When he found the split of her drawers, his cock twitched. Griffin hesitated for a moment, before allowing himself to reach within. He went slowly at first, tracing her seam with one finger in a gentle glance of a touch. She jerked against him.
“Griffin.” Raw desire infused his name as she moaned it into the heavy silence of the night.
He buried his smile in the soft cloud of her dark hair, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Yes, love?”
He touched her again, one more pass, before delving within her folds to where she was wet and scorching, her pearl a plump bud begging for his attention. He stroked her slowly.
“That feels so…oh! Oh my.”
He nuzzled her cheek, watching her expressive face as he pleasured her. Looking at her, brazen and beautiful on the stairs, skirts to her waist, legs spread for him, mouth open, breasts thrust forward, made him harder than he had ever been. He wanted her with a desperation that shook him, but he would not linger on that. There was no time for thought here in this moment. No need for deliberation.
All they required was this connection: touch and pleasure. Senses only.
He worked her into a frenzy with ease, increasing his pressure and speed until he felt her tensing beneath his touch. Until her breath was emerging in pants. Until she was squirming and writhing in an instinctive effort to cure the ache within her.
And then, he moved down her body at last, intent upon seeing her, tasting her. The only way he wanted her to spend the first time was on his tongue. She watched him, her expression a mixture of desire and wariness. She pressed her thighs together, hiding herself from his view. All he saw was beautiful legs, long and curved, clad in stockings and drawers. So much white. So much lace. His mouth watered, and the pressure in his ballocks grew.
She was beautiful. The loveliest thing he had ever seen. But skittish. Understandably, since she was a virgin. He tried to recall how it had been his first time, but there were so many years and memories intervening, that particular memory was hazy and indistinct. He recalled coming too quickly, spurred by the shock that a woman as beautiful as the widowed Countess of Fielding would allow him to touch her, let alone invite him to her bed. He recalled being nervous he would make a mistake.
And he thought he sensed some of that same nervousness in Violet now. Her lashes were low, her breathing still unsteady, her cheeks flushed. He placed his hands on her knees with the gentlest of touches.
“What are you doing, Griffin?” she asked, breathless.
“Open for me,” he coaxed. “Let me see you. Let me bring you pleasure.”
“But I…”
Her protest trailed away as he guided her legs apart. Through the gaping split in her drawers, he had his first sight of her cunny. Swollen with need, pink and pretty, in the low flickering of the lamp, she glistened.
“Perfection.” The word escaped him before he could even contemplate it. Because she was. “You are bloody perfect, spitfire, and I want to taste you.”
Correction: he had to taste her. Full stop.
Without waiting for her response, he settled himself between her thighs. He tugged the parted halves of her drawers open, and she was exposed, her mound completely on display for him. He could not wait a moment more. He licked her, seam to clitoris. Up and down, slow and steady. She was sweet and musky, and he could not get enough of her. He buried his face in her pliant flesh, sucking her pearl.
She bucked, crying out, and he groaned low in his throat. More than perfection, she was heaven. Paradise. He released her, alternating between teasing the demanding bud with his tongue and teeth, before sucking once more. His hands found the full curves of her rump, filling both palms, and he angled her the way he wanted, so she was a feast for him to consume.
And consume he did, until she was once more at the edge, thrusting against his face for more, the sounds in her throat sweet affirmations of just how well he was pleasuring her. She was the center of his world, and he was filled with a new, foreign awareness.
This lover was not like the rest. This lover, this experience, was something to be savored, and he knew it. Every inhalation of her scent, every taste of her, every sound, built the desire within him to a raging crescendo, until he feared he would come along with her, spending into his trousers like a green lad.
One more nip of his teeth on her pearl, and she shuddered beneath him, her body bowing off the steps, her thighs trembling as the waves of release prepared to crash upon her. She was close. Right at the edge, and he wanted to send her over. He sucked as hard as he could, then rubbed his face in her cunny, using the bristles of his beard to stimulate her.
It was all she needed.
She stiffened, coming with a low keen, her hands in his hair. He stayed where he was, licking up the juices pouring from her core, until he was drenched in her, soaked in her essence. Tonight, he would sleep with the scent of her upon his beard and skin, and he would not wash it off.
At last, she sighed, collapsing back against the steps, and only then did he rise, flipping down her skirts, extracting a handkerchief from his coat and wiping his mouth. Their eyes met. She was breathing as hard as he was, and his cock was rigid enough to hang a bucket of coal from it.
He had never experienced a more carnal, candid, delicious moment.
“That,” he could not resist telling her, “is my idea of decorum.”
The smile she gave him, along with the sudden pink of her skin, told him more than words could. “You are a wicked man.”
He retrieved the lamp from the stair behind him. “Guilty of the offense with which I have been charged, and quite unrepentant about it.”
Now all he needed to do was clear his name of the guilt that did not belong on his shoulders. A grim mood reclaimed him as he escorted Violet upstairs.
Lucien returned home from his intensive strategical meetings at the Home Office with Swift at his side, feeling rather buoyed by the productivity of the plans he had forged with the new team he had created since taking over the League. Buoyed, and yet weighed down, for in his private meetings with the Home Office, he had also received troubling information.
The leaks of information to the Fenians from within League ranks had not stopped in the wake of Strathmore’s imprisonment. Instead, what had begun as a few drips here, and a few drips there dropping into a bucket, had turned into a swelling river of secrets, being sold to the Fenians for a king’s ransom.
Which meant one very troubling thing was true: either the Duke of Strathmore had an accomplice, or he was not a guilty man. Neither of those scenarios was one Lucien wanted to contemplate.
But any and all thoughts related to treachery and the League and the Home Office, and even the bloody Fenian menace, flew from Lucien’s mind when the front door of Lark House opened to reveal his grim-faced butler.
Reynolds wore a perpetual frown, as if he were the most long-suffering man on earth, but this frown…this expression…it was different, and Lucien knew it. His gut clenched, worry flooding him.
Mere days ago, his carriage had been shot at, and not just once, but twice, with his sister and his great aunt ensconced inside, vulnerable to the dangers. They could have been wounded by a glancing blow, injured, or worse—
He would not even contemplate what worse would have meant.
Since the existence of the League had been revealed to the public at long last in the wake of the death of the Fenian ringleader John Mahoney, and he had taken the reins from the Duke of Carlisle as the head of the League, Lucien may as well have painted a target upon his back. Especially since half his secrets were being sold to the enemy by a conscienceless traitor or traitors.
“What is the matter, Reynolds?” he bit out now, desperation joining with fear to become a coiled snake within him, ready to strike. “Is something amiss in the household?”
It could not be, he told himself, even as worry churned in his stomach; a sick broth. He had employed a dozen of his best men as guards. He was prepared. Lark House was a veritable f
ortress.
Reynolds took Lucien’s coat and gloves, his expression growing even more pinched. “Did word not reach you, Your Grace? I am so sorry. I had sent round to every address I was able, hoping…”
The butler’s words were lost in the wild hysteria of Great Aunt Hortense as she burst into the front hall, a tear-soaked wreck. Holy God. She was not merely sobbing, but bawling like a terrified babe whose mother had abandoned her in the midst of a busy London street, about to be run over by the next carriage racing by. She had either neglected to wear her customary cap, or had somehow misplaced it. Her outmoded hairstyle—the severe center part complemented by bunches of oiled gray ringlets over each ear—shivered with the violence of her emotion.
“Aunt Hortense?” He went to her, frowning. He had not seen her this devastated since Uncle Arnold’s funeral when she had been half mad with grief and crying that she wanted to be buried with him.
He could still recall his mother’s calm concern then—that had been one of Mama’s gifts, her ability to soothe in times of extreme unrest, ironic, considering her own afflictions—and how she had placed a motherly arm around Aunt Hortense. How she had whispered something in his aunt’s ear and drawn her toward her in an unfettered embrace. It had seemed to calm Aunt Hortense at the time.
And so, because he did not know how to deal with a weeping female—thank Christ Violet had never been the sort to turn on the waterworks—he made the same gesture his mother had. He awkwardly scooped Aunt Hortense into his arms, giving her back a ginger, soothing pat.
But he did not whisper in ears. At least, not in the ears of his elderly aunt.
Instead, he spoke in as calm a voice as he could muster. “Tell me, Aunt. What is the matter?”
“H-h-have they not t-t-told you?” she stammered through her sobs.
His blood went cold.
Where was Violet? Why was she not here to console Aunt Hortense with her droll wit and her effortless capacity to care for everyone within her reach?
Something inside him broke in that moment. Dread descended with the heavy, suffocating weight of a boulder on his chest. And with it came denial.
No. Not Violet. Not his sister.
“Have they not told me what, Aunt?” he asked somehow, forcing himself to speak.
His skin went hot, then cold. Then hot again. His mind attempted to close its doors upon him. If something had happened to Violet the way he was beginning to suspect it had, he did not know how he would live. She alone had been his driving force, his sole motivation, over all the years since they had been left first without a mother, and then without a father as well.
She was all he had left. It was the two of them, and then it was the world. Always that strict delineation. No one knew him better than Violet did, but for all that she knew him, a part of her was just like their mother, closed off. There was a part of her she kept hidden away, for herself alone. He wanted to believe she would never be like Mama, that she would never tire of her struggles and walk herself into the ocean. He had to believe it, or he could not breathe.
Desperation clamored within him, threatening to close off his throat. It seemed to him a dozen people were speaking all at once, shouting out this or that, and he could make sense of none of it. He was dizzied.
He was weak, just as he had always been.
Lucien had forever harbored two great fears in his life, and one of them was that Violet would one day turn into their mother. The other was that he would. To that end, he spent every waking hour devoted to a meaningful cause. To fighting wrongs and making them right. To seeing Violet settled with a calm, caring, stable husband. A man who would not keep a mistress in St. John’s Wood or raise his hand to her.
But what if none of that was enough? What if…
“Where is Violet?” he demanded of his aunt.
Her pallor was unmistakable. She stopped in her copious sobs, attempting to catch her breath enough to speak. Just when he swore he would lose his mind and begin to tear the wall coverings down with his bare hands, she spoke.
Her voice was thin. Nothing more than a croak of desolation. “No one knows.”
What the bloody hell?
He ground his teeth so hard his gums ached with the force. “What do you mean, Aunt Hortense?”
Reynolds cleared his throat. “There was an incident this evening concerning Lady Violet. We sent word to you at the Home Office, but apparently it did not reach you.”
A memory pricked his conscience then, and he recalled Swift speaking to someone at the Home Office headquarters. He remembered a missive being handed over, watching as Swift bowed, pocketing the communication.
He had only noticed the exchange from afar, and purely by chance, but now, the oddity of it struck him. As if on cue, Swift produced an envelope from his inner breast pocket, holding it aloft as though it were the key to a great mystery, and he had just solved it.
He frowned. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I was given this, but the message that it was imperative for the missive to reach you was lost upon me.”
Lucien’s gaze narrowed on him, but now was not the time to offer a reprimand. All there was time for was Violet. Aunt Hortense was weeping once more, and Reynolds looked as if he were attending his own funeral.
“Damn it,” he growled, “cease speaking in riddles, all of you. Tell me what happened to Lady Violet, and tell me now.”
Perhaps that was the true key—finding her.
Aunt Hortense issued another violent sob. “She is gone, Strathmore.”
Gone.
The word echoed through him, and just like that, he was a gangly youth, swimming in the North Sea once more, desperate to find his mother, running down the shore hours later, finding her face down in the sand, so still and bereft of life. Scooping her into his arms to carry her home for the last time. His mother had been too broken to fix, too flawed to remain, too caught up in her own passions and troubles and emotions, and in the end, it had killed her.
But not Violet. He knew his sister. He had devoted his life to making certain she lived hers in the best way possible. In a way which would lead her as far away from the decisions their mother had made as he could. Because he could not bear to lose her.
“She did not…” His words died in his throat. His tongue was stupid and huge. Numb. And he could not finish the question for fear of the answer.
“The Duke of Strathmore took her,” wept Aunt Hortense. “Oh, Arden, you never should have allowed that villain to remain here. What can you have been thinking? Now he has our Violet, and Lord knows what he shall do to her.”
He knew a moment of blinding relief, followed closely by a moment of blinding rage. “Strathmore?”
Strathmore.
He should have known. He had never wanted the rogue beneath his roof at all, for there was no love lost between himself and the duke, but Home Office had given him no choice. They had been unwilling to imprison a peer of the realm and a longtime League member with an impressive history of service. Lucien had not suffered such qualms, but his concerns had been summarily dismissed.
And so it seemed fitting the one man he had warned the League about had just committed such a grievous sin.
The man was a plague. A traitor and a plague. Evidence did not lie, and there was a veritable avalanche of it against him. Lucien was going to hunt him down personally, and when he did, he was going to beat him to within an inch of his life, and then he was going to deliver his beaten, bruised, and bloody carcass straight to Newgate himself.
He turned to Swift, anger rising within him, hard and fast and sure. It would tide him over. For now, he could force himself to focus on his rage, to smother his worry with it. Because right now, Violet was as gone to him as their mother was.
“Bring me the guards, one by one. I want statements from each of them. I want answers. I want to know how the hell Strathmore left here with my sister unimpeded. Was everyone asleep on his bloody watch? I want everyone to account for each minute of his time, each action.
But most of all, I want to defeat the Duke of Strathmore. When we find him, he will wish he had never been born at all.”
Here was a vow he could keep, a promise he could make to himself.
And when he found Violet, he was going to see her wedded to the Earl of Almsley immediately. He wanted to make certain she was happy and secure. He owed it to her. He could only hope and pray Strathmore would be a gentleman and not attempt to compromise her or—damn it, he could not, would not think it—worse.
Tomorrow loomed before him, dark and endless and hopeless.
I will find you, Violet, he promised inwardly. I will find you.
And he would destroy the Duke of Strathmore. Burn him to the ground if he must. There would be no mercy.
Chapter Twelve
“It belonged to my grandparents.”
The statement took Violet by surprise, giving her pause. She turned to Strathmore—Griffin, she corrected herself inwardly—and studied him. He faced forward, a hat worn low on his brow, hiding his lustrous dark locks from her perusal. His expression was intent, presumably because he was concreting upon driving the rather pitiful excuse for a horse and cart he had managed to procure upon their arrival in Oxfordshire. They had taken the train for much of their journey, leaving the handsome carriage and horses that had aided their flight from London behind.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked him, when a few moments had passed and he did not appear inclined to offer more. “What belonged to your grandparents?”
“The home we stayed in last night,” he elaborated, his jaw tight, his voice sounding thick and odd. “It belonged to my grandparents, then changed hands half a dozen times, until finally, it became mine when I purchased it.”
The revelation seemed difficult for him to make. It had taken him an entire day before he had willingly made it after all, and even now, it seemed somehow torn from him. As if it were a secret he felt compelled to confide, rather than one he willingly shared.
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