“How dare you speak to me so! How dare you presume to think he deserves any happiness when it is he who denied my daughter hers! He took her from me and if he rots alone for the remainder of his days, I will be naught but glad of it!”
Realizing that the woman’s vitriol was truly out of control, her son rose. Hyacinth peered between her fingers at the tableau playing out. He took his mother in his arms, patting her shoulders as she alternately sobbed and shrieked unintelligible insults at all present. It struck her that he moved with an extraordinary amount of grace. She had only seen him a few times in passing, largely due to Mrs. Lee’s inability to control her temper.
Watching as he led his mother from the room, Hyacinth couldn’t help but be suspicious of them. Were they somehow responsible for the things that Ian heard and saw during the dark hours of the night? They certainly socialized little enough that they would have time and opportunity. Not to mention that Mrs. Lee’s theatrics always resulted in them either having dinner in their chambers or leaving the dinner table early.
“You should never have relented and let them come to dinner, Ian,” Lady Phyllida scolded. “You know how they are!”
“They are not prisoners, Mother. I do not control where or with whom they dine. For myself, I find the entire display has effectively curbed my appetite. If you will excuse me.”
“I am quite fatigued as well,” Hyacinth said. “If you’ll pardon me, Lady Arabella, Lady Phyllida. I think I shall retire early.”
Lady Arabella frowned at her. “You’re not suffering some sort of lasting effect from your little accident on the way here, are you?”
“No. Not at all. We simply had a very busy day and I slept poorly last night,” Hyacinth replied. It wasn’t a lie. She had slept poorly, but that had far more to do with distracting thoughts about Lord Dumbarton than any lingering injury.
“Very well, my dear. You go on to bed. I think Phyllida and I will play some cards if she’s of a mind.”
“Oh that sounds diverting!” Lady Phyllida agreed.
Hyacinth didn’t roll her eyes. It was clear that they thought her decision to flee the dining room was because she had some sort of assignation planned. And she did, though it was not romantic in nature. But first, she intended to see if she couldn’t overhear something from Mrs. Lee and her too-attentive son.
Leaving the dining room, she headed up the stairs and toward the rooms she knew to be theirs. She could hear raised voices from within. As she stood in the hallway listening, a maid emerged from another chamber. The girl’s eyes widened as she took in the scene. Understanding dawned only a second later and the girl scanned the hallway. Seeing no one else about, she beckoned for Hyacinth to follow.
The girl depressed a silk wallpaper-covered panel and it sprung open. Hyacinth would never have seen it on her own, it was hidden so seamlessly. Following the girl inside, she could hear the conversation much more clearly now.
“He’s going to have her declared dead! I know it, Mother! It’s that trollop that Lady Arabella brought with her!”
Hyacinth blinked at that. She’d been called many things in her life but never a trollop. Also, it was a strange thing to hear William speak so forcefully. She’d always imagined that it was Mrs. Lee who was the mastermind behind everything, but the man who was speaking was no milquetoast. There was authority in his voice.
“We’ve done everything we can to prevent it, William! What else is there?” Mrs. Lee cried. The woman, normally an absolute tyrant with everyone else, sounded almost fearful and plaintive with her son.
Hyacinth looked at the maid, both of them standing in the dark, their only source of light the dim lamps placed at wide intervals though the narrow corridors.
“You need to put some fear into the girl!” he shouted. “Make her believe he killed Annabel. If she has no fear of him, we’re ruined! Do you honestly think we could live here in comfort, far from the money lenders in London, if he remarries? If there’s even a hint that he’s reconsidering petitioning the House, I’ll have to take action, Mother. And you won’t like it when I do.”
Mrs. Lee spoke in a soft, cajoling tone. “My sweet boy, no. You mustn’t speak of such things. Those terrible days are behind us! Please, have a little lie down before you go out again. I know you must be so tired!”
Their voices grew quieter and then it was clear that they had left Mrs. Lee’s rooms and she was following William to his to tuck him in like a child. Hyacinth turned to the maid, but the girl held up a finger to her lips and beckoned once more for Hyacinth to follow her.
Winding through narrow corridors until they reached a dead end, the girl opened another hidden door and they emerged into a back hall. The noises below told her they were near the kitchens where the cook was making preparations for the morning.
“Have you ever heard anything like that from them before?” Hyacinth asked.
“They’re odd folk, Miss,” the maid said. “I don’t like to speak ill of my betters, but since they’ve been in this house, his lordship has been very different. These are dark days.”
“What is your name?”
“Peg, Miss.”
Hyacinth considered her next question carefully. “How long ago did Lord Dumbarton’s wife go missing?”
“Over a year ago, Miss.”
“And when did they arrive?”
“Six months past.”
Hyacinth found that very odd, indeed. “You mean they weren’t here for the immediate aftermath of her disappearance?”
“No, Miss.”
“Thank you, Peg,” Hyacinth said. “Please, say nothing of any of this.”
“Oh, no, Miss! I’d be sacked for sure.”
“Now, can you get me back to my rooms?”
“We’ll go down through the kitchen… if anyone asks, I’ll say you were lost and I’m leading you the quickest way back,” the maid suggested.
“Excellent… actually. I don’t need to go to my room. I need to go the library,” Hyacinth said. She needed to speak with Ian and it would not wait. “Point me in that direction, but first, are there more passages like that throughout the entire house?”
“Oh, yes, Miss! There’s some like that in almost every room. It was how the servants used to go about when the old lord was here. Lady Dumbarton and Lord Dumbarton aren’t quite the sticklers for such things as he was. So long as we do our work, they don’t expect us to be completely invisible.”
Invisible. Vanishing without a trace. Those devious, wicked people.
“The library, Peg… how do I get there?”
Ian was standing before the fire, drinking and brooding as had become his habit. When he was with Hyacinth, he could almost forget, he could almost push the guilt away entirely. But it only took a few moments in the company of Mrs. Lee or her wretched son to have it all come crashing back down upon him again.
He was refilling his glass when he heard it. The faint strains of a Mozart waltz that should not have been possible. It had been destroyed. He knew it. With an unusual flare of temper, Ian threw the glass. It smashed against the opposite wall, shattering into pieces as brandy slowly dripped down the striped silk that covered the walls.
A small noise from the doorway alerted him that he was not alone. Turning, he found Hyacinth standing there a look on her face that he found utterly inscrutable. Had he disgusted her so completely then? Guilt and shame swamped him then. He was going mad, and his vile temper was sure proof of it.
“Forgive me,” he said.
“I hear it, too,” she said. “The music. Be very quiet, Ian.”
He said nothing, simply watched as she let herself into the room and then walked around the edges of it, pressing her ear to the wall. He had no notion of what she was doing. Finally, on the wall that was shared by the library and his mother’s morning room, she paused. As he watched, she stepped back from it, pressing all along the woodwork and trim there until, finally, a panel in the wall simply popped open.
On the floor there w
as a bundled cloth which she removed to reveal a bracket clock. A cloth playing the very same tune that had slowly been driving him mad.
“I daresay this has been hidden in here and during the night, when no one is about, someone will slip in and wind it so that the song will begin and take you unaware,” Hyacinth said. “It’s both ingenious and diabolical.”
“Mrs. Lee,” Ian said between clenched teeth.
“I don’t think so,” Hyacinth said. “I think it’s William. He isn’t what he seems. She fears him.”
Ian frowned at that, even as he examined the clock. He had no notion where it had come from. Had they brought it with them? If so, how did they know that it should play precisely that tune?
“How do you know that, Hyacinth?” he asked.
“I heard them speaking. I followed them upstairs and was waiting in the corridor and I could hear them. One of the maids discovered me and showed me a passage similar to this that would let me eavesdrop with less chance of discovery. It was behind Mrs. Lee’s chamber and I could make out all that they were saying. I think that William even struck his mother. And he said something about the trouble they were in with money lenders.”
Ian’s eyebrows shot upward at that. He was beginning to realize just what they were capable of and just how much of a threat they might pose to all of them. “Did it never occur to you that it was dangerous? That you were taking a foolhardy and unnecessary risk?”
Hyacinth blinked at him, clearly taken aback by his rather harsh tone. “Well, no… I needed to find out more about them and I did. Don’t you see, Ian? This is good news. Now you know what they’re about!”
“Now I know that they are desperate people, and desperate people, Hyacinth, are capable of horrific things,” he said grimly. “What would they have done had you been discovered there?”
“Well, I d-don’t know,” she stammered. “But I wasn’t. Isn’t that all that matters?”
He rose from where he’d crouched next to the clock and gripped her arms, pulling her tightly to him and leaning down until they were nose to nose. “It most certainly is not all that matters. What would I do if something happened to you?”
“It wouldn’t be on your conscience, Ian. It would be on theirs,” she insisted.
“Damn my conscience,” he growled. “This isn’t about my conscience at all!”
“Then what is it about?” she asked.
Ian knew in that moment that he couldn’t simply tell her. He was too angry, too consumed with the fear of what might have happened. All that was left to him was to show her. Lowering his head, Ian slanted his lips over hers which parted in surprise. He claimed her kiss with a kind of hunger and desperation he’d never felt before in his life. At that moment, his only thought was of consuming her, of taking some piece of her into himself that he could hold forever.
It was not the sort of gentle kiss that one should bestow on an innocent young woman. It was certainly not the sort of kiss that one should bestow at the outset of such intimacies. It was hot, hungry, demanding, and relentless. But the thing that saved him was that she returned his kiss just as boldly. That when he slipped his tongue between her parted lips to taste her more fully, that, after only a slight hesitation, she slid her arms about him and met his questing mouth stroke for stroke.
It was the first time in her life that Hyacinth had ever been kissed. In all of her life, it had been Primrose whom men had desired. It had been her sister who’d been forced to fend them off at every turn, while she had simply disappeared into the woodwork. Quiet, unassuming, always responsible and dependable. She didn’t recognize the creature she had become the moment his lips had touched hers. Who was this passionate, wanton woman who clung to him and kissed him back with such fervor? She had no idea, but she found she rather liked that unexpected side of herself. What was more, she meant to indulge it to the fullest. After all, the opportunity might not present itself again.
Somehow, he had moved them from the small, dimly-lit chamber hidden between the walls. The panel closed and he steered them toward the settee. When he sat down heavily upon it, he pulled her with him until she sprawled across his lap. During all of it, the kiss never broke, it never altered. And Hyacinth was burning with it. Her face was flushed, her blood rushing in her veins in a way she’d never felt before, in a way that made her feel completely and utterly alive.
Everywhere he touched her, she felt the heat. His hands were at her waist, coasting over her back, down to her hips and then back up. When they moved forward, his thumbs barely brushing the underside of her breasts, Hyacinth pressed closer to him in an instinctive invitation. She wanted him to touch her there. She craved it even if she lacked the ability to say so.
Then his lips broke from hers to trail hot, tender kisses along her jaw, down her neck. His teeth nipped and his tongue soothed and she couldn’t halt the soft moan that escaped her at the delicious sensations. “I didn’t know it would feel like this,” she whispered.
“And how does it feel?” he asked, his fingertips tracing delicate circles over her ribs, drawing ever closer to her breasts.
“Like a perfect dream, like I need you to touch me the same way I need to take my next breath… just as compelling and just as vital,” she admitted.
His breath hissed out between clenched teeth. “You will be the death of me, Hyacinth. I did not intend for this to occur.”
“I didn’t either. But I will admit that I had hoped for it… I’m not so naive that I do not know where this leads, Ian,” she said. “And I am perfectly willing to follow you there.”
She could see the indecision warring in his gaze. He was a man of honor, after all, a man who believed that there should be some understanding between them before such intimacies. And he was not free to make such an offer to her. “Will you deny me?”
“I should. God help me, I should,” he whispered brokenly. “I cannot offer you more than this and you deserve so much more.”
“I deserve to be happy,” she said. “And so do you. I deserve passion and desire. I deserve to feel alive.” Each statement was punctuated with a kiss. “I deserve to know what it feels like to be wanted.” She moved from his lips to the firm line of his jaw, just below his ear. But she didn’t kiss him then, she bit down gently, her teeth scraping over his skin until his hands gripped her hips so tightly she knew there would be a mark. “We deserve this moment together.”
His gaze was intense, his voice raspy with it when he spoke. “I can give you pleasure, Hyacinth. I can show you all of those things… but I cannot make love to you completely. The risk is too great.”
Of getting her with child. “And will you teach me to pleasure you, as well?”
His head dropped forward until his forehead pressed to hers. “If you want,” he conceded.
“I do want. I want all of it, but I will settle for what you offer… for now.”
Her breath caught as he lifted his hands to the ties of her gown. He tugged them free until the fabric began to droop and he simply pushed it down her arms. Her stays followed and then her chemise. In the cool air, she felt her nipples pebble. But her eyes were on him, on the way he looked at her. For the first time in her life, Hyacinth felt truly beautiful. Then he dipped his head to kiss one taut peak, and thought fled. Only sensation remained. Her head fell back, her fingers threaded through the black silk of his hair to hold him to her. Pleasure coursed through her and only one word entered her mind. More. She wanted more.
Chapter Ten
Ian was consumed by her and by her pleasure. Had he thought her a quiet beauty—understated and lovely? He had been a fool. Her hair a mass of golden waves about her flushed face, her violet eyes darkened with desire and her lips bee stung from his kisses, she was a seductress, a wanton goddess demanding her due. And he was helpless to do anything other than give it to her. He touched her for her pleasure and for his own, tracing the delicate lines and lush curves.
Plying her perfect breasts with his lips, teasing the turgid peak
s of them until she moaned and writhed against him, he savored every sound that she uttered. Even then she was tugging at his cravat, at his shirt and waistcoat until both garments fell away. Her hands roamed over his chest, her fingers tracing the lines and indentations of muscles, sliding through chest hair until she could score the flat disks of his nipples with her nails. He hissed out a breath at that. “Minx,” he muttered.
She smiled. “I wondered if it would feel as good to you as it does to me.” Then she reached for the buttons at the fall of his breeches, but he caught her hand, stilling it. “I want to touch you. I want to touch you as you’ve touched me.”
“You will,” he promised. “But not yet. A woman is gifted with the ability to take her pleasure again and again. A man requires slightly more time to recover himself. Let me pleasure you, Hyacinth. Let me see how glorious you are with it… and then you may do as you please.”
She rose then, shimmying until the last remnants of her clothing slid to the floor. Naked bur for stockings, garters and a pair of evening slippers, there was no shyness in her at all.
“You are a study in contradiction, Hyacinth,” he said with a gentle smile tugging at his lips. “Bold and passionate, yet innocent and unspoiled.”
She climbed back onto his lap, pressing herself against him. “Unlike most women, I know what happens next, even if I’ve never experienced it. But this isn’t what I witnessed as a child in the Devil’s Acre… this isn’t some tawdry thing done hurriedly for a bit of coin. Is it that, Ian? Because it doesn’t feel that way. It feels beautiful to me and right.”
“It isn’t cheap and tawdry,” he said, his words ringing like a solemn vow. “I won’t call this love. Not because it isn’t and not because I don’t wish to. I won’t say those words to you because I’m not free to utter them. But if things were different and if the option was available to me, we’d be indulging our desires much more fully and we’d be doing so as man and wife. You do know that, don’t you?”
The Midnight Hour: All-Hallows’ Brides Page 51
