“How can you know this about Sally?”
Drake shrugged. “That young miss is on her way to Wapping and from there she will sail for Australia where one hopes she will find a new start and redemption for her sins here in England.”
Sally had seemed like such a quiet, unassuming girl. It was difficult to imagine her being part of Winterton scheme. Adrian could only gape at Drake. “Shouldn’t she have to stand trial?”
Drake just stared back with those enigmatic dark blue eyes. “Winterton is in Ireland at present. But he will soon embark for America. Ironically enough, he is bound for New York.”
“Why is that ironic?” Adrian asked in a clipped tone.
“Because, knowing what you know now, I would wager all that I own that you’ll accept that job your rather assertive, if not obnoxious, cousin is pressing on you.” Drake paused, to finally take a drink of his tea.
Adrian stared at Drake, transfixed with a sort of horrific fascination, not knowing if this man was a savior or a demon.
“You have not wanted to become involved with Ruel and his nefarious political. And you’re also leery of what his business world might be like and what he might expect of you and what you might find yourself pushed into doing.” Drake’s brown crinkled with a thoughtful expression. “You’re afraid of temptation. The worldly temptations of wealth and power and lust. However, you’re on the verge of discovering how to turn such drives into motivation for your own personal power. You have yet to find your true calling and place in this world. It will be interesting, my lord, to see where the next year or two takes you.”
Now Adrian glowered at him. “I will see to my sister-in-law’s well-being. I demand that you release my servant and cease your spying and interference in my life. I demand that you leave, now, or else I shall call for the watch.”
“Call the watch, if you feel you must.” Amusement warmed the depths of those dark, sinister eyes. “But the watch will not come.” Drake raised his brows. “Have you been paying attention to me? I have told you that your late wife’s sister was planning to kill your mistress, but she was involved with a more demonic and determined murder who wanted to kill you instead as a means of tormenting and breaking your mistress, and leaving her all alone in this world.”
“And you—”
“I did some mild manipulation of my own. I applied pressure to an already cracked vessel, and it worked. Lady Chadwick broke, did she not? She confessed to you?” Drake asked with a curious tone in his voice.
“She did,” Adrian admitted.
“Then you owe me—and my operatives, some thanks.”
“Thank you,” Adrian said, coldly.
“We can take Lady Chadwick to a place where she’ll be safe, and no one will be able to trace where she has gone. The Duke of Hartley has an institution in the north. A quiet place where patients are treated kindly and with minimal drugging or all the other various tortures.” Drake put a hand to his cravat. “I and my closest operatives would be the only person besides yourself to know who the lady really is and for that matter, what she has done. Let her go to her place of confinement with a clean slate and give her caretakers no reason to be prejudiced against her. And this might be the best idea, given her previous association with Winterton. Miss Miranda Jones is still in danger.”
All the anger left Adrian. And with it, the blood seemed to drain from his head. He sat and ran a hand through his hair.
God, Miranda…
The danger that she had narrowly escaped.
The unknown dangers she might yet face.
All because she had been born to that insane man, Winterton.
“I have thoroughly investigated all who are involved because I am retired and rather bored in the hours when I would normally be working. It gives me sense of purpose.”
Adrian was barely listening to Drake, for all the various ways this situation could have turned out were playing over and over in his mind like a cavalcade of nightmares with no end.
“Miss Jones is in grave danger. I am certain of it. Winterton will not give up so easily.”
Adrian nodded. “Yes, I know this.”
“And there’s another deadly strike against her.
Adrian looked up.
“She has no one in this world, except her mother, who is a but child in a woman’s body.” Drake’s dark eyes bore into him without mercy. “No one but you cares about Miss Jones. No one else cares in the least.”
Chapter Fourteen
Adrian had never felt so full of darkness in his whole life. He had one driving need, and that was to see Miranda. To hold her in his arms and feel her heart, still living and beating, against his. To squeeze her until she wriggled in his embrace and pressed against his chest, begging to be let go.
Only then, would he truly believe that she was really safe and sound.
He ordered his driver to take him to Chelsea and at her house, he let himself in with the key.
First, he went to Davey’s bedchamber. Moonlight shimmered like silvery dust on his fair hair. His cheeks had begun to fill out again and their color was more rosy than not. But what filled Adrian with the most gratitude was the way the boy slept. Peaceful and with a relaxed expression.
Adrian’s heart filled to overflowing with gratitude for Miranda and her ability to love Davey the way a boy needed to be loved. To draw out his confessions in the way a child would relate to.
The need to see Miranda became overwhelming and Adrian flung open the door to her chamber.
She wasn’t there.
Her bedspread was drawn back, the sheets wrinkled. He touched the mussed linen and found it cool.
“Miranda,” he called, softly, mindful of Davey sleeping down the corridor. He ran through the house, searching for her, his mood turning almost frantic until he came to the back exit.
The door to the terrace was open, allowing in a spill of moonlight the sheer white curtain that covered the sidelight flowing in the breeze like a gentle beacon, calling him.
He wandered out to the balcony then spied the glow of her lantern in the garden.
Of course, his country girl would instinctively seek the comfort of nature when she was overset.
She sat on the stone bench that faced the cherub fountain. The moon lent her nightdress a silvery-lavender sort of color and with her hair softly curling about her shoulders, she appeared angelic herself.
“Miranda.”
She held out a hand.
He yanked his gloves off and tossed them to the ground and then he rushed to her and took her hand.
The feel of her bare flesh against his, so alive and warm, sent such relief through him that his body actually went weak with it.
Overcome with gratefulness and love for her, maybe even some awe towards her, his mood goddess, he knelt beside her and put his head in her lap. “I am heartsore and filled with such darkness tonight. You told me before that I should come to you and find my solace. I was too stubborn, too arrogant, too determined to remain strong at all costs, even to you. Even to myself. God help me, even to my sons.” He paused, wrapping his hands about her. “Well, I come to you tonight, will all my arrogance and stubbornness ripped away by all the unacceptable truths I have been faced with and I am filled with nothing but a terrible darkness that has obscured all my ability to hope. And I ask you, please, my love, solace me now.”
“What darkness has caused you to lose your hope?” She caressed his hair. “Tell me.” Her voice was gentle as a feather gliding on the wind.
“You were right about Dorothy.”
“And?”
“And she’ll be taken care of. We needn’t worry over her any longer.”
She continued stroking his head. “You won’t tell me more?”
“There’s little else to tell,” he said.
To tell her all would only add to her hurt—the hurts she’d carried her entire life. With the strength of his love for her, he would carry the burden of the remainder of tonight’s secrets.
He moved to sit beside her on the bench. “I first began to lose hope when I was young and neglected by my father. I’ve told you this.”
She nodded, her eyes shone with sympathy and quickly because glossed by tears.
“I never allowed myself to admit, truly, how broken I was.” His voice turned hoarse. “I hid behind a belief that all who loved passionately, excessively were the broken ones. I believed I need only find a sane, safe and rational love. I though I’d found it in Jane, but it eluded me. My marriage disappointed me. And that disappointment broke what was left of whatever hope I’d ever had.”
“Oh, my darling,” Miranda said, reaching to touch his cheek.
He cupped her face. “Years ago, when I first saw you, on Carrville’s arm and he was so proud, like strutting, aging rooster and he paraded you, an eighteen-year-old country girl, around the Courtesans’ ball, do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said, softly.
“Our eyes met, and I saw a glimmer of the hopes I had once held, in the wistfulness of your gaze and my heart came alive in that moment.”
“I saw that in your eyes.” She whispered this, as though it were too dangerous a truth to be spoken too loudly.
“You turned away,” he accused.
“I was terrified of what I felt at that moment.” She squeezed his leg as though driven by the stridency of her defense. “I’d been told you were next to penniless and I had to provide and protect Mama and myself from Winterton. I needed Carrville, badly, and I wanted so much to be a good mistress. A faithful mistress. I hated you for making me feel that I could so easily be something far, far less worthy. I hated you for making me want you.”
“I was angry with you for making me feel so alive with just one look and then killing that hope, so easily. So painlessly.”
“It was not painless. Not at all.” Her voice rang with sadness. “I had my duty. And you, God, you were so arrogant it frightened me. Carrville was always so jolly, so kind.”
“I have been afraid that all I really loved was your outward beauty. I thought myself obsessed with a need to possess it, like a collector possesses fine works of art. But now that I admit the truth of that first moment to myself. Now that I have come to know you so well, I know that I fell in love with the beautiful hope that you carry within you. A light that shines so brightly, it eclipses any idealized image of physical beauty. I love your strength, your determination to fight against all the wrongs done to you. I adore you for your continued ability to love so deeply, so passionately in the face of so many painful hours. Pain you never deserved.”
Tears spilled from her eyes. “Oh, Adrian, how much time have we wasted with our need to protect ourselves against each other?”
“Hush,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t think of that now. Kiss me and share your love with me and show me how to hope again.”
She leaned close, her breath carrying a hint of tea and raspberry preserves. She put her lips to his, a sweet, gentle yet urgent pressure. Her tongue flicked at the seam of his. He opened his mouth and couldn’t stop his hand from finding her breast and cupping the soft, warm weight of it.
She pressed his chest and pulled away, her eyes full of mirth. “You say that you are no longer afraid that you love me only for my beauty, yet I know you love my breasts.”
He bent and took her mouth, kissing her deeply, until he lifted his head and saw that her lips were red and swollen from the force and intensity of his passion.
“You love my breasts, don’t you?” She laughed, in that wicked, sensual way of hers. The laugh that fired his blood to boiling.
“I do, God, I do adore them so much.” He squeezed her with the barest pressure.
She shivered in his arms.
He hooked a finger into her neckline and pulled downwards with a quick, fierce yank. Seams tore, and the pearl buttons popped, falling on the stones about them with little clicking type sounds. He pulled the edges of the gaping nightdress aside and revealed her bare flesh.
He bent and kissed each one then spent several moments caressing her, before suckling on her stiffened nipples until she was moaning and squirming.
He raised his head, still stroking her all the while. “They are the most beautiful, womanly sights I have ever seen. I can’t deny it. I do want to possess them, I am mad to claim your beauty for my own. And you mustn’t hate me for that. You can’t hate me for it, Miranda, because I also need your love. If you were to stop loving me, I fear that I wouldn’t even be able to draw breath.”
He cupped her face, again, and kissed her with all the love in his heart.
Her urgent need thrummed beneath the surface, igniting his blood even more. His cock throbbed, hardening and lengthening.
But despite that tender gossamer thread of urgency in her kiss, in her soft moans, he sensed her holding back, or was that she was unable to express fully the growing need within her?
He knew the reason why.
He knew the words she needed to hear from him, now. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “You’ve asked me to change my ways. You want me to stop drinking to intoxication and to spend less time at the gaming tables.”
Her face suddenly relaxed and her eyes brightened. “Yes,” she said. “For everyone’s sake. Including yours.”
Another wave of gratitude crashed over him. Thankfulness that she loved him too well to make excuses for him and that she wouldn’t allow him to destroy himself. Thankfulness that she thought highly enough of him to ask for all that she deserved.
“Then I will do my best to change,” he vowed.
“That’s all anyone can ask.”
This time, when he kissed her, she opened and poured all her passion into her kiss, drawing his tongue into her mouth and giving him back measure for measure all the intensity he gave to her.
It was too cold to make love out of doors, so he carried her up to bed then he stripped off and came to her, naked and ready, his erection felt harder and larger than ever. He stretched out over her body.
She reached between them and grasped his rearing cock, giving it a firm, loving squeeze. He allowed her to take the lead, to guide him to her wet heat. Her greedy sex sucked him in, deeply, clenching around him.
A warm, eager welcome.
He groaned.
She wrapped her legs tightly about him, leaning up. Her breath tickled his ear. “We’re free now, free to love each other.” She laughed, a rich, sensual, womanly laugh and one that he could feel vibrating through her body. The sensation was novel and heady. “Free to love each other as often and whenever.” She nipped at his earlobe. “And where ever we like.”
“Only in the summer, my love,” he replied then he groaned as her sex squeezed him, tightly.
“We shall have a greenhouse then.”
“And dine on strawberries and champagne.”
“Yes, oh yes,” she gasped, as he thrust deeply.
Afterward, he held her, feeling her body quake with her desperate panting for air. “I’ve made you many promises this night,” he said, still bit winded himself.
“Yes,” she said, with dreaminess in her voice.
“I’ll stop becoming intoxicated.”
“Except for Christmas?” she placed a kiss on his cheek, a faint, butterfly wing kind of kiss that set his heart racing.
He grasped her hand and pressed it to his chest, over his heart. “No, I think I must quit all spirits. It is something in my nature. It leads me to excess.”
“What about excesses of lovemaking?”
He took her hand and kissed the palm. “I think excesses of lovemaking are only to be proper between a man and a wife.”
Her body went still. Rigid.
He waited for her to accept what he had just said.
“But earls cannot wed bastard-born girls.”
“I’ve worked so hard, to rebuild a family destiny. For a bloodline that never cared for me. Never loved. No one has loved me as you have. I would give you everything. I wou
ld give you my name. I would make you my countess.”
“Adrian…” Her voice quavered. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying that I will see your greenhouse built.”
“Adrian, you’re making me afraid.” She sounded so small, so vulnerable.
He held her and stroked her hair. “Hush, now.”
“I am afraid. I am afraid of reaching for the moon and losing it and then being denied everything else that I could have had.” She took a trembling breath. “Oh Adrian, we love each other, and we could be happy with just what we have now.”
“I don’t know if I can be happy with the way things are now. Not for long. I want your commitment to me. If you accept me and are willing to live with my genteel poverty…”
“Wait.” She craned her neck around so that she looked up at him, her auburn hair glinting in the dying firelight. “Yes, your pockets aren’t deep and yet you talk of building a greenhouse? How you tease and torment me.”
She spoke lightly, but he could hear the confusion beneath the lightness.
He touched her nose with a fingertip. “My cousin is offering me a job.”
“A job?” Her voice held a touch of wonder. “But you are an aristocrat. You’re not some clerk.”
“I am not too proud to take his job. It would enable me to give up the cards and to spend my evenings with you and my sons.”
“I hear what you are holding back,” she said. “I hear the ‘however’ in your tone.”
He frowned. “You’re going to be very hard to handle, aren’t you?”
She flipped her position so that she lay on her belly beside him and she put her hand to his face. “Tell me all about this job.”
He told her.
“America.” She sounded a little awed and perhaps even a bit afraid.
“It is not so far, and the job is not so long. I can invest the money, and we can have a start at building our estate.”
“But he wants you to go to China. You said so.”
“I have no intention of leaving England for such a long time. This is our home, where we belong.”
“America.”
He drew her into his arms and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll return to England so quickly. You will scarce notice that I have been gone.”
A Most Demanding Mistress (Fashionably Impure Book 2) Page 14
