“It isn’t my blood,” Graham said softly. “I’m not hurt, Beatrice.”
She looked back at him as he pulled himself up to a sitting position. His face was bloodied, his lips split and a bruise was already forming around his eye. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Alain leaning against the wall. He clutched his abdomen and blood seeped between his fingers, his skin pale and clammy. Before her eyes, he slowly slipped to the floor.
“Should we help him?”
“It’s too late for that,” Graham said. “A wound like that… well, you saw Edmund.”
Alain opened his eyes then. With his last breath he uttered, “Bastard.” His eyes closed then and his breathing stilled.
Warner stepped forward, pressed his hand against the man’s neck to check for any sign of life. Finding none, he rose and shook his head. “I’ll have his body removed to the cellars and send for the magistrate. At least with him here, we can clear Christopher of any role in Edmund’s death. Miss Marlowe, can you help Lord Blakemore to his chamber? I’ll attend you both there as soon as I’ve dealt with this.”
Beatrice nodded. It was really all she could do. Speech was beyond her. After the fear of what Alain would do to her and literally fighting for her life, seeing Graham lying there seemingly lifeless, she simply could not process anything else. She felt numb, but also impossibly fragile, as if at any moment she might shatter into so many pieces it would be impossible to put her back together again.
Lady Agatha’s chamber door opened and Crenshaw poked her head out. “Is it all over, Miss?”
“Yes, Crenshaw,” Graham said, his worried gaze fixed on Beatrice. “Is Lady Agatha all right?”
“She’s bursting to find out what happened. I had to all but sit on her to keep her in bed and not wander out here in the thick of it… but she’s fine, my lord, and I’ll be certain to let her know that you all are fine as well!”
“Thank you, Crenshaw,” Graham said as he levered himself up from the floor. He’d taken quite a few punches to the ribs. Between that and the recoil of the pistol against those same ribs when it had gone off, he would be lucky if they were not broken. Turning his attention back to Beatrice, he spoke gently to her. “You must get up, Beatrice. I can’t lift you at the moment.”
She did so, but continued to stare blankly ahead. Taking her hand, he led her away toward the solitude of his room. Settling her in a chair before the hearth, he poured a heavy snifter of brandy and placed it in her hand. “Drink that. Every damned drop of it.”
Again, she simply did as she was told, without question. That alone was cause for concern. Beatrice was many things, but he’d certainly never counted docile among them. “Dammit, Beatrice! Stop this right now!”
“Stop what?”
“Retreating to wherever it is you’ve gone in your head! Come back to me in the here and now… scream, cry, throw something!”
The glass that was in her hand suddenly sailed through the air, shattering against the wall. “Is that better?” she asked. While her normal fire was still dimmed, he could see a hint of it in her challenging gaze.
“Yes,” he replied. “It is. I’d rather you break every glass in this house than retreat into yourself that way.” Graham paused to collect his thoughts and then approached her. Though it pained him to do so, he squatted down next to her chair. “We’re fine. We are both fine. And he cannot harm us again.”
After a moment, she looked at him and tears swam in her eyes. “I thought you were dead. I thought—” she broke off on a sob.
Graham pulled her to him. “What did you think?”
“That it was too late. That I was too late. All I’d done was tell you over and over how impossible it would be to have anything between us—I’d just wasted our time together.”
Graham held her, as much for his own comfort as hers. She wasn’t the only one who’d been terrified. As he’d raced up the stairs, he’d envisioned a dozen horrible scenarios awaiting him and all of them had involved the loss of her. “So now we know and we will not waste any more time. To be clear, I mean to marry you, Beatrice, and I don’t much care whether or not you object. I’ll drag you to Scotland and find some unscrupulous vicar who can be paid to sign the register and keep his mouth shut.”
A watery laugh escaped her. “I promise not to be so difficult about every major decision in our lives.”
It was his turn to laugh. “Don’t make promises you can’t possibly keep. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you weren’t being difficult… and to be entirely honest, I’m not exactly the soul of amiability. We’re a matched pair, you and I.”
“So we are,” she agreed. “And there’s no one else I’d rather be matched with.”
“No more arguments about the estates and about heiresses and whether or not you’re a suitable bride?”
She leaned back. “All of those things are still true. I am an imprudent choice for you and in agreeing to marry you, I am being supremely selfish… but the last hour has prompted significant reprioritization. That all seems far less important than being with the man—”
“The man?” he prompted.
She sighed heavily. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said with a slight nod. “But if it makes it better, I’ll say it first. I love you. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life here with you… whether I remember my past or not, I want to be focused solely on our future.”
She leaned into him, pressing her face against his shoulder and holding him tightly. “I love you. I think maybe I always have… no other man would ever do because I was waiting for you to return.”
“Even though I was a horrid little beast as a child?”
“Even though,” she agreed.
Epilogue
Beatrice swayed with the carriage as it rumbled along the road. Across from her, Graham was clearly less inclined to simply endure the journey in silence. He sighed, shifted in his seat and, in general, made his impatience known.
“We’ll reach Castle Black within the hour,” she said softly. They were returning from Gretna Green. A hasty ceremony in a small church was not what Lady Agatha had wanted them to have. She’d tried to dissuade them from getting married in what she referred to as a havey-cavey fashion but, instead, having a ceremony in the village church after the banns were read. Neither of them had been willing to wait so long.
“I’m well aware of where we are,” he said. “I am simply done with this carriage. And here I thought traveling by sea was bad!”
She laughed. “The roads are difficult at this time of year.”
He reached for her, grasping her hand and pulling her until she crossed the distance between them and sprawled across his lap. “There are things we could do to pass the time,” he said suggestively.
“In a carriage?” she asked, both scandalized and intrigued.
“It’s all about rhythm,” he offered with a teasing smile.
All thoughts of teasing fled as his lips moved along the column of her throat. He’d found her weakness. When he kissed her there, just below her ear, and followed that tender caress with the slight sting of his teeth, all of her good sense fled. It took so little to make her a slave to desire, she mused.
His hands moved to her hips, repositioning her so that she sat astride his lap. As his mouth descended on hers, he moved against her and she could feel the hardened ridge of his manhood pressed against her most intimate flesh. Experimenting, Beatrice shifted forward onto her knees and arched against him. The resulting contact elicited a soft groan from them both.
As the carriage rolled along, the sway of it did, in fact, create a rhythm that had them both breathless and gasping. The desire was so intense that any thought to propriety simply vanished.
Beatrice reached between them and began to unbutton the fall front of his breeches. “If we’re going to be scandalous, then let us be completely so.”
“Are you sure you don’t wish to wait until we are home i
n the sanctuary of our bed?” he teased.
“No. I want you now,” she said. “I need to feel you inside me.”
Her words were bold and impossibly brazen. But that had been the point. She’d discovered that her husband liked it very much when she behaved as a wanton. That moment was no exception. The simple statement had elevated the tension in him to new heights. Every muscle tensed beneath her and the hands gripping her hips tightened to the point that they would undoubtedly leave marks. But he was lifting her, positioning her above him, just so.
“If you want me inside you, Beatrice,” he whispered seductively, “then take me.”
It was a dare to see just how bold she would be and she was more than up to the challenge. Closing her hand around the thick shaft of his erection, she guided it to her entrance and with careful movements, began to sink down on him.
The pleasure as he filled her was impossibly intense. Beatrice swayed, but he steadied her by wrapping one arm around her waist. With that support, she began to move, rising up and down on him in rhythm with the movements of the carriage.
Again and again, she rocked down and he filled her, the heat of him scorching her skin as she strained toward release. When at last it came, her body shuddering and her cries lost in his kiss, she was weak with it. Limp and lax, she sank against him as he thrust into her once again, pressing deep as he spilled himself inside her.
Wrapped together on that seat, he whispered against her ear, “I may have to rethink my aversion to this mode of transportation.”
She smiled. “As our next journey is to London and your mother will be with us, I sincerely hope not.”
Graham shuddered at the thought. “If you had not already sated my ardor, that thought would have effectively withered me.”
Beatrice rose onto her knees and met his gaze. “Are you worried about London? About taking your place there?”
“I’m not worried about anything so long as I have you by my side… I will not be liked. I will be called a usurper, an outsider and, perhaps, even an imposter. There are those who will never accept that I am the Lost Lord of Castle Black.”
“It is their loss,” she said. “You are everything that a gentleman is supposed to be.”
“Hardly that!”
“But you are!” she protested. “You have been kind and generous with the staff, you have taken to the responsibilities and obligations of the estate, not as if born to it, but as if driven to do so! You were incredibly merciful toward Eloise when you did not have to be. Allowing her to return to her family rather than go to prison was a generosity that she did not deserve.”
“One could argue that it was a punishment her family did not deserve.”
Her lips quirked at that. “As you say… and what of Dr. Warner who struggled in York to build his practice? You’ve set him up in the village and now we have access to quality medical care instead of being dependent upon Dr. Shepherd’s quackery! Then there’s Sir Godfrey—even after the truth of his perfidy came about, you’ve still been gracious enough to let him live out his days in the townhome in Bath… albeit with a more stringent budget and supervision!”
“None of those decisions were made for altruistic reasons. Scandal, given all that we have already endured, should not be courted so openly.”
“Spoken like a true gentleman!” she proclaimed. “And while this trip to London is necessary to get Christopher enrolled in university again and to deal with the legal ramifications of your ‘resurrection’, it will be good for you to be reminded of what you come from, but it will also be good for Lady Agatha. She has been much too isolated at Castle Black.”
His hand made lazy circles over her back. Enough so that she wanted to purr and stretch like a cat. “And what of you, Beatrice? Will London and a jaunt into society be good for you?”
“You are good for me. Being where you are is good for me… beyond that, nothing else matters,” she admitted. The carriage turned off the main road and onto the more narrow lane that would lead to the castle. They were on Blakemore property. “Welcome home Lord Blakemore.”
“And to you, Lady Blakemore. Welcome home.”
The End
The Lost Lord of Black Castle (The Lost Lords Book 1) Page 24
