The Dark Lady: Mad Passions Book 1 (Mad Passions (Eternal Romance))

by Claremont, Maire

  Dark emotions turned his eyes emerald, and for a moment Eva was certain he would catch her up and let her have her release—and her laudanum.

  She didn’t dare think how far she had fallen to be on her knees before her childhood friend, the boy she had loved, begging . . . for pleasure . . . begging for release.

  Ian’s free hand, large and rough, came to rest on her fingers. He pressed her harder against his cock and his head dropped back against the cushions. He ground against her palm, a moan of lust escaping his lips.

  She had him. And she had her laudanum. Yet it wasn’t relief she felt. She wanted this, even if she didn’t truly understand.

  The feel of his hand over hers felt alarmingly right. As did the urge to lean forward and to place her mouth over the fall of his trousers. Her breasts grew tight at the thought, leaving her heavy with the drug of desire. She longed for him to take her in his arms. To devour her. To drive everything away but their bodies, united against the cruel world. With that image in mind, she reached with her free hand to undo the buttons at his front.

  Ian’s hand suddenly enfolded hers and jerked it back with a punishing twist. Regret raked his features as he choked. “What are you doing?”

  Shaking his head wildly, he yanked the window down and tossed the bottle of laudanum out into the cold.

  The desire that had consumed her died a quick death as a shriek tore from her lips. She scrambled toward the door, ready to fly out of the moving vehicle to retrieve it.

  Ian grabbed her face, his fingers pressing into her chin and jaw.

  Instantly, she stopped.

  Slowly, as slowly as she had dragged her hand up his thigh, he turned her face to his. Gazing down at her, his dark gaze blazing with intensity, he forced her face up until their lips were but an inch apart. “You are not a whore.”

  The pain of his words sliced her to the bone. “How can you be sure?”

  His entire body tensed as if she had hit him.

  Her lips curled back from her teeth, wishing to hurt him now with the impossible desire he’d taken from her. “Do you imagine I was in a nunnery all this time? I learned a number of tricks from the other girls.”

  The taut muscles in his face eased, but a shadow tinged his skin. “I don’t give a damn what they taught you.” His thumb caressed her cheek, but he didn’t let go. “I will not let you be a whore of another’s making.”

  As the fight diminished from her shaking body, she grimaced. How could she explain that she would whore herself every day if it meant she didn’t have to remember? “It was mine,” she insisted.

  He gripped her chin, those hypnotic eyes of his a war of agony and fury. “I don’t care.”

  “I risked my life for that bottle!” Eva grabbed his arm with both hands and lurched forward. Her body rocking harshly against his hard chest. The pressure eased as he wrenched his hand away from her jaw.

  “I don’t give a devil’s damn,” he growled, his hands coming up around her back, pulling her against him.

  “You don’t—” She sucked in several breaths, her body pressed against the contours of his hard chest and flat stomach. She’d felt nothing in her life like that hard wall of masculinity. “Do you know what happens—?”

  “Yes,” he hissed. “You’ll shake and scream and feel as if you are losing your mind.” His capable hands wrapped around her arms and bound her to him. “I have promised myself that I will protect you, even if I have to protect you from yourself.”

  Eva gaped at him as it hit her. “You think me pathetic and weak.” Suddenly, an unbidden hot tear slipped down her cheek, followed by another. The first true tears she had known in years as she saw herself in his eyes.

  He didn’t pause but worked his fingers into her hair and pulled ever so slightly. “You have no idea what I think.” And then he slanted his lips over hers.

  Eva struggled against his powerful embrace, her lips crushed under his. The touch of his mouth to hers shocked her for a moment and then, as tinder struck, her body burned with flame. She’d longed for his kisses once, and now she had them. They were everything she’d ever dreamed and more. So much more.

  One of his hands moved to angle her head so that he might deepen the kiss; his other hand splayed over her back, pressing her to him as if he might somehow make them one.

  The kiss, harsh and full of need, stole every thought she possessed. Any doubt. Any fear. Gone in a whirlwind of desire and promise. She gasped against him and his tongue delved into her mouth, tasting her.

  She moaned softly, marveling at how her body longed to yield itself up to him. Every muscle in her frame was liquid heat, intent on receiving something it barely understood.

  But as she held on to him, she felt herself slipping away, losing control. She couldn’t forget. She couldn’t forget that he had denied her just moments before, and that this kiss was not out of love, but rather fear and anger.

  With his skill and her wildness, it was so tempting to give in to this kiss, to give in to his will. A jolt of fury overwhelmed the temptation. He had stolen what little control she had, what few choices she had.

  She tried to pull away, bucking harshly against his arms. “Enough.”

  He only held tighter and his imprisoning embrace spilled ice down her spine. Madly, as if he could somehow reach her with his kiss, he lowered his head to catch her lips again.

  Gasping, she twisted her face away, still awed by the pleasure of their kiss. Still tempted to betray herself for the pleasure he could give. But she would never betray herself again, so she snapped, “Are you no better than them?”

  Instantly, he pulled his head back, staring down at her with enraged astonishment.

  “Remember, I am no whore,” she whispered, the words harsh against her closing throat.

  His grasp eased. His eyes filled with a matching self-disgust. “Eva—”

  “Not even your whore.”

  Slowly, he pressed her shaking body against his until their heartbeats thrummed together. “Forgive me.”

  “I’ll forgive you if you give me what I need.”

  Ian pushed her hands from him and he threw himself back to his own seat. His gaze slowly returned to hers with a terrifying clarity. “You shall have nothing that I don’t give you and certainly not laudanum.”

  Whatever demon had got hold of him showed its face, turning the sweet young man that she had known into the hardest of men. “I don’t know you anymore. We are not even friends,” she said.

  “No. We are not, and I don’t know you, either. Not any longer.” He leaned back, his face shuttering.

  Eva gulped at the sudden swelling of her throat. For in the finality and stone-cold intent in his eyes, she knew he didn’t lie. But she was his now, and she was as much a prisoner as she had been in the asylum. Worse, she and Ian were strangers now. Connected by nothing but the past. “Where do you take me?”

  “To Blythely Castle.”

  So tired now, so beaten, her body felt as if it were sinking into the floor. “Devonshire?”

  “Nothing but the hills and sea shall see you until I can prove you are not mad. We will prove to the world you are nothing more than a grieved woman addicted by force,” he declared adamantly. “You aren’t mad. You aren’t.”

  Yet, in his voice, she heard it. There in the deep tone of it was the worst thing she had ever known. Doubt.

  Chapter 16

  Ian’s boots hit the ground hard. He relished the feel of frozen earth jarring his bones. Sooty air invaded his nostrils and he flexed his palms, sure he might tear apart the first person he spoke to. He’d called her a whore. She’d acted as a whore. He’d been a bastard of the first order. Christ, he’d forgotten how to be around ladies, and Eva was no ordinary lady. She’d been to hell and was not yet out of it.

  How had he descended into such depths of cruelty?

  Worse, he’d been so tempted. So dangerously tempted to let her do as she had wished. Would he have given her the laudanum just for his own goddamn
growing need to feel her? To meet with her on some plain that was far afield from that of friendship?

  He would never shake this new self-revulsion. He’d been far too close to lacing his hand into her hair and guiding her mouth not to his cock but to his own lips, and then he would have made slow, careful love to her.

  Far too close.

  So he would have to be as cruel to himself as he was to her.

  Crueler.

  He strode up to the inn. Perhaps he should have sent Digby to collect their necessaries, but he longed for the normalcy he’d once known. The simple instruction of men, of organizing, something that had come naturally to him in India. But this wasn’t India. He doubted whether anything could ever be normal again.

  The Tudor structure sat like a tired old woman, half slouched into the earth and snow.

  The sign of the Rose & Thistle swung drunkenly above the scratched wood door, its rust-hewn hinges creaking in the wind.

  Wordlessly, he walked into the premises. The narrow hall was dim in the morning light, the whitewashed walls unwelcoming. Immediately the scents of dark ale and cooking meat mingled with rosemary assaulted him. God, what wouldn’t he give to stride up behind the bar—wherever that was—grab a bottle of whiskey, and pour the peaty liquid down his throat. He’d be done with it all for at least a day. But drunken oblivion was not in his near future.

  Hell was on his horizon and one didn’t face hell three sheets to the wind. Not if one wished to defeat it rather than join it.

  Eva would hate him more and more and he would see more and more of the dark side of her heart that had taken hold in these ravaging years. Striding deeper down the hall, he swung his gaze to a doorway, praying the keep was awake.

  A pathetic fire burned in the hearth of the sparsely furnished sitting room. Empty of life, ratty brocade chairs were interspaced over the cracked wood floor. It was barely later than dawn and no one was in sight. A black pot hissed and sputtered over the poorly banked fire and Ian drew in the smells of thick porridge.

  His stomach growled, and he forced himself not to go over and eat straight from the spoon still in the pot. It was almost a certainty that Eva was not hungry. Years of laudanum use was a particularly good means of suppressing the appetite. He, on the other hand, might eat an entire boar if it were placed before him.

  “Keep!” he barked, not giving a pox-ridden damn if he woke the entire establishment. Ian headed into the frigid room. If he concentrated, he could just barely feel tendrils of heat slipping through the cold air.

  “Keep!” he shouted again, his voice echoing off the white-plastered walls.

  Footsteps scurried above his head, shaking dust from the low wood-beam ceiling, then scuffled down the stairs at the back. “Sir,” an alarmed voice called just loud enough that he might hear. “Sir, please. I’ve guests. They’re sleeping and I can’t—”

  The short little man of about fifty nearly tripped on his long, flour-covered apron as he hurried forward. His mouth froze as he took Ian in. Bushy white whiskers framed the keep’s face, and he squinted up at Ian through myopic blue eyes. For several moments, those fat lips worked and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he contemplated him in exaggerated shock.

  Apparently, gentlemen didn’t make a habit of stopping at the Rose & Thistle.

  “Do you require a room?” he finally managed.

  Ian shook his head, already desirous of departing. In fact, the fast-brewing impatience in him would not dim until he was safe in his castle on the clean and untouched sea. “Fresh horses. This is a coaching inn?”

  The man bobbed his hanging chin up and down. “Indeed. Indeed. I shall fetch my man.”

  Ian turned toward the window, squinting at the sun’s first real rays gleaming through the dirt-smudged panes. “And while you’re at it, I’m going to need several other items for quick transport.”

  “Certainly. In a few hours—”

  “Now,” Ian barked, his gloved hands fisting as he snapped his gaze back to the short little man. A man who no doubt had never known a life-threatening day in his existence. “I will give you five guineas if you can make all that I wish happen within the hour.”

  The innkeeper wrung his calloused hands. “F-five?”

  “Five,” Ian said firmly. “I need horses. Coal for a burner. Blankets. Water, food. And anything that might relieve—” Ian hesitated. How was he to say it? “Shivering.”

  “Shi—” The man nodded as he stopped himself. “Of course. Of course.”

  Ian didn’t smile or nod; he was beyond such reassuring measures now. He’d wasted those on Mrs. Marlock. In turn, Mr. Marlock had taken his coin and sent Mrs. Palmer’s dogs on Eva. “Good. I shall return within the half hour. I expect all to be done.” With that, he charged back out into the cold.

  As he came outside the old inn, he slowed his step, eyeing his solitary coach standing in the quiet yard. Something wasn’t right.

  The door stood ajar.

  Eva.

  Unruly fear grabbed his guts. His eyes darted to the coaching box. The coachman was gone. Ian ran across the snow, his feet slipping in the icy slush. Windmilling his arms, he just barely kept from sliding headlong into the earth. He stopped at the vehicle and ripped the door open.

  The velvet seats stared back at him. Empty.

  Bloody hell.

  Ian reeled around, his breath coming in strangled intakes. His vision intensified until his pupils burned. Again. He’d made a mistake again. A horrendous mistake. Since Hamilton had shot that horse, his life had been nothing but one mistake after the other. “Eva!” he shouted.

  His desperate eyes searched the horizon, then swung back to the inn. “Eva!” he shouted again.

  “Yes?” she called sweetly.

  He stopped and whipped around at her disembodied speech.

  Snow crunched on the other side of the coach. Then Eva emerged from behind the vehicle, straightening her skirts. Dark smudges blossomed under her eyes, but there was a definite relief to her face. Her tension seemed to have dissipated as if she’d been holding her muscles taut these last hours.

  For a brief moment, he was certain she’d somehow gotten her hands on laudanum, but there was hardly an apothecary here on the open land.

  “Where the hell did you go?” he demanded. Terror still ricocheted through his limbs and stole his reason. He crossed to her in two short strides and grabbed her upper arms, feeling the ridiculous need to have her body under his touch. To know she hadn’t been taken. “I told you to stay in the coach.”

  She narrowed her cobalt eyes, then jerked back from his grasp. “You don’t need to handle me.”

  Her warmth vanished from his now empty hands. Anger and fear rumbled inside him. “Eva, I cannot allow—”

  “Oh, yes,” she mocked, her hands shaking slightly. “I forgot. My safety is your primary concern.”

  “Exactly,” he said softly, wishing he hadn’t reacted with such impulse. “I’m sorry you dislike my behavior, but you are behaving rashly. You charge off without thought—”

  “I had to relieve myself,” she mumbled quickly, her eyes leaving his. “I believe your servants needed to do the same.”

  Ian gaped at her, his intense, fury-tinged worry fading at her practical and yet frustrating words. “You could have waited.”

  She turned her face back up to his, her bold chin thrusting at him. “No, I couldn’t. And you gave me no indication as to how long you might be gone.”

  “There are men looking for you, Eva.” He closed his eyes for a moment, attempting to collect his mixed thoughts. He couldn’t decide whether he should shake her for taking such a chance or drive his own head into a nearby stone wall. “Do you understand what will happen? If they find you?”

  Instead of the immediate contrition that he had expected, she snorted. Tendrils of short hair bounced against her face as she propped slender hands upon her equally slender waist. “Oh, Ian.” The admonition came out as a rich, frightening laugh. “I understand better than
you possibly ever could. I lived in that madhouse. Not you. I know what Mrs. Palmer and her men are capable of.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Because you wouldn’t stop the coach when you would have been but a step away from me. I have been in severe discomfort for over an hour.” Those indigo eyes glinted under the morning sun, cold, empty, furious. “I don’t know about you, but I had no desire to ride all the way to Devonshire with the scent of—”

  “Yes, thank you,” he growled. He had never traveled with a woman and certainly not at breakneck speed. In the military, men had picked up and run without hesitation. With her, there was a host of troubles. Aside from her addiction, there were common necessities that would simply slow them down.

  Perhaps he could permit her a few moments’ rest inside the inn. As he opened his mouth, the rumble of another coach approaching filled his ears. The brief temptation to let her go into the inn with him vanished. Foolishness could not mislead his heart. Nor pity. Not when so much was at stake.

  At any moment, that woman’s men could come racing down the road. He might not be able to fight them off, for all his fine experience in killing. “Get in.”

  She blanched at his harshness, her cheeks even paler than usual. Her skin glistened with the fine touch of perspiration despite the chill in the air. “Ian, I merely wish to walk. My legs—”

  “You can walk to Land’s End and back when we reach my estate.” The last thing they needed was someone to see her. She stood out like a lily among slug-eaten petunias. If Palmer’s men came asking questions, he wanted as little information left in their wake as possible. He took a step forward, towering over her. “Are you waiting for something in particular? Another invitation, perhaps?”

  She drew in a slow breath, her breasts pressing against the thin gown. “Ian, you cannot mean to—”

  Without a word, he picked her up, ignoring her tense muscles. There was no time for words, for explanations or assurances. Her light form barely weighed his arms down as he readied to shove her back inside. It seemed to be a ritual in the making, his depositing her without due manners into his coach.