I squeezed Richard’s hand, very gently, because bruises and scrapes marred the knuckles and flesh. Richard returned the pressure and turned his head to one side so he could watch me. He wouldn’t willingly take his attention away from me now.
Paul lay a little way away. A man knelt by his side. Unlike Richard, Paul was unconscious. The man had stripped and cut his clothing off, so he lay naked, under our scrutiny. No place for modesty here. When I scanned his body, my horrified gaze remained on his foot, which was sickeningly twisted to one side and limp.
It was swollen, dark with bad blood, and when Carier touched the sole of the foot, nothing happened. He should have responded to the touch, even unconscious. Even though Paul’s skin was of an olive tone, the foot was darker, with streaks of red marring it. I swallowed. Both Carier and I knew what we had to do if we were to save Paul’s life. Those streaks contained poison that would infect the rest of his body and kill him if we didn’t act quickly and decisively. I had helped in a similar situation years before, when a man had fallen on a scythe, sustained a relatively minor injury and bound the wound lightly. Days later, he came to us, too late to save the limb, but in time to save his life. Not that it helped him later, when employers refused his services.
Now Paul was in the same physical condition. And the same solution rode us. I glanced over to where Richard had rolled on to his side so he could watch me. He nodded, very slightly but I saw it, and it gave me the courage to say what I had to. “It has to come off.”
“Can you assist, ma’am? I’m sure I can find someone to help if you feel you cannot,” Carier asked.
“Yes, I can help. Let’s do it now, before he has a chance to wake. If we do this while he is conscious, he’ll perish from the shock.”
Carier set his mouth to a firm line. “Likely as not. Yes.” He nodded to someone behind me. One of the Thompson’s men, who handed him a roll of canvas, which I knew from past experience held his medical supplies. Carier handed the man an iron, which the footman took away to put in the fire. We’d have to cauterise the wounds, or Paul would bleed to death. But it would take hours to get back to the house, and by then the infection could have spread, and he’d lose more than a foot.
I will not go into the details of the operation. Suffice it to say that we had the foot removed and the stump cauterised, the blood vessels tied off and the wound bound in clean linen as quickly as we could. Carier and I had worked together before, and one-word comments sufficed. We trusted each other’s abilities, and we did the job as cleanly as possible, given the circumstances.
Paul lost some blood, but not enough to endanger his life if we were careful. All through the procedure I felt Richard’s gaze on me, steady and stronger than he should have been. I knew it was for me. Someone had brought fresh water to him, and some bread. They must have starved these past four days. He drank and ate, all the while watching me.
To our relief, Paul didn’t regain consciousness while we were operating. But we had to get him back to the house and awake to assure ourselves that he was, apart from his injury, ready to recover. We had sent word back to Lizzie for carriages and more help, and the welcome news that we’d recovered them, alive. No more.
We rested. I lay next to Richard, and we curved blankets around us and fell into a light doze, too tired to do more than clasp hands. Nevertheless, it was enough.
Hours later, I don’t know how many, I was shocked to see the vision of my sister. She climbed over the rubble, a servant in attendance, holding her skirts high to prevent herself from stumbling on them. She looked fresh and clean, an angel visiting the poor rabble in the streets. Of which I was one. Dirt streaked my hands, together with the blood from her husband. We had saved the fresh water for the people who needed it most, and I wasn’t a priority.
As she sank to her knees beside Paul, I turned my attention back to Richard. He fought his hand free of the blankets that covered him and reached for mine once more. Grasping it, I felt the stress and sleeplessness of the past few days sweep over me like the great wave that had devastated Lisbon. The rare hours of snatched repose were nowhere near enough. I wept, and he watched, too weak to hold me. But he understood. He murmured words I could hardly hear, but his musical tones were enough.
Nichols touched my shoulder. “Come, ma’am. We’ve found a door to lift their lordships. The men will carry them to the place where the carriages wait.”
I swiped my sleeve over my eyes and then blew my nose, again on my sleeve, since I wore no petticoat and handkerchiefs were an unheard of luxury in this place. Like the urchins in the street, suddenly I understood that their ill manners weren’t necessarily because they didn’t know any better. It was because they didn’t have the means to follow them. Etiquette could only work if one was rich enough to follow the edicts. An odd thing to realise now.
Little revelations as well as big ones. While I couldn’t stop my tears overflowing, I could feel the burdens leaving me. If Richard fell ill over the next few days, I had it in me to care for him. I wouldn’t have to worry about him alone, needing what I could bring him. I didn’t have to worry about a future life without him.
I stood and only then saw the two bodies laid out on the ground. The unknown man, who must have been the cook Carier had spoken of, had obviously been dead for days. I didn’t approach his corpse. I could do nothing there.
The other hadn’t been dead as long. I stared down at the body of my husband’s firstborn son.
His hair gleamed gold, an echo of his father’s, and the face, now in repose, appeared its true age. Young. So young my heart went out to him. He’d never see twenty. A pale, flawless complexion, with the clever, clear-cut features I saw in his father every day when I woke. He was lithe of limb and beautiful, even in death. I knelt by his side and prayed. They were the only prayers his body was likely to get, and I hoped they’d help to speed his soul to heaven. So full of promise, he’d destroyed it all by his vicious, driving ambition, that ambition that had urged him to commit acts a boy of his age shouldn’t even know, much less take part in.
I recalled what Richard’s life had been at that age. He’d lost his brother, Gervase, to exile. He was abroad with Carier, meeting Gervase in secret before his twin left for India, doing the Grand Tour, teaching himself to be the immaculate, heartless man who the world saw when he returned home, the brilliant leader of society and inventor of vice, determined to make society pay for the destruction it had helped wreak on Gervase.
Freed of its constraints, the rigid ruts I’d forced it into in the last few days, my thoughts ran riot, and too tired to stop the process, I let them go. I returned to my husband, stumbling in my fatigue.
The men loaded Richard onto a door and carried him the mile to where the carriage drivers had found a place to wait and guard the vehicles. Already people were converging on them, but the men Lizzie had hired to accompany us rode around the vehicles with loaded weapons, prohibiting access.
It was a tragedy that we couldn’t offer more help, but the carriages would hold us and our patients, and the footmen who were returning with us. We left two to clear up and follow in short order. They would bury the bodies as well as they could. Then we’d leave the site to its sad fate.
Chapter Nineteen
“Rose.”
The sound, soft as it was, woke me from exhausted slumber. I lay on a truckle bed in the bedroom, unable to leave Richard now that I had him back.
Immediately I sprang to my feet. It was dark, the curtains drawn, but a glimmer of light showed through the cracks.
Oh God, he must be frantic, waking up to find that. My husband had always hated being closed in, and after the experience he’d just gone through, must hate it even more.
“I’m sorry.”
I crossed the room, but before I reached the windows, he spoke again. “It doesn’t matter. Come here. I need you, not the light.”
Obediently I went and stood on the side of the bed. The floor was chilly under my feet, but I repressed
my shivers. The morning was cold too.
He threw back the covers. “Get in.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“I want to hold you. Get in.”
Unable to resist the temptation, I climbed in next to him and snuggled close, letting him slide his arm around my waist. “I’ll get up today,” he said.
“You’re not well.”
“I’m perfectly well. I’ve lain here for three days now, and if I don’t rise and see to business, I’ll go mad. My foot is nearly healed, and I can bear my weight on it.” He held me more firmly when I started. “I visited the necessary while you were asleep, using the cane Carier thoughtfully placed within reach. I’m sure it was to strike the wall or the floor if I needed help, but it supported me well enough. I’ve eaten, drunk, rested, even greeted our children yesterday, and now it’s time to start living again.”
He touched his lips to my forehead. It felt like heaven. By instinct, I lifted my chin, and he dropped a kiss on my mouth. It turned into something neither of us expected, and we shared a long, leisurely kiss of love and welcome. I had come home, truly come home.
“Sweetheart, I want to make love to you. I want to prove that I’m alive, that you’re here with me and it’s not another fevered dream. My love, mi adorata, I can’t go another minute without it.”
I was worried about him, but the entreaty in his eyes let loose the restraint I’d been holding back for so long. I wanted him so badly. I wouldn’t let myself think, not about anything.
I reached up and sealed our mouths together with the kind of kiss I wanted to give and receive.
He touched my lips with his tongue, traced their shape. My frantic urgency seemed lost on him because he took his time, easing into my mouth with a luscious richness that melted my concerns away and forced me to concentrate on the moment. He could do this for weeks, months, years and I’d never tire of it, always want more.
He devoured me, as if we’d been apart for months, and in a way, we had been. This time we wouldn’t stop.
We both wore nightwear, but not for long. His bruises had faded to greenish yellow, but he wouldn’t let me soothe them. He tossed our nightwear aside and leaned up to look at me. “So beautiful, and all mine.” He glanced at the light bandage that covered the gunshot wound Jerry had given me.
When he lifted his gaze to my face, I smiled and shook my head. “An inconvenience, no more.”
He touched his lips to my mouth, then down to the hollow at the base of my throat, a place he knew drove my senses to high alert, and down farther. He covered my breasts with his hands and took a nipple between thumb and forefinger. “I love the way they peak for me. It tells me you want me, that you can’t resist me. As I can’t resist you. I don’t intend to try.” He bent then and sucked a nipple deeply into his mouth, releasing it to move to the other and give it the same treatment. Short, intense, like a steel needle to my nerves, he roused me to almost unbearable levels. But he wasn’t done yet. Sliding his hand down my side, from my breast to my hip and my thigh, he did it again. “A delicious curve, made for a man’s hand.”
I reciprocated. “And this. Masculine and mine.” His muscles swelled under their covering of satiny skin. Despite the bruises, it still felt the same. His touch was addictive, as always, and I would never get enough of holding him. If I lost him—
He must have seen my sudden fear because he stopped his caresses. “Look at me, Rose. Look at me.” I lifted my gaze to his. “We are here,” he said. “This is now, and that is all we have. We only have this moment, this time, and we should live it. That’s what I got back in those days in the cellar. The immediacy of now. Think of nothing else but us, you and me, here in this bed, loving each other. Can you do that?”
I swallowed and understood. “Yes, I know, I understand.”
“Then touch me and know that I’m here.”
I was only too willing to obey him. His sex stood hard and ready for me, and I wanted him. A bead of moisture gathered at the tiny opening at the tip, and I touched it, smoothed it over the shiny head.
He groaned, and his fist clenched in the sheets by my side. “Not too much, my love. I want to get inside you first.”
With a wry smile he swung his body over mine and settled between my thighs when I opened them for him and drew up my knees. I clasped his narrow hips between them, loving the way he pushed my thighs wide and caressed me with his shaft. He slid down my wet crease, lifted and slid again, catching the pearl of passion, which, he told me, was correctly called the clitoris. I preferred pearl.
Richard had expanded my vocabulary in a most lascivious way and encouraged me to show him everything I wanted to in the privacy of our bedchamber. And occasionally elsewhere too. He’d unlock the door and add the spice of possible discovery to our trysts. He wanted me with an eagerness I could only respond to with equal need, and his honesty forced me to drop any pretence at maidenly modesty. Or any other kind of modesty.
Now, naked as nature intended, we explored each other’s bodies with a greed born of abstinence and a reconnection spiced by rebirth. He stroked me, slid his fingers deep into my body and found the spot that drove me wild. Mercilessly he stroked, murmuring my name and how much he wanted me. “You will come, Rose, and then I’ll come inside you. We’re not stopping this time, my love.”
I poured a litany of pleas and begging, alternately wanting him to stop and then do it more, not stop until he caused that explosion that came to me new-minted. My senses lifted, became aware of the scents of our bodies, the slightly foreign perfume of the soap we’d washed him in, not his usual one, and the musk of his arousal, so yearned for, here with me now. My sharper aroma rose to wreathe us in a sensuous perfume of our own making. His skin slid against mine, creating a friction, an embrace that was wholly Richard, one I’d know anywhere. From now on I could wake in the night and reach for him, and he’d be there.
I opened my mouth to scream, but he covered my lips with his own, taking me in a devastating explosion of mind and spirit. I pulsed around him, my body contracting in waves of magnitude, gripping him and then releasing. I lost my mind, coming to when he pushed his shaft deep inside me.
Then he stopped. Lifting his upper body, leaning on his elbows, he gazed at me, so that when I opened my eyes I found him there, waiting. He was smiling. “Sometimes I wonder, why you, why me? How did we meet all that time ago? If I’d found you after you’d come to London, if you belonged to someone else, I would have moved heaven and earth to get you, broken every law there was if I could have you. But we got there in time. If not for your trust and your generosity that day when you offered me everything you had, I might have missed you, might have done something stupid, like sacrifice myself for my family honour. The family can go hang, then and now.” With a low laugh, he withdrew and plunged back, taking me to heights he’d taught me to abandon myself to enjoy.
I thought I was worn out after the climax he’d given me. I was wrong.
I cried out helplessly, giving myself up to him. Everything I was, everything I could be, was in his hands, in his talented body, at present pounding into me. He entered, touched, retreated, thrust, until I lost count of what day it was, or why I should worry about him. Nothing. His strength surrounded me, as it always did, as it always would, and then, in that moment of stillness before my body exploded with our passion, he said, “I love you.”
I gasped his name, panted that I loved him, and then we climaxed together, his hot essence jetting into me, as I gripped him, cried his name over and over as if it would save me.
As it had.
When he finally drew away, he gave a chuckle and touched his forehead to mine. “We’re ready to turn the page and begin again.” He rolled to one side, taking me with him. I curled in, wanting contact with him all over me. I felt his firm, warm body next to mine and knew it was enough, for now. Until the fever of passion took us again, and it would, in the not-too-distant future.
I hadn’t realised how exhausting worry could be, but
I knew now. I knew that must have added to Richard’s burden when I had fallen ill after the birth of our sons, and recognised the size of the weight he had unstintingly carried for the last few months.
I glanced around. The light filtering through the drapes was brighter now. Day had arrived. “Should I draw the curtains now?”
He chuckled. “No. I honestly don’t mind them being closed. I seem to have overcome my fear, although I would have wished to do it some other way. I had too much to think of at first, and by the time the confines of our imprisonment had borne on me, I was too concerned with other matters to give it much thought. I want to be close to you, and being enclosed like this adds a certain intimacy to our situation. Don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do.” Unlike Richard, I had always enjoyed the privacy afforded by small spaces. I had shared bedrooms for most of my life, with my sisters, and the luxury of a space of one’s own could never be overestimated in my opinion. “Can you sleep better like this?”
He chuckled. “With you in my arms? Indubitably. But I seem to have done nothing but sleep during the last three days. That and eat.” He kissed me, lingering over my lips like a dish he was reluctant to leave. His expression turned grave. “I’m ready to talk about it, if you want to hear.”
“Are you sure?”
He pressed his lips against my hair before he answered. “Yes. While it’s fresh in my mind. It was a nasty experience, and I have a feeling that the mind, which likes to forget the worst parts of everything, will discard it as soon as it can.”
“I’ll make sure your account is recorded. Tell me, Richard. If you want to.”
“I want to.” His voice, strong again, but low, created a cocoon of intimacy between us that I never wanted to end. He drew a breath, kissed my forehead and tilted up my chin once more so he could watch me while he spoke. “Carier was there at the start. I presume he told you. Forcing us down into the cellar actually protected us from the explosion. John must have set his bomb in the upper rooms. He showed me bloody hair, said the children were dead, and you were too. He wanted me to know so I’d die despairing. It only made me more determined to escape.”
Lisbon: Richard and Rose, Book 8 Page 22
