The Heir

by Catherine Coulter

  He brought her to pleasure before he entered her. He wanted no fear in her, no hesitation. Her release was shattering, her astonishment clearly written on her face. She was staring up at him even as her heart pounded in the aftermath of a pleasure so wild, so intense, she could never have imagined such a thing. “That was very nice, Justin,” she managed to say after a moment.

  “There’s more I hope you will enjoy.” He eased into her, feeling her tense around him, her muscles tightening in shocks of pleasure. He went deep and deeper still. And she couldn’t believe this, couldn’t believe what it made her feel.

  “You’re part of me,” she said against his neck, and then she bit him, and her hands were wild down his back and his hips. “I will never let you go.”

  “No,” he said, “no.” And he turned into a wild man, heaving and thrusting and then his own pleasure overtook him and he threw back his head and yelled with the power of it.

  He was flattening her but she didn’t care. She bit his shoulder again, then kissed him, again and again. “That was nice,” she said. “Perhaps we can do it again?”

  He managed to raise himself on his elbows and stare down at her. “I cannot,” he said. “I am just a man, Arabella, just a weak man and you have wrung me out.”

  “I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

  He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose. “Give me a little while and then I will please you again.” He paused, then said in a low gruff voice, “Do you forgive me for hurting you? Can you forgive me for all of it?”

  He was deep inside her. She lifted her hips and he moaned. “Yes,” she said. And he began moving deep inside her again and she loved it, no, craved it, and soon she was with him and it went on and on.

  She snuggled into the warmth of the covers, held tightly against him, and soon fell asleep.

  She was magically transported to the chamber beneath the old abbey ruins. Rock rumbled and fell about her, striking her head, her face, her shoulders. She tossed forward on her face, frantically trying to avoid the sharp, jagged stones, desperately flailing her arms about for protection. Her fingers clasped about brittle, spiderlike projections. She felt her hand squeezed with such force that she was jerked forward. Though she was struggling in darkness, she saw with terrifying clarity what held her so mercilessly. A skeleton’s hand held her fast, its fleshless fingers digging into her wrist. She heard a low cry, a moan of hate and pain, the rattle of imminent death. The skeleton rocked up from its prone position, broken teeth falling from its rotted hollow mouth. Slowly, before her eyes, the bones of its hands began to turn to dust and trickle away. The head tottered backward and fell, crashing and crumbling to the ground. She heard hellish screams all about her. She felt death upon her, clogging her throat, enclosing her in a shroud of terror.

  Arabella awoke, her hands tearing at the bedcovers, a final cry dying on her own lips. “Arabella, dammit, wake up!”

  The earl lit a candle and raised it above her head. She drew back with a gasp as the light fell upon the jeering face of the skeleton on The Dance of Death. Dream and reality mixed in her mind. Had the screaming come from the skeleton? Could it have been the wailing of an infant? The hopeless cries of a woman? Had she heard the ghosts of Evesham Abbey?

  “Arabella, wake up. Come, love, come back to me. You had a nightmare. It’s over now.” He drew her to him and began to rub his large hands up and down her back.

  She drew a shaking breath. “It was that horrible skeleton in the old abbey ruins. Then I thought I heard from our ghosts, but now I begin to doubt that their cries were not my own. Oh God, it was horrible.”

  “I have heard the ghosts.” He looked over at The Dance of Death panel. “I do not like that thing. Should you like it if we removed it to the attic?”

  She nodded slowly. “It was odd, Justin, but somehow that panel was part of the dream. I don’t understand it. Yes, let’s send it to the attic. It means nothing to anyone now.” She snuggled against him again. “I came very close to dying this afternoon. I would have died without ever having known all of living. I would have died without knowing you as my husband. I thank you for saving me.”

  “You’re shivering.” He was kissing her temple, shoving her hair from her forehead. “Here I am trying to avoid speaking honestly to you. It is because I am a man, I suppose. We don’t wish to speak of things so deeply felt. It makes no sense, but there it is. If you had died, I couldn’t have borne it. It’s that simple.”

  “Gervaise tried to kill me today. No, don’t shake your head. I know that he must have. The collapse of all the rocks and dirt were only around the cell I was in. He asked me to stay there. He said he wanted to go exploring. Why, Justin? Why did he want to kill me? I have thought and thought about it but I can’t dredge up a reason. Why did he do it?”

  The earl was silent for a long time, but he didn’t loosen his hold on her. His fingers lightly caressed her shoulder, the softness of her upper arm. “He didn’t want to kill you,” he said finally. “What he wanted was to get me out of Evesham Abbey. He wanted to come here, to our bedchamber. There is something in this chamber that is hidden, something he wants, something probably poor old Josette knew about and that is why he killed her. Did you not wonder why I had this bedchamber locked? Why I gave that ridiculous excuse that some floorboards were loose and thus posed a danger? It was to keep him out until I found out what he was after.

  “I risked your life because I wanted to trap the little bastard. It was all I could do not to wring his mangy neck today, Arabella. But the game is soon up. He will not leave here until he has made a last try to get into this room and retrieve what it is he is looking for.”

  “You know he killed Josette.”

  “It sounds like you had already guessed as much yourself. It makes sense. It was you who pointed out that she had no candle with her to guide her in the darkness. Yes, it only makes sense. Did she threaten to expose him? I don’t know. I suppose I could simply beat him until he’s either dead or he tells me the truth of why he came here.

  “But before he leaves on Friday, he will try again. When he came running in here to tell us you were trapped in the old abbey ruins, I immediately began running to the front door. I turned to see him going quickly up the stairs. He trapped you so that he could get me out of the way, come to this room, so he could retrieve what it is he is after.”

  “Let’s kill him. Now.”

  He was shocked into silence, his brain numb, but just for an instant. She was like no other woman he had ever known in his life. He laughed, even as he was kissing her ear. “You delight me. You’re no fainting miss, and that pleases me. You will probably flay me with your tongue many times in the future. I shall relish each time. You are magnificent. Now, tell me. How shall we kill the bastard?”

  “I would like to tie him up and leave him in the abbey ruins until he tells us why he came here.”

  “I like it,” he said, nibbling now on her earlobe. “Will we give him water?”

  “Water, but no food. He will be utterly alone. You will visit him but once a day to ask him one question. If he fails to answer, you will leave again. I predict he will break in three days, no longer.”

  “I’m sorry, Bella, but I don’t believe we can do it. However, I do appreciate the way your mind works. Now, there is Elsbeth to consider. What will we do about Elsbeth?”

  She swallowed. It was decision time. But she couldn’t, not yet. She turned to face him. “Not yet, not yet. Love me again, Justin. Love me.”

  He did, and it was wild and frantic, and she still didn’t know what to do when she listened to his breathing even into sleep.

  Life wasn’t simple. It was vastly irritating, particularly since she had her husband again and wanted nothing more than to have him love her until she was unconscious, which should require at least several years, by her reckoning. She had all of him now, finally, and it was beyond splendid. She wanted all of him forever.

  But forever didn’t seem to be me
asured in a very long stretch just now.

  29

  The earl flung back the heavy curtains that covered the long row of narrow mullioned windows in the family portrait gallery. He brushed a light layer of dust from his hands, mentally noting to bring this neglected room to Mrs. Tucker’s attention. He would have liked to open the windows to air the room, but a fine gray drizzle had become an earnest downpour.

  He was not certain why he had come to the family portrait gallery, save that he wanted to be alone. He gazed down the length of the long narrow room, scarcely wider than the second-floor corridors, his eyes resting briefly on the portrait of his great-uncle, haughtily staring at the world beneath the dark flaring Deverill brows, his dark hair covered by a white curling wig. What a proud, lecherous old man he must have been, the earl thought, his mouth twisting unwillingly into a grin.

  Both he and Arabella had fallen asleep deep in the middle of the night. He had awakened first this morning, kissed her, then realized he shouldn’t make love to her again so soon. She was certainly sore—she had to be after they had made love three times during that marvelously long night. He’d left her. God, but it had been difficult. If she had awakened in those moments, he would be willing to wager that he would still be in their bed.

  Neither of them had again discussed how to kill Gervaise, since he’d only seen her in the company of Lady Ann and Elsbeth. A pity. Justin wanted to kill him very badly. He had been trained all his adult life in military strategy. He couldn’t escape it now. Never kill an enemy until you have what it is he wants. It was that simple. Arabella had known that without a whit of training.

  What to do?

  One thing he fully intended to do today was search the comte’s bedchamber. He doubted that the little bastard had left anything about, but search he would. If he had to, he wouldn’t let Arabella kill the comte until he had tried to fetch what it was he had come for.

  He looked up to see his wife standing beneath the portrait of a long-dead Deverill of the sixteenth century, the ruff coming to her pearl-encrusted ears.

  “My love,” he said, his voice deep and low. It sounded so very natural. He felt it to the very depths of him. He’d never said that to another woman. He was at her side in a moment, drawing her up against him. “I have missed you.”

  “Why did you not awaken me?” Her hands were stroking up and down his back, then lower. He held in his breath. “I woke up and you were gone. I wanted to kiss your mouth and throat. I wanted to kiss your belly, the way I did last night. Remember? You told me you would very much like it.” She grinned wickedly at him. “I seem to remember that you groaned until I drew away, then you sighed in disappointment.”

  He was trembling. He shook his head, saying simply, “It was difficult to leave you, but you had to be sore. We came together too many times last night and you are too new at this business not to be sore. Were I of a crude disposition I might say that I rode you until you collapsed beneath me.”

  “I wonder,” she said thoughtfully, her finger in the cleft in his chin, “could I perhaps ride you? Is it possible? Is it done? Would it give you pleasure?”

  His eyes crossed. His breathing quickened. He looked at the wall. He wanted her desperately. She laughed suddenly. She knew what she had done to him, even though she wasn’t all that certain of how she’d done it. He would teach her all about riding him this very night.

  He managed to say, “Tonight. I give you until tonight. Now, before you make me forget my brains, this morning I didn’t want to leave you but I knew that if I stayed with you, I would have come to you again. I didn’t want to rut my wife. Rest today and perhaps tonight—very well, tonight and not a moment later. It’s likely, though, that I will bite my fingers through wanting you so badly during the rest of today.” From one moment to the next, he was deadly serious. He stroked his fingers over her face. Such a beloved face. “Do you still forgive me, Arabella?”

  She leaned forward in his arms, looking up at him closely. This was as serious as life got and she knew it. She said slowly, her heart in her words, “You are my other half, so much a part of me that if I did not forgive you, then I would not forgive myself. Yes, I forgive you. I even realized that you and I are so much alike that if I had witnessed you coming out of the barn and another woman following, that I would have drawn the same conclusion. I would have made your wedding night a misery just as you made mine. But it is over now. We have begun again.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him full on the mouth.

  “Open your mouth.”

  She did. His tongue was sliding between her lips and she jumped with the newness of it, the excitement of it. “Justin,” she whispered, kissing him deeply, touching her tongue to his, “You know, my lord, perhaps I’m not all that sore.”

  He laughed, then groaned. Slowly, he set her away from him. He was harder than a rock. Jesus, he couldn’t believe how she affected him. He cleared his throat, but his voice was still a croak as he said, “Tonight, not before. I shall be in control here. I know what is best. You are still ignorant, though I pray that will not last long. Actually, I will promise you that it will not last long. Ignorance is not something to be desired when it comes to men and women.

  “Now, obey me. Keep your hands to yourself, well, at least keep them above my waist. Shall we gaze at our ancestors together?”

  The earl said to his wife as they strolled in the parterre late that morning, “I want you to take Gervaise away with you this afternoon. Elsbeth as well. Suzanne if you can get her. I want to search his bedchamber and I must know that he won’t walk in on me. If he were to, then I would have to kill him and we wouldn’t know why he came here to Evesham Abbey in the first place.”

  It burned in her throat, her knowledge of Gervaise and Elsbeth. Burned deep, but her loyalty to her father, to Elsbeth, burned even deeper. She held her tongue, but it was difficult. She owed this man all of her, and she was holding back. But what choice did she have?

  “Yes,” she said, “I will get Suzanne. She would doubtless be shamelessly delighted to get away from poor Lord Graybourn. I will send a messenger to her right now. She doesn’t dare refuse me.”

  “You know, I believe, if we are lucky, that Lord Graybourn just might prefer Elsbeth to Suzanne. That would delight Suzanne and put her in my debt.” She beamed a smile up at him. He wanted to have her atop him, bringing him deep inside her, her back arched, her head thrown back. He drew in a deep breath. “All right,” he said. He raised his hand, his fingers lightly touching the tip of her nose. “You are beautiful and ruthless and loyal. You are the most splendid wife a man could have.”

  “If you ever forget it, I will hurt you badly,” she said as she lightly punched her fist into his belly, quickly kissed his mouth, and stepped back, whistling like a boy. Once she knew how it would be when she was astride him, he wondered how she would whistle then. He grinned shamelessly after her.

  There was no reason to send a messenger to Suzanne. Both Justin and Arabella heard the sound of carriage wheels in the drive. They turned to see the Talgarth carriage draw to a standstill in front of Evesham Abbey. He felt a moment of surprise to see Lady Talgarth follow her daughter out of the carriage. It had stopped raining, although Lady Talgarth was eyeing the sky with some disfavor. She obviously didn’t trust the weather. Neither did he.

  The earl said to his wife, “I wonder. Do you believe that Lady Talgarth has decided to forgive Ann for marrying Paul? I had rather hoped she would hold firm. I have always had an affinity for gossiping biddies. I dislike having to revise my opinions.”

  She laughed. Together they walked forward to greet their guests. He left his wife so that he could clasp the lovely Suzanne’s gloved hand and give her a formal bow. “Why, Miss Talgarth, how very brave of you to venture forth in such bad weather. Although it has stopped raining—just for your visit—I do fear for the immediate future. You bring no ill news, I trust.”

  Suzanne dimpled, shot an amused glance at Arabella, and said, “No, my lord, M
ama and I are here with a bit of grand news. Aren’t we, Mama?”

  Lady Talgarth looked like she’d swallowed a caterpillar. She managed to smile, but it fell away when Ann came into the room. Civil greetings were managed, just barely. “Ah,” she said, “here is tea. However, I do not see any lemon seed cake.”

  “I will send Crupper to see if there is any left,” Lady Ann said, smiling behind her hand.

  Suzanne said, “Mama, I just told the earl that we bring no ill tidings. In fact,” she added, now looking at Arabella, “we are here to issue an invitation.”

  Lady Talgarth choked on her tea. Ann gently thumped her broad back, which was covered with a bright purple brocade.

  “Yes,” Suzanne said, “an invitation.”

  “That sounds interesting, an invitation, you say, Miss Talgarth? Come, I am certain that neither Arabella nor I would think of disobliging you. Well, perhaps Arabella might. She wants only my company, you know, but perhaps if you are very kind and very persuasive, she might consent to this invitation of yours.”

  “So, it’s like that, is it?”

  The earl disliked that gleam in Suzanne Talgarth’s lovely eyes. The minx wasn’t a dolt, not at all. “Yes,” he said, flicking a piece of lint from his sleeve, “it is. Behold a reformed man. As for my wife, who can possibly say? I daresay it will be a mystery that will tantalize me for the remainder of my days. Now, what is your invitation?”

  “Such a pity that I did not meet you first, my lord.”

  “Suzanne,” Arabella said, “I will cosh you into the carpet if you don’t get to the point. Just look at your dear mama. She wants to issue an invitation yet you won’t stop talking long enough to let her.”