She nodded that she did.
“Good. I’m going to show you how. Sometimes it hurts a bit the first time. That’s why I’ve asked you to drink the wine. It will help. There will be pleasure, too, I promise. I love you, Jenna. I do not ever want to hurt you, and I apologize beforehand for what has to be.”
More talk of pain. She wouldn’t show her ignorance. She drank the second glass dry, a little too quickly, and set it aside. At first it didn’t seem to have any effect. It wasn’t until he took her in his arms again and began kissing her—deep, soulful kisses that set her pulse racing and pumped the alcohol into her blood—that she began to feel pleasantly dizzy.
After a moment, he took her arm and led her toward the four-poster, extinguishing the candles one by one with the palm of his hand until the room was in semidarkness, the only light issuing from the mellow glow of the fire burning low in the grate to chase the dampness. When they reached the bed, he untied the sash that closed his dressing gown and let it gap open, taking care, she noticed, to spare her the sight of his deeply scarred right knee. Turning her toward him, he untied the satin ribbon that gathered her nightgown at the neck. Sliding it down over her shoulders, he let it puddle at her feet and feasted upon every inch of her body, his hooded eyes becoming smoldering black sapphires, dilated with anticipation. They followed the curve of her arched throat to her breasts and narrow waist, and slid along the curve of her hips and over her belly and thighs.
“Good God, you are exquisite,” he said, his voice husky with longing as his fingers lightly followed the same route his eyes had taken. When they reached her breasts, Jenna held her breath as fire surged through her loins. He drew her closer, and she melted in his arms.
His satin dressing gown, so cold pressing against her, couldn’t cool the fever rising in her blood. His runaway heart was beating against her naked skin through the fabric. It was racing, pounding, echoing in a wild, hypnotic rhythm that resonated throughout her quivering body. He was erect, his greatness touching her. When he guided her hand there, she uttered a strangled gasp as his sex responded to her touch.
All at once he struggled out of the dressing gown, lifted her in his arms, and laid her on the bed. Her head was reeling. The champagne had taken effect. It blurred her vision as he gathered her close and held her there murmuring her name. Emboldened by the wine, and intoxicated by his maleness, she threw her arms around him, pressing him closer, and slid her fingers along the length of his spine. When they reached his taut buttocks, his body convulsed and shuddered against her. He groaned, folding her closer, his chest hair like silk against her breasts.
Who was this paradox she had married—this man, so strong and virile, yet capable of such incredible tenderness as this he showed her now? It made him seem almost childlike, vulnerable in her arms. Her heart ached with love for him.
He kissed her again, holding back at first as he had before, then more deeply, urgently. The effect was dizzying. He tasted of wine and traces of latakia as his skilled tongue opened her mouth and entered her, savoring each slow, silken advance. Waves of intense sensation began to pulse through her belly and thighs at the touch of his hand on her breast. When his lips traveled there, usurping his fingers, she called out his name.
She had imagined this since he held her in the garden at Moorhaven—wished for it, longed for it. Now her delicious fantasy had become real, and nothing in her wildest imaginings could compare to the touch of these warm lips, sucking, tugging—surrounding her aching nipple, grown tall and hard against his tongue.
Jenna arched her throbbing body against him. It seemed to have a will of its own. Her heart leapt at the abandon with which her flesh reached out for his in the heat of raw passion. Involuntary sighs trembling from the very depths of her became husky with desire. The vibration was more than she could bear, and when her lips parted to release the sound, his warm mouth closed over them and swallowed it. Conjoined, their moans gained volume, thrumming wildly in her blood—pulsing through her body as she moved to the strange erotic rhythm coursing through her.
Jenna’s heart began to race as his gentle fingers left her arched throat and traveled to her breast. It nearly stopped when they moved over her belly and along the inside of her thighs. She held her breath as he opened her legs, and her body tensed. What must he think of her wanton behavior?
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “Relax, Jenna.”
She did as he bade her, and he probed further into the soft, moist hair curling between the thighs she’d opened to him—slow, rhythmic strokes that tantalized her deep inside with waves of warm, achy heat. She spread her legs wider, writhing against his fingers, leaning into the pressure of his strokes. That pressure grew more intense, the rhythm more rapid. Her breath quickened as his fingers inched deeper—then deeper still! His lips moved over her breast, closed over the tight, hard peak, his flicking tongue teasing it taller. He began to suck, and when his teeth nipped lightly, she uttered a hoarse, throaty groan. The sound was so foreign she almost didn’t recognize her own voice.
There was pain then, but oh what glorious pain, as those skilled fingers glided inside her, wet with the first dew of her awakening. Was this what all the pother was about, this excruciating ecstasy that riddled her body so rapturously with pleasure she had never imagined?
But no!
All at once he pulled back and gazed down at her, his broad chest heaving, his hooded eyes glazed with arousal, glistening with the reflection of the dying embers in the grate.
“Hold me, Jenna,” he panted.
As she reached to pull him close, he withdrew his fingers and filled her instead with his engorged sex. Jenna cried out as he entered her, but he stifled the cry with his warm lips, meanwhile guiding her legs around him.
Jenna shuddered with pleasure and pain as he plunged deeper, igniting her loins with drenching fire. And she matched his thrusts with a rocking rhythm that halted him momentarily, their moist bodies trembling, their runaway hearts hammering in unison. But the moment was short-lived. He gathered her closer, and they clung to each other in a frenzy of mindless oblivion.
Her hands, seeming to act on their own again, flitted over his moist skin—caressing, reverencing, exploring forbidden regions of his well-muscled body in shameless abandon. What shocking fervor had he awakened in her? What primitive force was this over which she had no control in this man’s arms? Whatever it was, this was the consummation of what she’d felt from the very first moment she’d set eyes on him at Moorhaven Manor. It was right. This wasn’t just a mating of their bodies; it was a mating of their souls.
When she took his face in her hands, he threw back his head and gritted out, “Now, my Jenna . . . please . . . I beg you . . . now . . .”
Jenna murmured his name and he groaned, taking her deeper and deeper until his sex froze inside her. Then, pumping wildly, it convulsed in a spasm of pulsating contractions that filled her with the warm rush of his seed.
Simon let his breath out on a long, low moan. His thrusts eased to mild undulations. He dropped his moist brow on her shoulder, his breath coming short, and folded her close in his arms.
Jenna wasn’t dizzy anymore. Her vision had almost become normal again, though her whole body throbbed like a pulse beat. It was a long moment before his warm mouth found her lips, and he shifted his weight, though he didn’t withdraw.
“Are you all right?” he murmured.
His warm breath puffed in her ear, and she nodded against his lips.
“Was there much pain?”
“A little,” she said. It would serve nothing to lie. “But then . . . oh, Simon!” she whispered in reflection. How tenderly he had managed it.
He gathered her close again, then gently withdrew himself and relaxed, heaving a ragged sigh.
Jenna soothed him with caressing hands, but when her fingers slid upward across his shoulder, he stiffened against her. Her hand was resting on something rough and puckered—still tender, judging from his reaction to her
touch—and she pulled back, examining what she’d discovered.
The room was almost in total darkness. Only the faintest embers still glowed in the hearth, but in what light they spared, she picked out the ragged shape of a scar just below his collarbone. The wound was recent, and deep.
“Simon, what is this?” she breathed.
“Nothing to trouble over,” he said. Lifting her hand from the scar, he raised it to his lips and kissed first her palm, and then her fingers, fondling them gently.
A surge of hot blood rushed through her veins. It crippled her. Her mind reeled backward in time. The aroma of latakia and wine seemed stronger suddenly, drifting from his moist skin, invoking a memory older than Moorhaven, as she stared up into eyes gazing back like blue-black fire. But she saw them instead, not dilated as they were now, with passion, but in pain, blazing through the holes in a black silk half mask. Her throat closed over a gasp.
“When did it . . . happen?” she murmured.
“Months ago. Before we met,” he said almost tersely.
“H-how?”
Simon kissed her again. He took hold of the counterpane and wrapped it around her, pulling her close in his arms. “It’s nothing, Jenna, nothing at all. Cover up. You’re trembling.”
“Simon—”
“Shhhh,” he whispered, nuzzling her throat. “It’s been a long, difficult day. Go to sleep, my love.”
But Jenna couldn’t sleep. She lay wide-eyed in Simon’s strong arms while he slept peacefully beside her well into the wee hours of that long, stormy night. Outside, banshee winds howled about the pilasters. It was a mournful, melancholy sound that reminded her of the peacocks’ cries, and rain tapped against the windowpanes like the anxious fingers of some lost soul begging admittance. Was guilt causing her imagination to run wild, or was this development worse than her worst nightmare? Though Jenna didn’t want to address that question, it gave her no peace.
Why had Simon been so evasive about the wound? He had almost become angry when she persisted about it before he drifted off to sleep. Her thoughts kept returning to that awful night on the old Lamorna Road. The highwayman had seemed to walk stiffly. Was he disguising a limp the way she’d so often seen Simon do? She’d smelled exotic tobacco and wine on the man when he approached her that night. Was that why Simon’s latakia blend sparked recognition the very first time she’d inhaled its distinctive aroma? She recalled the eyes of the man—the blue fire burning toward her through the holes in his half-mask. Was that why she’d fainted at the ball: not because Simon represented her nightmare, but rather because she’d literally seen a ghost that her conscious mind wouldn’t let her accept? What was it he’d said when she asked him why he’d worn that costume—that it was a protest against the aristocracy, that he was making a statement, showing his disapproval. He’d made his convictions plain. Had he put them into practice? Was that costume a blatant reality, a daring insult, a slap in the face to a houseful of examples of the very decadence he so abhorred? How did he dare take such a gamble that they wouldn’t see him for who he really was? Maybe it wasn’t such a gamble. He evidently knew they wouldn’t make the connection, or he wouldn’t have taken such a risk. But then, he seemed to thrive upon risk. At best the man was a paradox. No wonder he distanced himself from the ton, kept such a low profile. He was hiding this, protecting his alter ego. Could it be?
All at once her own words came back to haunt her:Long hair could be made to look short, but short hair could not be made long! Was he simply a revolutionary as Evelyn had observed, or was his unconventional hairstyle a clever ploy to throw suspicion off himself should the need arise? She wracked her brain trying to remember if his queue had been visible on the night of the ball, or tucked up inside that antiquated tricorn hat—another signature of the Marsh Hawk—but she couldn’t. She’d passed out before taking notice.
Her heart was pounding, keeping time with the runaway brain that repeatedly harkened back to the same terrible thought: Dear God, could that highwayman have lived? Could Simon be the Marsh Hawk? Have I fallen in love with and married the man responsible for my father’s death? Whatever the cost, she had to know. Somehow, she had to discover the truth. With that decided, she succumbed to physical and emotional exhaustion and let the peaceful sound of Simon’s deep breathing lull her into a deep, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Phelps’s encrypted knock at the dressing room door called Simon from his marriage bed. While the wedding guests had been sampling the delectable viands and drinking French champagne at the wedding breakfast, his valet was closeted at the Heatherwood Arms, plying one of Rupert Marner’s tigers with enough of the inn’s black ale to loosen the man’s tongue in regard to Rupert’s travel plans. The volatile brew, known to have doubled as a furniture stripper on occasion, had done its job. As Simon feared, the viscount was, indeed, privy to their itinerary, and was about to set out for Roxburghshire. At that news, dressed in his highwayman garb, with Phelps in tow, the earl rode into the oncoming storm at breakneck speed and reached the stretch of wooded road just west of Widdon Down in time to intercept Rupert’s brougham.
Well hidden among the trees that formed a natural canopy over the narrow thoroughfare in that sector, and sheltered somewhat from the persistent rain, Simon donned his half mask and loaded his pistols.
“My lord, it’s madness, this,” Phelps pleaded. “Are you certain you want to take such a risk?”
“The bounder’s got to answer for Jenna, Phelps,” Simon stated, speaking in a dark mutter. He tucked his tied-back hair underneath his old-fashioned tricorn hat, and adjusted the mask around it, anchoring it in place. “Nothing else could have gotten me out of that bed just now, old boy. I had planned on waking with my wife in my arms. What he’s done, not to mention what he’s planning, demands satisfaction. You know that.”
“What satisfaction, my lord, when he won’t even know that it was you who have leveled it—and why?”
“My satisfaction,” Simon returned, thumping his chest with a balled-up fist, “in that I’ve put paid to the score.”
The valet wagged his head in an all too familiar manner, and Simon heaved a gusty sigh that flared his nostrils and answered the gesture. “What? Would you rather have another duel?” he said.
“At least there would be honor in it, my lord. You’ve never stooped to what you’re planning. The Marsh Hawk has never—”
“I don’t intend to kill him, Phelps. Stubble the melodrama.”
“What do you plan to do, then?”
“I plan to prevent him from spoiling my wedding trip. I plan, Phelps, to meddle with his travel plans. Just how much of a meddle depends upon him. Now, ride back ’round the bend and crow when you see the blackguard’s coach. I don’t want to meddle with anyone else this trip. Oh, and, Phelps,” he added, as the valet turned, “no matter what occurs, you are not to interfere.”
The valet offered a cursory nod and did as bidden, making no sound as he walked his horse through the underbrush and disappeared into the eerie green pallor of the wood.
Simon nodded in approval. Phelps would perform well, for this was his usual procedure. The one thing all of his victims remembered of an encounter with the Marsh Hawk was the cry of a real hawk before he appeared; hence his title. But it was never the Marsh Hawk himself who uttered the cry. It was Phelps, and the cry of the hawk was the valet’s signal for Simon to continue according to plan.
Simon didn’t have long to wait. The stubborn rain had just begun to drip from the corners of his hat, making hollow splats on the broad, caped shoulders of his greatcoat, when he heard the valet’s piercing cue. And he drew his pistol and rode out onto the highway, firing a shot in the air that stopped the listing black brougham that rounded the curve.
“Stand and deliver!” he shouted, his voice booming like thunder, amplified by the storm. Then, to the driver he charged, “You there, coachman, throw down your weapons and hold your hands high where I can see them.”
A fl
intlock rifle came crashing to earth, landing in a puddle, and Simon’s narrowed eyes—reduced to slits behind the half mask—glared through the rain-spattered coach window.
“You in there, step down!” he commanded.
The coach team shied and pranced in place, set in motion by the nervous right leader, nearest to Simon. With a careful eye upon the animal, Simon walked his own prancing mount closer as a slow hand pushed the coach door open and Rupert Marner stepped out on the sodden road, wearing a dour look of indignation.
“Well, well,” Simon taunted, knocking Rupert’s beaver off his head with the point of his pistol, “a born-to-the-purple toady, I’ll be bound.”
“H-how dare you stop this carriage? D-do you know who I am, you want-wit?” cried Rupert in falsetto, reaching too late to retrieve his hat, which had rolled upside down into the puddle between them, and joined the coachman’s gun.
Simon ground out a guttural chuckle, meanwhile crushing the hat beneath his mount’s prancing forefeet. He laughed outright as Rupert danced quickly away to spare his pantaloons a splattering with mud.
“Oh, aye, that I do—a fat chicken to be plucked,” he replied, disguising his cultured voice. He slid out of the saddle, looped his mount’s reins around a clump of bracken at the side of the road, and strolled closer. “Turn out your pockets, gov’nor,” he charged, “and hand over your purse, that quizzing glass, stickpin—and the gold watch you’re trying to conceal there, too.”
“I’ll see you swing at Tyburn for this,” Rupert snapped, tossing the lot after the hat into the puddle.
“You will, eh?” Simon drawled. He took down a coiled length of rope from his saddle, advanced—pistol in one hand, rope in the other—and said through a dangerous tremor, “Off with the driving coat.”
Rupert hesitated, but Simon pressed his pistol barrel against the man’s corseted stomach.
“It would be a pity to spoil this with a bullet hole, such a fine wool coat; a real pity,” he said, his thumb caressing the hammer.
The Marsh Hawk Page 14
