“I claim you.”
“I’m yours,” she whispered, her hands braced on his forearms.
“I won’t lose you again.” He rotated his hips in a slow undulating rhythm. “I should have taken you like this years ago.”
She strained upward. “Don’t think I didn’t dream of it.” Her inner muscles tightened on his shaft. He groaned and felt her body trembling, on the verge. He loved to make her lose control. He drove deeper, to the hilt, in a black haze of desire. His heart hammered with the elemental fury of their mating, his emotions.
She was beautiful in her arousal, in her vulnerability, her trust, as she came apart beneath him. He held back another few moments to watch her take her pleasure. His own climax devastated him, swept him into a world of sensation, emptying him and filling him at the same time.
His chest was damp, his heartbeat had slowed, but its frantic pulse throbbed throughout his body as he held her tightly. His woman. He breathed in her scent, savored the warmth of her. “I love you, Heath Boscastle,” she whispered against his neck.
His throat tightened. For her he had waited. For her he would fight and sacrifice his honor if need be. Their time together was precious but not illicit; Russell would be mad to surrender her without a struggle.
“Rogue,” she said, shaking his shoulder. “I have just told you that I love you, and you answer me with silence?”
He gave a low devilish laugh. “Just remember you said that, Julia, and this time I am not a young man you can run away from. I won’t give up for anything. I love you with all my being, even if I do end up disgracing us both.”
“I wouldn’t expect less of a Boscastle rogue,” she said gently.
Chapter 25
On the following morning Emma Boscastle, the widowed Viscountess Lyons, was giving etiquette lessons in the drawing room of her younger brother Devon’s London town house. It offended her sensibilities to be dispensing advice on proper conduct from a known rogue’s headquarters. But at least the rogue was situated in the fashionable part of town on Curzon Street, and she did happen to adore him, faults notwithstanding. If only she could persuade him and Drake to settle down and behave themselves. Thank heavens Grayson and Chloe were married and that Heath conducted his private affairs with discretion. Emma had always been grateful that she could count on Heath to use common sense in his personal dealings.
She clapped her hands to bring her unruly female students back to order. In all her days she had never seen such a wild bunch, unless she counted the members of her own family. In fact, two of her most challenging pupils were Boscastle cousins, thereby explaining their misguided energy.
“That will be quite enough talking, girls. And giggling. We are not a gaggle of geese.” She stood on tiptoe to see what had caused such a stir amid her pupils, who only minutes ago had been on the verge of falling asleep. “What is it you are all examining with such interest?”
“Just some artwork, Lady Lyons.”
“Of a Greek deity.”
“Ah.” Emma sighed. “Dare I hope this signifies an appreciation for the Ancients?”
“He doesn’t look ancient to me,” one of the girls murmured.
“Goodness, look at the size of his arrow!”
Charlotte Boscastle giggled. “That’s not an . . .”
The gleam in the girl’s blue eyes set off alarm bells in Emma’s brain. She marched into the middle of the circle. “Hand it over this moment.”
Charlotte looked up innocently. “But it’s only a drawing of Apollo.”
Emma gasped in horror. “It’s a pamphlet,” she exclaimed. “One of those scurrilous caricatures that defile the streets and drawing rooms of our country! And, oh, my goodness, a naked man, of all things.”
“It isn’t just any man, Lady Lyons,” a girl in spectacles said shyly. “It’s your brother.”
“My”— Emma stared down in disbelief at the cartoon in her hands —“heavens. Oh, my heavens. My vinaigrette, please. A chair. A fainting couch. It’s Heath.”
Charlotte pushed a stool under Emma’s swaying figure. “Sit down. Take a deep breath.”
The pamphlet fluttered to the floor. The bespectacled girl swooped down to retrieve it. “I always wondered what he looked like. Isn’t he supposed to be one of the more respectable men in the family, Lady Lyons?”
Charlotte peered over her shoulder, shaking her head in wonder. “Not anymore, he isn’t.”
Two hours later Lord Devon Boscastle strolled into his club on St. James’s Street. He headed straight for the group of young men gathered around the bow window. There was an air of wicked excitement around them that drew Devon like a magnet.
“What piece of frivolity are we betting on today?” he asked in a bored tone.
“Have you seen this?” one of his friends asked in an incredulous voice, hanging over the back of a chair.
“Have I seen what?”
“The pamphlet that’s circulating all over town,” someone in the center of the group replied.
Devon fought off a faint sense of foreboding. His family had a saying. Where there was smoke, there was usually a Boscastle in the vicinity. Where there was smoke and scandal, one could count on finding a member of his family in the thick of it. “It’s a bit early in the afternoon for heavy reading, isn’t it?”
“It’s your brother, by God,” a friend announced with glee.
Devon’s first thought was of Drake. Grayson, the marquess, was married and practically dead in terms of scandal. Their youngest brother Brandon was gone forever. Devon had not gotten into trouble for, well, it must have been almost three weeks now. And Heath, sneaky devil that he was, played too discreetly to get caught.
“What’s he done now?” he inquired, sauntering to the edge of the semicircle.
“I’d say it’s what’s been done to him. This is Heath, isn’t it?”
Someone pushed the pamphlet under his nose. His eyes widened in amazement. It was Heath, all right, as very few members of the ton had seen him. Standing spread-eagle in front of a flaming chariot, in all his natal glory, with the biggest—
“Is that an arrow?” he asked aloud, choking back laughter. “Who the blazes would do this?”
“The Wicked Lady Whitby. Look, she’s even signed her name to it, presumably never dreaming it would be seen. How the mighty have been brought low. By a woman, too. Won’t Russell have an apoplectic fit when he sees Heath like this?”
Devon studied the caricature with a droll smile. “I expect Heath might be a little hysterical himself.”
By the next day, the Morning Chronicle reported that Lord Heath Boscastle had eloped to Gretna Green with Lady Whitby, the infamous widow who had shot a British soldier in India. There was no mention of her having shot Heath. However, the article did claim that she was carrying his child.
Another column in the Times asserted that the scandalous couple had fled to France. The correspondent also stated that the most popular portrait painters of the ton had noted a sudden demand among their clients to be depicted as Greek deities.
Sir Russell Althorne read both articles in stark-faced silence in his mistress’s bedchamber. He had been back in London for approximately one hour. Scarcely had he recovered his powers of speech than his mistress, who was carrying a child, produced the pamphlet of Heath, as Julia had sketched him.
Russell surged off the bed, practically choking with fury. He was fatigued from his frustrating mission in France, outraged at what he had returned to find. “How could they?” he demanded, shaking the pamphlet in the air. “My honorable friend. The friend for whom I sacrificed an eye. The woman I rescued from shame and scandal—”
“Does this mean you won’t get her fortune?” His mistress lowered her plate of cake.
“How the hell do I know what it means?” he bellowed. “It means I have been played for a fool.”
She brushed some crumbs off her bosom. “I thought it was a good sketch of him, actually.”
“He was naked!”
>
“Yes, I did notice that.” She peered up at the pamphlet. “It’s very hard not to—”
“ ‘Do not cause a scandal,’ I said. And what did they do?”
She hesitated. “Cause a scandal?”
“That clever mind of yours never stops, does it, darling?”
She smirked up at him and crossed her swollen ankles on the footstool. “I don’t suppose this is a good time to tell you that Julia was seen visiting Audrey Watson.”
“Audrey Watson?” he said in a weak voice. “Why?”
“I have no idea. I’ve considered working for Audrey a few times myself.”
“Julia . . . visiting a courtesan?”
She leaned forward. “The Boscastle men tend to bring out the wickedness in women. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Heath Boscastle is supposed to be a gentleman.”
“Decadence runs in the family.” She frowned up at his agitated figure. He was pulling on his pantaloons and shirt, stepping over her crossed feet to find his boots. “I thought you didn’t care for her in that way.”
He didn’t answer.
She lowered her legs and covertly kicked one of his Hessians behind her chair.
“Why would she do this to me?” he muttered. “Does she have a total disregard for social opinion?”
She placed her plate on her abdomen and glowered at him like an ill-contented cat. “You’re not going to see her, are you, not on your first day back?”
He slung his blue military coat over his shoulder, jamming his shirt into his waistband. “I am engaged to the bloody woman. Do you think I will suffer being the laughingstock of her scandalous behavior?”
“You cannot rush off after her . . . half dressed,” she said, setting her plate on the floor.
“Why not? I have just returned from a wild-goose chase across France. An assassin is on the loose. My fiancée has published a sketch of my trusted friend, in the raw, with her name signed to it. Do you think I will tolerate this? Do you think I can?”
She picked up his missing boot and hurried out into the hall after him. “Heath Boscastle will kill you if you confront him.”
He turned on her like a madman, the pamphlet clenched between his teeth as he snatched his boot. “Not if I kill myself first.”
“Everything is perfect,” Julia said late that same afternoon as she stood in the circle of Heath’s muscular arms, her head on his shoulder. She hadn’t felt so cherished and protected since she’d been a young girl with her father. She wished she could tell him how happy she was now.
She and Heath had been walking in the woods when it had started to rain. Heath had drawn his black woolen cloak around her, and they had kissed in the watery shadows of a sessile oak grove. Lightning flashed across the dark lavender sky. London seemed to be part of another life, the congestion and the petty scandals forgotten.
Heath kissed a hot trail down her throat through her clothes to the tops of her breasts. She closed her eyes, trapped between a rough-barked tree and his hard, warm body. “It will be perfect,” he murmured, his hand slowly stealing down her spine, “when I get you back to the house.”
“Are you unhooking my cloak and gown?” she whispered, laughing.
“Are you objecting?” he asked, cupping her bottom through her dress.
“I’m—”
She swallowed a shiver at the onslaught of wet air on her exposed breasts, followed by the welcome heat of his mouth. She gripped his forearms, her cloak sliding off one shoulder as fire engulfed her from head to toe. Why did it feel so natural to behave like this with him? It always had. Was there anything more beautiful than passion and love combined? Perhaps only when a child came as a result.
“You look very wanton,” he whispered. “I don’t think I want anyone else to see you like this.”
She grasped his waistband, her fingers working at the fastening. “Shall we even the playing field?”
His teeth grazed the dusky peak of her breast. “I have a better idea.”
Without warning he scooped her up in his arms, rain droplets running down the creases of his angular face, into his thick blue-black hair. Julia clung to his powerful frame. “This isn’t the direction of the house, you rogue,” she said, inhaling the virile musk of his skin.
“Isn’t it? Fancy that.”
“You can’t carry a woman off into the woods, even if you are a Boscastle.”
“That’s exactly why I can do it. It’s bred into me.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Here.” He deposited her before a veil of ivy, virgin’s bower, and thorn that concealed the mouth of a shallow sandstone cave. He swept aside the creepers and pulled his cloak off to cover the leaf-strewn ground inside. Julia surveyed the dark, mysterious interior while he made a quick inspection, presumably to be sure they were alone. There was an old brass-hinged chest in the shadowy void behind him, overflowing with broken wooden swords, tarnished silver goblets, a paste-gemstone tiara, and an assortment of childhood treasures. A skull sat in the dirt, leering at her.
He held his hand before her. “Welcome to the Boscastle lair, captive. On your knees. Now.”
She walked him back a few paces. “And if I don’t?”
“Well, in the old days I would have beheaded you.”
She let her gray cloak drop to the ground, holding her bodice to her breasts. His eyes narrowed as he watched her, gleaming in the dimness. She circled him playfully like a proud pagan queen who had been captured by a peasant. “And now? What do you intend to do with me?”
He raised his chin as she brushed around him. “I thought I might make you plead.”
“For my life?”
He caught her under the knees and drew her down with him to the ground, his mouth capturing hers. He tangled his fingers in her hair. His thighs lifted to trap her against him as he lowered her body to his. He kissed her with the rain pattering against the curtain of vines before gently rolling her onto her back. It could have been snowing outside, and Julia wouldn’t have minded.
“I take it you’ve played this game before, Boscastle.”
He smiled, his heavy-lidded gaze traveling over her supine form with an erotic message she couldn’t miss. “Not as an adult.”
“How do I gain my freedom?” she asked in a low voice.
“You don’t.”
They might have been the only two people who existed in the world. Julia glimpsed flashes of lightning outside the cave through the curtain of vines. She could hear thunder rumble in the distance, the lyrical splash of rain through the trees. The promises, both erotic and emotional, that Heath whispered in her ear.
If he had never revealed his gentleness to her, his vulnerability, she might have had a chance to resist him. She might have managed to fight her feelings and follow the course she had chosen. She would not have risked heartbreak again, not repeating the same painful mistake.
For years, she had built her case against him in her imagination. Based on the assumption that he had felt nothing for her, she had resented him. Even more she had resented the reckless aspect of her own nature that made her desire him all the same.
The true Heath Boscastle, in all his enigmatic darkness, was far more dangerous to her heart than her false image of him as a heartless rogue. The tenderness he had hidden was his secret strength. His unerring perception was a weapon against which Julia had no defense.
He was a lone wolf, intense and loyal. He had not left her, all those years ago, as she had believed. He had not married either.
Why not? She wanted to believe he had waited for her.
She looked up at him and gasped softly at the promise of wicked pleasure in his eyes. He slid his hands under her bottom and molded her to his hard, aroused body. He hadn’t bothered to remove their clothing. She shivered beneath him, enjoying his touch, so absorbed in him that several blissful moments passed before she realized that her dress was bunched up wantonly to her waist; she could feel the jack buttons of his waistcoat brus
h her breasts as his thick shaft slowly penetrated her. Cool brass against her burning flesh. The breathtaking sensation of him pressing into her sheath.
“You’re very wet,” he said in a deep husky voice. “I like it.”
He trailed kisses across her temple, down her cheekbone, onto her shoulder. He sank deeper inside her with every thrust until she gave a soft cry. She struggled to breathe at the friction of stretching fullness, the sinful feeling of sexual invasion.
“Do I hear a plea for mercy, Julia?”
She ran her fingers down the ridges of his muscular back. She loved every inch of this man, his passion, and perceptive nature. “You’re indecent.”
He withdrew, then slammed into her, grasping her hips to hold her still. “So I’ve been told.”
She trembled; his hard mouth smothered the instinctive cry she gave. He groaned deep in his throat. His unapologetic sexuality completely disarmed Julia. Considering their past, it did not seem terribly shocking that he was ravishing her in a cave. Or that she had encouraged him. She delighted in his hard powerful body, the ripple of muscle and sinew as he drove inside her.
“How many other women have you brought here?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“None,” he amended, laughing at her response. “You’re my very first captive.”
He brought his mouth to hers. His tongue mimicked the movement of his lower body, thrusting, conquering her, driving deep inside, withdrawing with sensual self-control. She closed her eyes. Her muscles had melted to warm liquid. A trembling began in the depths of her belly. She was losing control, surrendering, spiraling.
“Only you,” he said again.
He clenched his jaw, surging upward. She clasped his back, murmuring as the storm overwhelmed her, “Just as long as I’m the last.”
Chapter 26
Julia hadn’t noticed the ivory-inlaid pistol Heath carried on him until she saw him return it to his waistband. It sent a chill up her back to think they had made love with a loaded gun lying on the ground beside them. That no matter what they felt for each other, he might have to confront a man who took pleasure in killing, inflicting pain. She watched the gun disappear from sight.
The Wedding Night of an English Rogue Page 25
