by Eve Silver
Unfamiliar with her case? But her father had written Doctor Barker for his advice. Perhaps he had forgotten. She imagined many people wrote to him for advice, never mind the throngs who attended his surgery.
Her attention was diverted as Aidan turned the peculiar contraption that he held.
“Do you see?” He shook the harness again. “I lined the leather with felt so your skin will not chafe, and here”—he poked at the bands connecting the two circles—“I reinforced the bands at the sides. Six layers of leather. Sturdy, yet flexible. I can add layers, if needs must.”
He lifted his head and caught her staring. She could only imagine how wide her eyes, how high her brows. Astonishment was too mild a term to call the emotion that surged through her. His smile began to fade.
“I believe it will work, Jane.”
She stood there, trying to understand what he had done. For her. With his own two hands. Such a creation took time. Planning. Craftsmanship. He had begun it when first he saw her, before they had even met. She felt hot and cold as she reached out tentatively, her hand trembling, and took the harness from him.
“You made this... but how? When?” She turned it this way and that.
“Amazing, the skills I have learned in my lifetime. By necessity, I am deft with a needle”—he shrugged—“among other things.”
She walked to a low boulder, sat, and rucked up her skirt. She could feel Aidan watching her as she slid the strange harness around her leg and buckled first the larger top ring about her thigh and then the smaller bottom one about her calf.
“Like this?” she asked, raising her head.
At his nod, she went back to the fastenings, adjusting them until they were neither too tight nor too loose. It felt strange—like two belts wrapped about her leg—and a little stiff.
Dropping her hem, she rose.
“Can you bend your knee?” He leaned down and touched the back of her thigh through her skirt, running his fingers along the outline of the harness.
“Yes, I think so.” She took a tentative step, then another, stretching and working her damaged leg, amazed that despite the oddness of the sensation, the harness neither pinched her nor hampered her movements. Instead, she felt a small confidence in her own stability. With a startled laugh, she turned a slow circle, head back, arms stretched wide.
Coming all the way around, she stopped and watched as Aidan doffed his gloves and his greatcoat and tossed them in the carriage. His broad shouldered form was accentuated by the loose folds of his fine lawn shirt and the trim outline of his waistcoat. He took her cloak and folded it atop his coat, leaving her with only her shawl about her shoulders.
From the corner of her eye she saw a blur of movement. Looking up, she found the herd of wild ponies tearing across the moor, their short sturdy legs churning the ground, their brown bodies glistening in the sunlight
Do you dream of running free on the moors, Miss Heatherington? Like the wild ponies? Aidan’s words from what seemed a lifetime ago rang in her thoughts. Her gaze flew to his.
He had done this. Made this harness so she could run. Run. She was lightheaded with the enormity of it. “I had thought it an impossible dream.”
One corner of his mouth curved up. Slowly, he held out his hand. She stared at the broad palm, the strong fingers, desperately wanting to believe. Terrified to believe.
“Take my hand, love,” he said, the rough texture of his voice sliding over her. “Run with the ponies as you do in your dreams. I will not let you fall.”
She felt as though the world tilted on its side. The thunder of the horses’ hooves pounded in her ears, mating with the wild thrumming of her blood. She wanted to do this so very desperately, to run wild and free for the first time in more than a decade, to feel the wind whip her hair and her lungs scream for breath.
“Yes.” She wove her fingers firmly through his.
He smiled at her, a reckless grin that held nothing back. The sun caught the brightest glint in the thick strands of his hair, and the blue of the sky reflected in his eyes. Dazzled, she could only stare as the smile took years and cares from him, turning time back and making him the youth he must once have been.
Tightening his grasp, he began to walk—drawing her with him—then run, slowly at first, as she stumbled and struggled to find her rhythm, then faster, his firm grip giving her strength and balance, until he was no longer dragging her, but loping beside her, gifting her with an unbearably sweet taste of freedom.
Her lungs heaved and burned, her legs ached with unfamiliar strain, and oh, how she loved it. She knew that she was not graceful, that her gait was uneven, tortured, but she could not bring herself to care. They ran parallel to the herd, and she was released from her chains, flying like the raven as she had only in her fantasies and dreams.
The ponies quickly disappeared in the distance, and with their departure, Jane felt her strength wane. She slowed her pace, and finally stopped, her chest heaving, her heart banging against her breastbone and ribs like a drum.
Leaning forward, she rested her hands on her thighs as she dragged great gasps of air into her belabored lungs. Finally, the frantic rhythm of her heart slowed, the painful gasps fell into a smooth pattern. Breathe in, breathe out. She dropped her arms to her sides and straightened, noting that Aidan was not winded; his chest rose and fell at a slow, steady pace.
“Walk, Jane,” he said, and drew her back the way they had come. “Else you will cramp.”
She did as he bid for a bit. As they approached the carriage, she stopped and studied the man who stood watching her in silence.
“Oh, look what you did for me, Aidan!” she cried. “Look what you did. You cannot know...” Her voice trailed away at his expression.
“But I do know, Jane,” he said, his gravelly voice flowing with an odd, almost melancholy cadence. “I do know what it is to dream of running free.” He paused, looked away, and then let his gaze slide back to rest on her once more. “I would see your dreams come true, sweet.”
Words tumbled against each other in her thoughts, and she couldn’t find a way to set them free. With an inarticulate sound, she spun closer to frame his face with her palms, feeling his skin and the rough stubble of his jaw. She looked into his eyes, his beautiful gray-blue eyes, bright now with satisfaction, and she kissed him soundly on the mouth before spinning away with a laugh. Then she stood there looking at him, smiling, feeling as though he had gifted her with the moon and the stars.
“Pretty, pretty girl,” he murmured. “With your cheeks flushed and your eyes sparkling.” He stepped closer, his expression changing. “I like the way you look at me, as though I made the sun rise and set. Will you always look at me like that, Jane?”
Yes, yes, yes.
Another step, and another, he crowded her, all grace and lithe power. On instinct she retreated, feeling the air shimmer with a new tension. Her back bumped against the side of the carriage and it rocked lightly on its high wheels. She felt hot and flushed and giddy, though whether from the unfamiliar exertion or the heat of Aidan’s heavy-lidded gaze, she could not say.
Catching her arm, he pulled her to him and sealed his mouth over hers, no sweet kiss, but a hard and open-mouthed taking. His lips were cold from the wind, and her own as well, but his tongue was hot, and the taste of him made her moan. She twisted the fabric of his shirt in her hands; the sculpted mass of his shoulders shifted beneath her fingers.
A shuffling step, in tandem they moved, and then his weight came upon her, pressing her back to the carriage. The kiss became darker, more demanding, and the wild thrum of her pulse grew apace. She felt as though she was running again, dizzy with it, the urgency of his touch driving her. Her dress came undone under his deft fingers; her bodice gaped.
He shifted, moving his lips to the column of her neck. The wet trace of his tongue made her shiver. Tugging the cloth aside, he closed his mouth around her nipple, sucking gently, then harder, a swirl of tongue, the nip of his teeth, until she was pant
ing, her hands tangled in his hair, her back arched to offer herself more freely.
Need streaked through her, finding a home deep inside, gathering at the juncture of her thighs, throbbing and tense. She moaned as he dragged her skirt up, his palm sliding along the skin of her thigh and higher, finding the moist, hot folds of her sex, probing, stroking.
She shifted her hips, an undulating rhythm, her head falling back again the side of the carriage, her limbs trembling.
“We cannot.” She sucked in a sharp breath as his fingers slid over the most sensitive part of her.
“We are alone...” he murmured. His tongue traced up her neck, and she felt him free himself from his breeches, a hard jutting ridge, so tempting as he swayed against her.
She knew him now, knew the scent of his skin, and the taste of him, the honey brown hair on his chest and the line that traced down his belly to nest at the base of his thick shaft. She knew the secrets of his pain, the sounds he made in ecstasy. That knowing made her want him all the more.
Delicious anticipation and the pulsing heat of desire spun in a tight coil, so intense it took her breath. His kiss was potent, deep and wet.
Beneath her hand she could feel the flex of muscle, the coiled tension, the strength of him, power and barely leashed hunger. She wanted to sever the last of his control, to make him lose himself in the wanting, as she was lost. Closing her hand about his shaft, she followed the smooth contours, the thick head, the silky skin, her caress eager and a little rough. He grew still against her.
“I want you,” she whispered. “I want to feel you inside me. Here, under the sky and sun, fierce, untamed.”
With a growl, he yanked her skirt higher to bunch at her waist, and pushed his fingers up into her, stretching her, the heel of his palm pressing her until she moaned and squirmed, one hand tight around the hot length of him, the other clutching his shoulder.
He was not civilized or careful. He was raw. Uncouth.
And she was mindless with the thrill of it, the feral, staggering hunger.
Moving her mouth to the base of his neck, she closed her teeth on skin and muscle, hard enough to make him grunt, hard enough to fracture the last of his restraint.
He swept her up, her back against the carriage, her legs wrapped about his waist. With one hand beneath her buttocks, and the other supporting her bad leg, he angled until the broad head of him was at her opening.
She cried out as he thrust up and in, filling her, a slick, hot glide. With rough, deep strokes he took her, and she tilted her hips forward, the hard carriage at her back lending her purchase. Deeper, she wanted him deeper, and faster, and—
“Oh, yes. Like that.” She panted, words stolen from her lips as he did as she bid.
There was no civility in this, only pounding fervor, untrammeled, unrestrained.
With her head thrown back against the carriage, she shook with the force of her passion.
He gave a rich, low groan of pleasure, the sound coiling through her, pulling her senses even tighter. He kissed her neck, licked her. Bit her.
A jagged cry ripped from her throat. She shattered, throbbing around him as he drove in hard, his body rigid, his teeth on her skin, his release pumping through him, through her, and the ragged, hoarse sound of his breathing mixed with her own.
She was suspended above the ground, his strong arms her only support as her shivers subsided and her heart slowed.
I love you. Words without breath or sound, they swirled through her mind, through her heart. I love you.
She had not imagined that love would be so wonderful, so awful, so magnificent and terrifying at once. Emotion tugged at her, vast in scope and depth; it left her reeling. A sound escaped her, half laugh, half sob.
Aidan tensed, and then slid from her, leaving her open and moist, a little bereft. With care, he set her back on her feet, holding her as she found her balance, her skirt sliding slowly along her legs, coming to rest in rumpled folds. Finally, he drew back and stared down at her, his expression grave.
“No frowns,” she said, and pressed the flat of her fingers to his lips.
Her time with him was a gift. She should take it and hold it to her breast and treasure it for the greatest he could give. Because to hope for more was to invite devastation. She was not such a fool.
He was a creature of darkness, of hate and vengeance, claimed as such both by his own words and by all she had seen. But he did hold some kind regard for her. She was sure of that.
It would have to be enough.
It was not enough.
She would love him, vast and endless and with all her heart, until her dying breath. But damaged as he was, he did not know how to love her even a little.
There it was, the truth, naked and stark. She had known that he would hurt her without meaning to, and that without meaning to, she would let him.
* * *
Through the open carriage door, the sun slanted in a slash of yellow ocher across the velvet seat and one half of Jane’s skirt. She could hear Aidan murmuring to the horses, and she wondered how he knew that she had wanted a moment to gather her wits and her thoughts.
Such passion. Such emotion.
She unfastened the brace and carefully placed it to the side. Her fingers lingered on the supple leather, and her heart was both light and heavy.
So many things to ponder and fret over and scrutinize, but one coalesced, certainty nipping her as she stared at the brace.
I wrote to London, to your Doctor Barker, in fact, when first I saw you. Oddly, he was unfamiliar with your case... Aidan’s words condemned her father as a liar.
The niggling unease she had felt earlier came to roost as she slid the bits of the puzzle together. All these years, her father had claimed that he had sent to London to Doctor Barker, the renowned scholar in his field, and that the good doctor had pronounced her a helpless cripple. And, oh, how her father had moaned and fussed that the consult had pushed him to penury. Lies. Lies. Lies upon lies. And what was the truth?
Would she even recognize the truth if it struck her across the face?
She wrapped her arms about herself. The truth was that she had known it all along. She had seen how unwilling her father was to part with even the small payment for the doctor at Launceston. In her heart of hearts, she had always known he would not buy another opinion. He had humored her. Acted as though he shared her dream of obtaining a brace to support her twisted limb. But Doctor Barker had been a fantasy.
Until now.
She shuddered. Did she know her father at all?
Carefully, she climbed down from inside the coach, holding her skirt above her ankles. Turning, she looked at the brace where it lay on the velvet seat. Aidan had done this for her, spent hours and hours planning and conceiving, cutting leather, stitching, piecing the thing together. With his own hands.
The thought was staggering.
The light behind her shifted, a long shadow falling across her and the carriage seat both. Aidan stepped up behind her. Wordlessly, he reached past her and drew out her cloak, then draped it over her shoulders. Closing his hands about her upper arms, he turned her to face him.
Still reeling from the untamed pleasure of their lovemaking, the emotion of it, she lowered her lashes, inexplicably shy.
“The brace... when must I wear it?” She raised her gaze to his.
“Not all the time. Doctor Barker was clear in his opinion that too frequent use would weaken the muscles.” He was frowning a little, studying her as though he sensed her mood, but he did not press any questions. She was glad for that. She could not bear to explain her new realization of what her father had done, to provide Aidan with yet another confirmation of Gideon Heatherington’s perfidy. Nor could she bear to explain that despite all, he was her father, and though she reviled what she now knew of him, a part of her loved him regardless.
“Are you hungry?” Aidan asked.
“Famished.”
“All that fresh air and exertion?” His ex
pression was only polite interest, but in his tone she heard a smile. She could not help but smile in return, and a light shiver touched her frame as she thought of exactly what exertion he described. “Are you cold, sweet? Do you wish to ride in the carriage while I drive?”
“No.” She wanted to sit beside him, and look upon his face, and press the length of her thigh to his. She wanted to hear his voice, and talk with him.
Taking her hand in his, he raised her fingers to his lips. His eyes sparkled, blue and pewter. “Then off we go. We shall raid the kitchen at Trevisham.”
For an instant, she imagined the look on the butler’s face, his mouth pinched in disapproval. More likely, they would end up in the enormous dining room, separated by endless feet of gleaming mahogany table. She did not have the heart to tell him so.
With care he helped her to the driver’s perch, and then clambered up beside her with easy grace. As they rode back toward Pentreath, their shoulders brushing as the carriage dipped and swayed, Jane said, “Tell me why Hawker refers to you as His Lordship.”
Aidan cast her sidelong glance. “Because I am.”
“And I am the queen.” She laughed, certain that he teased her.
“I can never claim the title for, with my father dead, where is my proof? Who would name me the rightful heir, accept me as the drowned son returned from the depths of the ocean? Would the new heir gladly hand off his inheritance without significant evidence? Somehow, I think not. But by birth, I would have held the title one day.”
She wriggled sideways and stared at him, staggered when she realized he was perfectly serious. “But... that is not fair!”
Her exclamation drew a startled laugh from him. “What in life is fair, sweet Jane?” His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “It matters not. There is no coin. Only a title and a moldering country house, entailed, with crumbling walls and the family silver sold long ago, the coins spent in search of a son my father never found.”
His tone belied his casual dismissal, and his words made her sad. “How terrible.”
