Nobody's Angel

by Karen Robards

  "Yes," she replied, so tartly that her meaning was unmistakable. He laughed.

  "Besides that."

  "I really must find Mandy. She could be looking for me. She . . ."

  "To hell with Mandy," he said, quite firmly. "Let Mandy, and the rest of them, take care of themselves for a while. Come play with me, Susannah. You need to play."

  "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?" Susannah misquoted tartly, still holding back.

  He laughed again. "Something like that," he admitted, not a whit chagrined as he practically tugged her inside the open-sided little structure. "You learn fast, don't you, my darling?"

  Susannah caught her breath, then hoped he had not heard the telltale gasp. "Yes, I do, and I'm not your darling, so you may save your blandishments for someone naive enough to be taken in by them."

  "Prickly little puss, aren't you?" He turned to face her, catching both her hands and raising them, one at a time, to his lips. His lids lowered as he kissed her knuckles, and she saw that his lashes were thick and as black as ink, blacker even than his hair.

  "Stop that," she said, but her voice was unsteady. There was still a foot or so of space between them, but she was tinglingly aware of every inch of his hard body. Like herself, he was clad in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and he looked more the gentleman than any of the so- called ones inside the ballroom. The peaked roof of the pavilion kept the moon from shining on them directly, but its muted glow reflected off the lawn and the garden and allowed her to see his face. He was smiling down at her, the merest curve of his lips, and she thought the expression in his eyes looked almost tender. Her heart lurched, and she knew all her hard-won resolutions where he was concerned were on the verge of flying out the window.

  "Do you hear that? Listen." Ian cocked his head as the sweet strains of music whispered past their ears. ". . . Da - da - da - da - dum . . ."

  "Alas, my love, you do me wrong to cast me off so discourteously. . . ." Susannah, entranced by his deep voice intoning the familiar notes, could not resist adding words to the music: ". . . who but my Lady Greensleeves?"

  Her voice soft and true, she sang the haunting melody until he picked it up and joined in. Only then, with his eyes not quite smiling as they searched her face, did she realize how apropos the words were. She broke off, biting her lip in chagrin.

  He shook his head at her. His black hair, drawn back from his forehead and secured at his nape with a ribbon, was struck by a stray moonbeam that made it shine like a starling's wing.

  "You sing like an angel," he said. "I could listen to you forever. Go on. Please."

  Thus encouraged, she took a breath, then picked up the tune again and sang it through. He bent his head close to hers, humming along, and Susannah was entranced. Before she quite knew how it had happened, he had drawn her against his chest, grasping one of her hands while with the other he guided her in a graceful pirouette. Then he drew her close once more, took a few mincing steps forward, which she mimicked dreamily, and twirled her again before bowing, to which courtly gesture she responded with an instinctive curtsey. It was only then, as the song came to an end and the spell was broken, that Susannah realized what they were doing and jerked free of him.

  "We were dancing," she said in an awful tone, as if accusing him of the vilest of acts. He grinned at her.

  "And very elegantly, too." As he saw the expression on her face, he added, "Why is it so wrong to dance? I knew as soon as I saw how much you love music that you could be a wonderful dancer. You sing, and play, and lose yourself in it. Even from the very back of your church I can see that. Dancing is just another way of appreciating beautiful music."

  It sounded so logical that Susannah found herself nearly persuaded. She frowned direly. "That tongue of yours could coax the devil out of his horns, Ian Connelly!"

  He laughed and caught her hands again when she would have turned and left him. "I would it were true. If so, then I would persuade you to forget about your notions of what is proper and what is not, just for a little while. If you'd let me, I'd teach you how much a part of the music you can be. Hear that tune?"

  Almost unwillingly, Susannah tipped her ear toward the source of the lilting melody. It had a soft, dreamy quality that made her eyes half close.

  "It's a waltz." Ian began to hum. His voice had a deep, raspy tone to it that stirred something deep inside her. When he began to sway in time with the cadence of the violin, she allowed him to pull her closer. Before she knew quite how it happened, she was clasped against his chest. One of his arms was wrapped around her waist, while the other held her hand in a tight, warm grasp.

  "One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three four," he counted, as Susannah falteringly tried to match her steps to his. It was difficult, because being so close to his body distracted her. His chest was hard as a board against her swelling breasts; his thighs were as powerful as steel springs against her weakening legs. She could smell the musky scent of him, feel the heat of his body, see the black stubble that had grown since his morning's shave to darken his chin. More than she had ever wanted anything on earth she wanted to touch that stubble, to feel its roughness beneath her fingers. . . .

  The thought disturbed her so much that she stumbled, and trod on his toe. She was mortified, but he only laughed and refused to let her stop. Instead his arm tightened, and he picked up the pace until he was whirling her around the inside of the pavilion at such a clip that she was soon breathless.

  When the music stopped she was leaning against his chest, her hair falling down her back, laughing. He was laughing, too, his eyes alight with it, his face almost boyish as he chuckled. It was then, as she looked into his face and laughed and quite forgot how devilishly handsome he was in her sheer joy at being with him, that she realized, purely and simply, that she loved him.

  Not that she was in love with him, though she was that, too. But that she loved him, for the man he was, quite apart from his heartbreaker's face.

  At the realization, her heart threatened to shatter into a million tiny pieces. She was going to be hurt, badly hurt, perhaps mortally hurt, by this love that had come upon her unsought and unbidden, and she knew it. But there was nothing she could do, now, to escape her fate. Like a person caught in quicksand, she had been sucked deeper and deeper until she had no hope of pulling free.

  All her fine resolutions vanished in the face of this new knowledge. How could she distance herself from a man who meant more to her than the very air she breathed?

  Something of what she was feeling must have shown in her face, because he stopped laughing and looked down at her intently.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Let me go," she said, and tried to pull free. She had to put some distance between them, had to separate herself from him for a little while, just enough time to think this shattering new truth through. She had barely enough wit left to know that if he discovered how she felt he would have her at his mercy.

  But he wouldn't let her go. He caught both her hands and held them trapped against his chest.

  "Alas, my love, you do me wrong . . ." he began softly, even as his eyes possessed her.

  "Stop it!" The song cut her to the heart, and she tried again to pull away from him. But his arms slid around her waist and his hands locked behind her back and he refused to release her. Her hands were free, pressed flat against his chest. She supposed she could have slapped him to secure her release, but at the thought of striking him she felt sick. What she really wanted to do was slide her arms around his neck. . . .

  Her hands clenched. He looked down at those telltale fists pressed against his chest, and for a moment he went very still. His arms tightened until she was molded against him, with scarce enough room between them to run a thread between their two bodies. His eyes flickered up from her hands to meet hers. The gray depths were suddenly as dark as the darkest pit, and unsmiling.

  "Kiss me, Susannah."

  It was a seductive murmur, hot and deep and full of temptati
on. His head bent over hers, bringing his mouth tantalizingly close. There was heaven and hell combined in his face. Muddled by his nearness, she could not decide if he was demon—or savior.

  "I—can't." Her voice was anguished.

  "Yes, you can. You've been safe all your life, Susannah. Take a chance. Take a chance on me."

  "Ian . . ."

  "Kiss me."

  "I can't do this. I . . ."

  "Kiss me."

  ". . . know it's wrong and . . ."

  "Kiss me."

  His eyes blazed at her suddenly. The heat was so palpable that she felt her mouth go dry. She longed, yearned, to go up on tiptoe and slide her arms around his neck and press her lips to his. . . .

  No longer able to resist, she did.

  At first he kept his lips closed, while she pressed her mouth to his in feverish entreaty. Now that she had bitten of the apple, she felt like a woman possessed. She wanted him. She needed him. She craved him. Her hands shook as they ran over the broad shoulders in the rough linsey- woolsey coat. Her knees shook too as she pressed her thighs against his. Her heart pounded, her lips quivered, and a steamy hot liquid boiled to life deep inside her to pulse through her veins.

  "Oh, Ian. Ian." It was a broken little cry.

  "God, I love the way you talk," he muttered against her mouth. Then, as if her voice whispering his name had exploded the iron control he'd been exerting over himself, his arms tightened around her until she could hardly breathe, and he bent her back over one arm and kissed her with a torrid hunger that turned her brain to mush and her body to jelly and her morals to air.

  Susannah locked her arms around his neck and clung, kissing him just as feverishly as he kissed her. When he lowered her to the wooden floor, she went willingly. When he pulled at her skirts, she moaned and arched her back. When he unbuttoned his breeches and positioned himself between her legs, she lifted her bottom off the hard cold floor to meet him.

  He grasped her bare hips beneath the frothy tangle of white petticoats and black skirts, plunging deep. She cried out at the fierce pleasure of it as, shuddering, he filled her to bursting. Her nails tore at his coat. Her teeth locked on his shoulder. He caught her thighs, lifting them high even as he took her again and again and again.

  It was fast, this taking. Fast and hard and hot and glorious. Eyes closed, lips parted to gasp in air, Susannah writhed and bucked and strained toward the ecstasy that she knew awaited her. She wanted it. She needed it. She didn't think she could live without it.

  When it came, it was as searing as an explosion of ball lightning. Flames swept her, hot licking flames that made her quiver and twitch and cry out. She was whirled away on the firestorm, barely aware of him echoing her cry as he held himself quaking inside her. Her arms were still clasped tight around his neck when he collapsed.

  Little things, like the lush scent of roses and the thick, humid heat and the buzz of a mosquito, roused her in what could not have been more than a few minutes, though it seemed an eternity had passed. Her eyes blinked open, to find that she was staring up at the beamed, pointed roof of the Haskinses' outdoor pavilion. When she looked to the left, she could see the starry night sky through the structure's open sides. If she listened, she could hear the lilting strains of a violin.

  Reality hit like a shock of cold water. She was lying sprawled on a hard, cold wooden floor that was bruising her bare bottom, the skirts of her best Sunday dress were pushed up around her waist, leaving her naked from her navel down; her legs were spread wide, and her bound man, half naked like herself, was lying in what felt like the sleep of the dead between them, the male part of him still inside her.

  Anyone could come along.

  "Ian!" She pushed at his shoulder. Awake after all, he turned his head, planting a kiss in the general vicinity of her left ear.

  "Ian, get off me! Let me up!" She pushed at his shoulder again, urgently this time.

  "You are clearly not a woman who likes to savor the afterglow," he grumbled but obligingly rolled off her. Susannah scrambled to her feet, not surprised to find that her knees were shaky as she yanked her skirts into place and straightened her fichu. Ian lay on his back, his hands folded beneath his head, watching her. His breeches were unbuttoned and his person was indecent to the point of putting Susannah to the blush, but he didn't seem one whit bothered by it.

  Modesty, as she had already learned, was not his strong suit.

  "Get up! Anyone could come along!" she whispered fiercely. Her hair hung in a hopeless tangle down her back, and her dress was crumpled. The skin of her face felt chafed where his bristly cheeks had rubbed hers. A scent clung to her, a musky aroma that she remembered from her first experience with him.

  Only now she knew what it was: the smell of carnal love.

  30

  "Stop, Susannah. You're only making it worse. Let me," Ian said in a resigned voice as he watched Susannah's frantic efforts to restore her hair to some semblance of order. Without brush or comb, it was almost impossible to tame the curly mass. She had coiled it twice, thrusting her pins deep into the center of the bulky knot, only to have the pins spring out again and her hair tumble down her back.

  "Hurry, then!" At the thought of being discovered, Susannah felt sick at her stomach. Mandy might be looking for her by this time. Or anyone might decide to visit the rose garden. The scandal would be all over Beaufort by dawn tomorrow.

  "There's no need to panic." Ian cupped her face in his hands and tilted it up to his. She felt the warmth of his palms on her face, the rough tips of his fingers brushing her cheekbones, and had to fight the urge to close her eyes. Shameful or not, she could not regret what they had done. She loved him.

  "If someone should come . . ."

  "If someone should walk in here, right now, all they would see is a woman whose hair has fallen down. I'm fully clad, you're fully clad, and there's no scarlet letter blazing on your bosom. Your guilty secret is quite safe."

  Put that way, it sounded even worse than she had thought. Was that what he was, her guilty secret? Susannah moaned.

  "Now what?" Sounding mildly exasperated, Ian dropped a quick, hard kiss on her mouth and turned her around. Susannah forced herself to stand still as he ran his fingers like a comb through the wild mane of her hair.

  "What we did was a sin, and I knew it was a sin . . ."

  "Susannah . . ."

  But she rushed on, disregarding the interruption. ". . . and—and still I did it anyway!"

  His fingers stopped moving, and for a moment he went very still behind her. His hands left her hair to close over her shoulders. Gently he turned her about.

  "Sin, like beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder," he said. Looking up into his face, her eyes flickering over the stark masculine beauty of it, Susannah shook her head.

  "Sin is—sin," she said in a strangled voice,

  Ian's eyes darkened. "Making love to you is the closest I've come to heaven in a very long time. I don't want to hear any more talk of sin."

  "Whether we talk of it or not doesn't change the truth."

  "You're a very stubborn woman, did you know that? And a very beautiful one."

  "Oh, Ian!" Her laugh trembled 011 the verge of tears. "I'm not! Be honest for once, and admit that I'm nothing at all above the ordinary. In fact, I'm rather plain."

  "You're beautiful, and I'm always honest. You just don't know the truth when you hear it."

  "You lie as easily as you breathe." Her accusation was both humorous and despairing.

  "I breathe a sight more easily, believe me. Do you know your hair makes me think of a wild palomino filly I once saw galloping free on a mountain in Spain? That horse was a deep, burnished gold, and your hair is just that color."

  "My hair is plain brown." It was a struggle to keep a grip on reality while he beguiled her, but Susannah tried her best. It would not do to let herself believe the preposterous things he said.

  "And your eyes remind me of a sunlit pool hidden deep in a forest gl
ade."

  "They're hazel."

  "Your mouth is as soft and generous as your nature, and the color of squashed raspberries."

  "Squashed raspberries?" That sounded so very unro- mantic in comparison with his other poetic images that she couldn't help repeating it in a quizzical tone.

  His mouth lifted up at one corner, and humor twinkled to life in his eyes. He looked so very dear, smiling down at her in that familiar teasing way, that she had to smile back at him almost mistily.

  "Crushed rose petals, then. Something very lush and pink."

  "I see."

  "And your figure puts Venus to shame. How can you say you're not beautiful?"

  "Who," Susannah asked, frowning, after the briefest pause, "is this Venus?"

  For a moment he stared down at her, incredulous. He started to laugh and hugged her close against him. Susannah rested her forehead against his shaking chest, slightly miffed at being the source of his amusement.

  "Venus, my darling," he said in her ear, "is one of the most famous classical figures in the world. But I can un- derstand why your father, when he was educating you, might have kept you from all knowledge of it."

  "Why? What's wrong with it?" Suspiciously she lifted her head to look up at him.

  "Nothing is wrong with her. She's very beautiful. She's also very, uh, voluptuous, and almost completely nude. To the ancient Romans, she was the goddess of beauty and love."

  "Oh." At the implications, Susannah felt her cheeks pinken.

  "So when I tell you you're beautiful, you're to believe me. Is that clear?"

  "But . . ."

  "Say yes, Ian," he ordered.

  Susannah surrendered. "Yes, Ian," she murmured obediently. As a reward he kissed her.

  When he lifted his head, her arms were looped around his neck and her eyes were dreamy.

  "And you taste good, too." He was pressing soft kisses all over her face. Susannah closed her eyes and leaned closer against him. "And you smell good—so fresh and clean, and always with the faintest hint of lemon. Why lemon?"