Seduced by a Stranger

by Eve Silver

  And a second event, where a girl’s body had been found.

  Unease crawled through her like a centipede, making her shiver.

  That day when she and Gabriel had walked in the graveyard, when he had gifted her with the red and gold tin, he had blocked her path and kept her from seeing the headstone in the corner. Madeline’s bewildering account made her suspect that the murdered girl was buried there.

  But that knowledge only circled back to more questions. Why had Gabriel kept her from seeing the stone? Had he kept her from it? Thinking back on it now, she wondered if she could possibly have misread his actions. Perhaps he had only been intent on holding her attention long enough to offer his gift.

  And the girl who was buried there… had she been murdered as Madeline intimated, or had she died in some horrific accident? And what did her death have to do with Gabriel, or with Madeline’s assertion that she had watched him from the woods while he killed a bird?

  None of this made sense, and Catherine had no way to tell if all was fact or all was a fantastical nightmare Madeline had carried forward to her waking hours.

  Perhaps the truth was some patchwork of the two.

  The place to start was the beginning, and so she picked up that thread of Madeline’s ramblings.

  “Madeline,” she said, taking her friend’s hand between her own. “What happened to the birds? Tell me about them.” Turning her head on the pillow, Madeline smiled, serene and calm. “I hear them singing. Such a lovely day. The birds are singing.”

  They were. Catherine could hear them through the glass of the window. But it appeared she would hear no more of Madeline’s tale. Not now.

  Whatever brief coherence had touched her friend’s mind, it was gone.

  Catherine could only wonder when—and if—it would return.

  With Madeline fast asleep, Catherine left her for a few moments, intent on retrieving her novel from the sitting room she had visited earlier in the day. Following the maze of stairs down, she came to a sharp corner that she must round to reach the passage that led to the next flight. Voices carried to her, and she hesitated, listening. She was making quite a habit of skulking and eavesdropping.

  A feminine voice answered by a masculine; Mrs. Bell and Gabriel engaged in conversation. She could not say what made her remain there, holding her breath, loath to betray her presence.

  No, that was not true. She could say exactly what made her do it. She wanted to overhear, to listen, unseen. She wanted to glean any information about Gabriel St. Aubyn that she could. Perhaps if she knew enough, she could convince herself he was a villain, convince herself not to long for his touch. His kiss. The feel of his arms tight about her.

  Madeline was afraid of him, perhaps even hated him, but given the multitude of things that made Madeline afraid, Catherine could not blindly trust in that. Was he the monster she claimed, or just a man? A strange, enigmatic, arousing man?

  He annoyed her, angered her, fascinated her. Beguiled her. And despite it all, he haunted her every thought.

  He had comforted her, been a brief calm place in the storm of her grief. Was that enough to make her believe there were depths to him she had not seen? Was it the tiny foundation on which to build the beginnings of… something? An assignation? An association? What exactly did she want of him? Of herself?

  “Will that be all, Mrs. Bell?” Gabriel asked, ruthlessly neutral.

  “No, Sir Gabriel. I do not wish to overstep—”

  “Then by all means, do not,” he interjected.

  The housekeeper exhaled noisily, and though Catherine hugged the wall and the shadows and could see them no better than they could see her—which was not at all—she imagined the woman crossing her arms over her belly as she was wont to do, and regarding Gabriel with both wariness and frustration.

  “Sir Gabriel,” she began again. “I wish to speak with you about Susan.”

  The silence stretched, and Catherine could imagine the exact expression on his face… or rather, lack of expression as he waited for the housekeeper to continue.

  “Susan Parker,” she clarified, and still he said nothing. “She is one of the upstairs maids.”

  Catherine recalled precisely who Susan Parker was: the maid she had encountered her very first night here at Cairncroft, the one she had intimidated by implying she would report her to the housekeeper. The episode was not one she was proud of.

  “Yes, I am aware of who she is.” His assertion surprised Catherine, and then she recalled how he had known Peg’s name, and she thought that perhaps he made it his business to know something about each of his staff. She could certainly believe it of him.

  “She walked to the shoemaker the day before last to be measured for new shoes. It was her half-day and she left promptly at noon.” Catherine heard the clink of Mrs. Bell’s key ring, and she thought the housekeeper must have knocked it by accident, or was perhaps worrying it out of nervousness. “Susan never returned.”

  “Is she due wages?” Gabriel asked, his tone bland. Yet something in his question made Catherine suspect he was more interested in the matter than he wished Mrs. Bell to know.

  “No, sir.”

  “She would not be the first maid to run off.”

  Mrs. Bell huffed in a breath, loud enough that Catherine could hear it where she stood, far down the corridor and around the corner.

  “What if she didn’t? What if the same thing happened to her that happened to—”

  “Mrs. Bell,” Gabriel cut her off, his tone silk and steel. “We both know that is an impossibility. Let us not raise the issue.”

  “We do not know—”

  “We do.” His words, his tone, both absolute in their finality, ended the argument. But again Catherine had the impression that his words masked his true thoughts. “Speak to the other servants. Find out if she had a beau. A sick family member. Any reason that she might have left precipitously.”

  “And if there is no reason?” Mrs. Bell asked, oddly forlorn.

  “There is always a reason, Mrs. Bell. You know that as well as I. Questions always have answers. Puzzles have solutions. It is only that we do not always like the resolutions and explanations we discover, and so we discount them, though they settle the matter quite satisfactorily”— he paused—“if not always pleasantly.”

  Again, a long moment of silence, and then Mrs. Bell asked in a harsh whisper, “Is that what you call murder? A satisfactory resolution?”

  Catherine pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, stifling her gasp, her pulse speeding up like a cart on a hill.

  “Our discourse is complete, Mrs. Bell,” Gabriel said, his tone calm and even, though Catherine could not imagine how he held his temper in the face of the housekeeper’s temerity. “I expect you will keep me apprised of any information that you uncover regarding Susan Parker.”

  Because he expected information to be uncovered. Catherine was convinced of it. But he did not trust the housekeeper with his suspicions.

  Mrs. Bell inhaled sharply, and when she spoke, her voice was tight. “Very well, sir.”

  A moment later, there came the rapid shush of the housekeeper’s footsteps and the swish of her skirt as she moved in the opposite direction. For a slow count of ten, Catherine stayed exactly where she was, motionless as a hare in a field, straining to hear the sounds of Gabriel’s retreat. But she heard nothing at all. Not a footstep or breathing or anything to indicate whether he had stayed or gone.

  There came a dull thud, like a door closing, or a fist knocked against wood.

  Warily, she peeked around the corner. The hallway unfurled before her, the dark walls and blood-red carpet disappearing into dim shadow. Of Gabriel St. Aubyn there was no sign.

  “Curiosity can be a dangerous thing.” His low voice came from directly behind her right shoulder and she whirled, pressing her palm flat against her chest, her heart twitching and writhing like a landed fish.

  “How—” She stumbled away and spun to peer around the wall at th
e empty hallway where she was certain he had been standing. Of course, the passage was empty. Turning back toward him, she stalked two steps forward, disbelieving. “How did you get there without me seeing you pass?”

  He made a hushed laugh, a lush, tantalizing sound she had never before heard him make. It made her shiver. It made her ache.

  Deliberately, she took a step back. Equally deliberately, he took a step forward.

  Reaching out, he rested his palm against the wall at her back, caging her between wood panel and the length of his body. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her mouth went dry. He was strong and near, his eyes glittering in the dim light. His gaze dropped to her lips, her breasts, and she stopped breathing entirely.

  After a moment, an eternity, his eyes lifted to hers. She gasped at the things she read there: primitive desire, bared and unchained. Bending her knees, she dipped down below his outstretched arm and scooted to the side, away from the threat of him… the temptation of him.

  He made no move to stop her.

  Leaning to the side, he pressed his weight onto his outstretched hand, touching a particular spot on the heavy wooden panel. It swung open to reveal a yawning tunnel, dark as sin.

  Grateful for the distraction, she looked away from his face and peered into the gloom, her nose wrinkling at the stale smell and the cobwebs that hung in long, ghostly pale tendrils, broken where he had passed through them.

  “You went in there without a candle?” she blurted.

  “I did.”

  “I would not like to.” The narrowness of the passage made her shudder.

  “Afraid of the dark?” he murmured, too close.

  He had come up beside her. She wondered that such a tall, powerful man could move with such grace and quiet.

  “I am not afraid of the dark,” she demurred. “Not since I was a child. It is the confined space I do not like.”

  As soon as the admission left her lips, she regretted it. What was it about him that made her reveal any part of things better left hidden? She had trained herself to do better than this, but every time he asked a question, she felt driven to answer. She did not want him to know any of her secrets. Not a one. And yet, here she was offering them up without even the slightest consideration, as though a part of her wanted to tell him all. There was a sure route to danger.

  “I did not like to go in, either,” he mused, “for much the same reason.”

  She blinked, startled that he revealed anything private and personal. It went completely against his nature. She knew enough of him by now to be certain of that. It made his admission something of a gift.

  Was it payment in kind? She offered a glimpse of her secret soul, and he did the same? An exchange. A connection. The possibility both thrilled her and made her uneasy.

  “Then why did you?” she asked, studying him, noticing a single cobweb woven in the spun gold of his hair. Without thought, she reached up and stroked it away, her fingers lingering at the gently curled ends, so silky and soft.

  He stiffened, but did not pull away.

  “Because I had no way to know who lurked in this hallway, watching, listening.” He offered a tight smile. “I prefer to catch my enemy unawares.”

  She stared at him, nonplussed, her fingers still twined in his hair. He had known someone was here, listening. How? She was certain she had not made a sound.

  “You must have extremely acute senses,” she observed, drawing her fingers through his hair.

  “Extremely.” He looked at her strangely, and it was then she realized what she did: petted and stroked him as though she had a right. Mortified, she pulled her hand away and dropped it to her side.

  “You said you like to catch your enemy unawares… Am I your enemy?” she whispered.

  “The answer to that question resides entirely with you.” One corner of his mouth curved in a lazy smile, his eyes darkest amber, his head tipped close, his breath soft on her cheek. “I would prefer that you are not.”

  Then it was not just his breath on her cheek, but his lips, gliding along her skin to the corner of her mouth. His fingers were warm as they closed on her wrists, and he drew her hands behind his back so she was pulled close against the length of him. Hard muscle beneath perfectly tailored cloth.

  She lost her breath, lost her thoughts.

  “Why—” She gasped as his tongue traced the edge of her mouth, and turned her face away. Heart pounding, she thought she ought to step away. Run away. But she did not. Instead, she remained exactly where she was. “Why is this tunnel here?” she managed at last.

  He shifted his mouth to her ear. “A servants’ tunnel. There is a maze of them behind the walls.”

  With a gentle tug, he drew her closer still, his thighs pressed to hers, and she was drowning in him, the enthralling, faintly citrus scent of his skin, the feel of his body, the way his hands circled her wrists, holding her in place, binding her to him, though he had positioned her so that she was the one whose arms held him close, circling about his lower back.

  And why did she not pull away?

  Even as he loosed his hold on her wrists and brought one hand to her throat so his thumb stroked her pulse, and the other to her nape, she made no move to break free, but held her arms in an easy loop about his body. Holding him.

  Slowly, he tipped his head down, his lips soft on hers, the sweetest caress. She hated him for that, for his gentleness, and for the hard, sharp kick of yearning that even that near-innocent brush of his lips on hers drew from deep inside her.

  His mouth was slightly open, his breath warm, mingling with her own, but he did not taste her, did not push his tongue inside her. And she wanted that, ached for it. Oh, how desperately she wanted the taste of him in her mouth.

  A whimper tore free, and she arched up, drowning, her lungs and veins and limbs filled only with sharp heat.

  Breathless. Hungry.

  And then she understood… because you are breathless and I am air…

  His mouth played on hers as he wooed her, tantalized her, made her breathless so he could be all she craved. She pulsed with the need to press herself tighter against him so that there was no space between them, not even air.

  He used only his lips, leaving her imagination to conjure and crave the thrust of his tongue. She wanted him to put his hands on her breasts, and his mouth. His teeth. She wanted him to press her down, here, on the floor, to feel his full weight, heavy and heavenly.

  With a nearly chaste kiss he stole her will, her reason, and she had no more breath. He was her air.

  She bit his lower lip, lightly, then harder, then soothed the place she had nipped with her tongue.

  Abruptly, he pulled away, her name—Catherine—no more than a whisper.

  No. Do not leave me. She reached for him, her hand pale in the shadows, hovering between them, outstretched.

  13

  “Tell me,” Gabriel demanded, holding himself beyond her touch.

  Catherine snatched back her hand and pressed it to the hollow of her throat, though she ached with the need to play her fingers across his lips, to stroke his hair, to curl her hands into smooth cloth overlying steely muscle.

  She had never yearned, never ached, the way she did in this moment. And he wanted her to say it, to lay herself bare to him, to trust him with full knowledge of her wanting and need.

  No, not full knowledge. He had that already. She saw it in the hard glitter of his gaze and the tight line of his jaw.

  He wanted her admission, freely given. He wanted to be water for her thirst, food for her hunger. That night in her chamber he had clearly laid out his terms.

  “My bed is down this corridor and up a single flight.” His lips curved in a smile dark with promise. “Say it, Catherine. Tell me what you want.”

  “Please,” she breathed, wanting it to be enough. Needing it to be enough. The hated word, offered in supplication.

  “No.” He frowned and shook his head. “I have no wish to hear you plead. I know it holds dark memor
ies for you.”

  He knew that? How?

  “I am a keen observer,” he said, faintly sardonic, answering the questions she had never asked. He caught her hand—the one she had held out to him earlier and now clutched against her throat—and brought her fingers to his lips. His tongue tasted the tips, and then his teeth. She swallowed the moan that begged for escape.

  “Say only that you want me. That you hunger.” That I am water and you are parched, he did not say, but she heard it nonetheless.

  “Only that?” she managed with a strangled laugh.

  “For now.” He stroked the backs of his fingers across her cheek, and she was so sensitized to his touch, so raw, that she had to sink her teeth into her lip to keep from crying out.

  Shaking her head from side to side, she backed up a step and then another, poised to flee. He made no move to stop her. Not by expression or action did he alter her course. Her choice. With him, it would always be her choice. He had no desire to bend her or break her to his will. She understood that with sudden blinding clarity.

  She could give herself to Gabriel without sacrificing who she had become.

  Her heart beat, wild and terrible, in her breast.

  Fear. Lust. Raw, aching need.

  And then she said it, forced the words through bloodless lips.

  “I do. I do want you. I ache for you. I dream of you. I fight it and chain it and lock it behind any boundary I can conjure, and still the wanting steals free.” She lowered her head and stared at the tips of his boots, shiny black, catching the paltry light. Her breath came hard and fast, as though she had run for miles. “What have you done to me?”

  “Nothing. Not yet. But soon.” He yanked her hard against him, his mouth open as he tasted her, his tongue sliding the length of hers, his teeth nipping, gently, then harder, enough to make her gasp. Make her moan. He fed on her, claimed her, his kiss sinking through her to leave fire in its wake.

  Lifting her in his arms, he cradled her against his chest, bending his head to nip the skin of her throat. Her breathing was uneven and quick, as was his. He strode along the hallway, then took a flight of stairs with rapid, sure steps, and she clung to him and breathed his scent and buried her face in his neck so she could lick his skin.