something she wanted no one to find?
A place where few people would go. Somewhere... forbidden.
Forbidden.
Emily froze for a heartbeat, unable to breathe. Of course. Of all the places on this vast plantation, Lucy would doubtless take the doll to the one place she was forbidden to enter. The place everyone was forbidden to enter.
The East Wing.
Emily's heart thudded against her rib cage as she remembered Ian's warning: "If I were you, I would stay as far away from the east wing of the house as possible. You would not like what you find there."
What could there be? Something so sordid she could not even imagine? Or was he lying about what lurked there, as certainly as he was about his own soul? Blackening it in her eyes so that she wouldn't suspect the truth.
She took up a brass candleholder and touched the wick of the candle to one of the others that illuminated the room. But as she started for the door, she was disturbed by memories of Ian stumbling across her last night while she searched.
What if she encountered him again?
No. He had looked exhausted when he left the green salon a while ago. Between the throbbing pain he must have been feeling from the gash in his head, and the effects of the liquor she had smelled on his breath, he was probably in his own room by now, sprawled out across his own bed.
She quickly crushed the vivid vision she had of him there, tossing fitfully on the coverlets as he fought the secret pain that lurked in the hidden depths of his eyes.
There has never been another woman like you. He had rasped the words in the Green Salon, unable to keep the raw longing from his voice.
It's too late…
Emily caught her lip between her teeth. It was too late. For him. For her. For Lucy. Too late...
Quietly she slipped out of the room, into the hall. There would be no chance meetings in Ian's private wing. No danger of running afoul of stray servants. She could go about her search, and then... then go upstairs and peek into Lucy's bedroom, tuck her little feet beneath the coverlets just as she had Jenny's every night in their rooms in London.
She could stand, looking at Lucy's face, angelic in sleep. Serene in a way it would never be when the child was awake and waging battle against the world.
Her hand would be clutched in the lace that iced the shirt. If only Ian could see it, he might smile again and...
Stop this! Emily raged inwardly. Hurry!
She wound her way through corridors that were wide and airy to allow in the cooling flow of summer's breeze. Then she came to a pair of intricately carved doors. She hesitated for a moment, astonished by their beauty. Carved into the doors was a scene from an ancient myth. Man's awkward attempt to explain the inexplicable, to reason out how life's horrors had been poured out over the world. A lovely Pandora held a box in her hands, the lid open wide, while plagues and hunger, death and demons, swirled around her.
It was a warning.
Emily felt herself shiver. But she was not like Pandora, compelled to uncover the forbidden only because of her own curiosity. There was far too much at stake here to turn back now.
Glancing over her shoulder to make certain she was alone, Emily reached for the doorknob and was relieved to feel it turn easily in her hand. She slipped through the doors and shut them behind her.
Her single candle did little to drive back the darkness. The corridor flowed out before her as dark as the river Styx, as mysterious as the man who called this wing his own.
But as she glimpsed beautiful pictures and lovely statuary in the corridor leading east, she felt slightly more at ease. It seemed little different from the rest of Blackheath Hall. At the end of the hallway was a half-open door. Emily was drawn toward it as if it possessed some secret current, some magical spell.
Her fingers trembled on the candlestick, the light reflecting off the walls writhing in ghostly patterns, as if even the flame were frightened.
She sucked in a deep breath as she neared the door, swallowed hard as she pushed it open.
The chamber was so vast that the candlelight did nothing to chase the shadows away from the far corners of the room. Emily glanced at the area caught in the web of the candle's glow, a gasp of astonishment breaching her lips.
If ever the Lord of Darkness had wished to tempt angels away from heaven, he would have chosen this site for their seduction.
It was a room fashioned for pleasures of the flesh—unashamedly lush, sensual—and as Emily's eyes scanned the chamber, she felt a swift stab of pain as she wondered how many women Ian Blackheath had escorted down that long, forbidden hallway and into this, his private domain.
An exquisite bed was enthroned on a dais in the center of the room. A volume of love sonnets lay open upon a bedside table, twin goblets in readiness beside an elegant decanter of wine. Imported sweetmeats waited on a silver tray to tempt tongues heated by kisses, tangling in passion.
In one corner stood the oddest-shaped piece of furniture Emily had ever seen. It looked almost like a two-tiered divan covered in damask with curled bits of ornamental ironwork in the shape of vestal virgins protruding at strange angles.
Emily ran her fingers over it, totally nonplussed. What was it? A place for two people to lounge, one above the other? A convenience for a room in which there was not enough space for more pieces of furniture?
But that made no sense at all. This room was gigantic.
She raised her gaze again to look around, her eyes now focusing on the walls.
A hot flush stained her cheeks at what she saw, but there was such amazing beauty that she couldn't tear her gaze away.
Black velvet was looped back to reveal stunningly beautiful murals that covered the walls from the floor to the soaring ceilings. Figures that Emily recognized as the most famed lovers of myth succumbed to passion there upon the walls, feeding the flames of their desire.
Orpheus reveled in Eurydice's arms, Jason arched his muscular body against the lush breasts of Medea. Persephone, willing and wanton, forgot her anguished separation from her mother in the heated embrace of Hades, the illicit pleasures he schooled her in darker and more forbidden than his mythical domain.
While above the strange piece of furniture, Cupid, perfection in masculine face and form, adored Psyche with his hands and mouth. The likeness was a study in exquisite line and shadow, portraying the darkness in which the two loved, so that the mortal Psyche could not look upon the face of the god who was her husband.
Emily stepped nearer the image of the Roman god of erotic love, transfixed as she tried to make out the features the artist had painted veiled in shadow. There was something vaguely familiar about the angle of jaw, the thick, rippling darkness of his hair, the straight, aristocratic nose, the mouth, full and soft and sensual.
The image seemed so real that Emily almost reached out to touch it. But as she stared into Cupid's heavy-lidded eyes her breath caught at the fierce yearning in eyes of night-shadowed blue.
"Sweet heaven, it... it's Ian."
"Very perceptive."
The hard voice made Emily wheel around, a scream caught in her throat as candlelight groped with tentative fingers beneath a midnight velvet curtain that shielded a window seat.
In a heartbeat the sight imprinted itself in her mind forever. Gold ribbons of light tangled in glossy dark hair and flowed over features so unyielding that Emily could scarce draw breath.
Ian.
He lounged against a scarlet cushion, every bit as sensual and as threatening as the image of the Roman gods all around her. Black breeches were molded tight against the long thighs stretched out before him. His shirt was open, those strong tanned fingers curved around the stem of a goblet half full of something intoxicating.
Dear God, what had he been doing here? she thought a little wildly. Sitting in the darkness, like Hades, alone?
The candlelight writhed drunkenly in her shaking hand, as she watched him uncoil himself from the seat with the grace of a stalking panther. He drained the goblet then paced toward her, slowly, deliberately, his upper lip curled in a snarl that was terrifying.
But even though his eyes were filled with anger and dark desire, Emily could see in them the yearning that the artist had captured in the mural. And she felt as if she could touch the pain that seemed to vibrate from every pore of his body.
He was dangerous. Yes. In the same way an animal was, caught in some snare he alone could see. Yet never had she felt such an urgent need to reach out and release him.
He took the candle from her hand then turned to touch its flame to the cascade of tapers in a silver branch on the table beside the odd-looking settee. The room was washed in light.
If it had been sinfully beautiful before, now it was even more stunning, more imposing....
Not with the lewdness that some of Alexander's friends had displayed on occasion. Rather, the mythical men, locked in passion with their lovers, were strangely tender despite their hot desire, and their women were both ardent and adoring.
Passion. Never had Emily seen the secrets between a man and a woman so vividly displayed. Never had she guessed that the awkward fumbling she and Alexander had experienced beneath the sheets of their bridal bed could be spun out into a primal dance that was at once awesomely beautiful and wildly sensual.
Never had she been able to envision quite so clearly what the heat in Ian Blackheath's hands had promised her.
But her woman's body had known. It had shuddered and tingled and burned. Her mouth had known when it opened beneath his kiss, allowing him entry.
He turned away from the candles, his eyes finding hers again, harsh, compelling. "The ar
tist thought that it might be amusing for me to pose for one of the murals. I was happy to oblige him, although it was difficult to pose with such a beautiful lady in my arms for so many hours, feel her skin beneath me, her feminine charm, and not act on my baser impulses. Of course, any sacrifice in the name of art."
Emily stared at him, all words trapped in her throat as certainly as she was trapped in this room, her escape cut off by this hard-eyed man with the mouth of a fallen angel.
"What are you doing here, Emily Rose? Searching for a bed?" his words sounded a trifle slurred with drink, his laugh a trifle ugly. "By God, my little beauty, this time you've assuredly found one."
"I came to search for the doll Lucy took from my shop," Emily flung back, resolved not to show him how terrified she was. "I thought... thought she might have hidden it here."
"The doll?" His eyes narrowed. He took a step closer. The aura of sensuality about him was so thick Emily could scarce draw breath. "Do you mean to tell me that you sat with the child all day, that you listened to her, heard her pain, and you would still take the doll away from her? What was the sewing basket, Emily Rose? And all those lovely smiles you gave to Lucy? Were they bribes to get what you wanted?"
"I just—just need to see the pattern of the gown. I already have orders—"
"Tell the women who made them to go to the devil. You don't need their coin anymore. I'm certain you have other talents besides stitchery. You are far too beautiful to be wasted as a milliner, to spend your life bending over your needlework until these lovely shoulders grow stooped, those eyes of yours, so damn wide and wondering and filled with promise becoming squinty from plying your needle in the dimness."
His hand reached out, tangling in a silken skein of her hair. "No, Emily, you were fashioned for far different pursuits. To open yourself to a man, to take his passion. To feel it break over you, so wild you go mad with the power of it."
"I've already been a man's wife," she said in a shaky voice.
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