“I learned then that no woman should be at the mercy of a man, and I vowed that there would be justice for such heinous acts. I could not save my mother, but I can stop injustice when I see it. There is nothing more important to me than that. So, you see, I cannot just ignore Wilkes. It is a point of honor. He must pay for what he did to Sarah. He must.”
Tristan came back to the bedside and gazed down at her. “Annica, I understand your need for justice, but you must leave it to the courts.”
“Can you not understand? There is no justice for a woman in an English court. So stay out of my way, Tristan.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, knowing her chances of escape were growing dimmer. It was now or never.
He placed one hand on her shoulder and pushed her back onto the pillows. “Oh, no, Annica. You are not going anywhere. You haven’t told me how you knew where to come for your information or how often you’ve been here.” He lifted one diaphanous layer of sheer, flesh-pink silk and tugged. The delicate threads popped and crystal drops scattered across the pale coverlet.
She kept her expression neutral, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
There was a bare twitch of a muscle in his scarred cheek as he flicked a finger and another seam gave way. This time the crystals rolled to the floor. The air was cool on the newly exposed flesh of her shoulder and arm. She cursed herself for a fool. How could she feel so elated at the sensations sweeping over her and yet so afraid of a will stronger than her own? With great difficulty, she grasped the essence of his question and launched another counterattack.
“I…I merely began here, Auberville. I was prepared to visit every brothel in London if necessary.”
“Are you playing me for a fool, Annica?” He popped the studs at his cuffs and collar, then ran his long fingers through his hair. “That would be a serious mistake.”
She swallowed hard in an attempt to still her jangling nerves. Had he been serious? Did he mean to…to take her? “I’ve never thought you a fool,” she said, dismayed by the wild tattoo her heart began and the hunger building in her blood.
“What is your game, then?”
He was not going to give up. “’Tis not a game, Tristan….” She wavered as he turned his attention back to her costume. “I am deadly serious. Though you might not believe me, I cannot help what I am. Nothing is more important to me than justice.”
“Nothing, Annica? Me? Us?”
She gulped. “I…I collect this is what is meant by ‘acting in haste and repenting at leisure.’ You involved yourself with me before you learned my true nature. I release you from your offer. Society will believe me flighty enough to botch the negotiations, thus you will come off without damage to your reputation.”
Her shoulder seam split under his skillful dissection.
“’Flighty?’ Sweet Jesus! Are you mad?” A slow smile curved the sensuous lips and he leaned over her with fatal emphasis. “Do not toy with me, Annica, or I am apt to lose what little control I have gained over my temper.”
Her mind reeled at the mere thought of Tristan out of control. In a very squeaky voice, she managed to state, “It was an honest offer, Auberville.” She was a little afraid and entirely fascinated. Oh, dear Lord! When had his shirt come open? When had his cold eyes begun to burn with a different light? And what wanton inside her was responding with a primordial instinct?
“I am beginning to think you concocted this whole episode in an effort to be rid of me. I see your game now. The fear in your eyes tells me what you will not. You are afraid of me. Despite that you take risks, you are afraid of the greatest risk, afraid of taking that chance. Whatever else your father did, he instilled an unwillingness to join the game. That’s what’s behind the absurd risks you take. It has become your substitute for emotion, your excuse to stand outside the passions of life at its wildest and most exciting. Oh, no, Annica. I won’t let you wither from dead emotions. Come into the fire.”
“I—you are wrong,” she choked out. Tears sprang to her eyes and she turned to run, but his grip on her arm was strong and steady. There was no escape, no hiding from the truth.
His mouth claimed hers with a soft, cherishing touch that made sparks fly along her nerve endings. She could not catch her breath unless she drew it from him.
His lips moved against the flesh of her cheek and throat as he whispered, “I have never been more right, Annica. Tell me. Tell me what he did to destroy your innocence and turn you against marriage. What did he kill in you that breathes life only in a challenge or a reckless chance?”
“Nothing,” she gasped, feeling cornered and surprised. Was he right? Is that what she had done—deaden herself to emotion? “He…he was just a man—like any other man.”
Tristan uttered a muffled curse and shook his head. “Is that what you believe? That every man is like your father?”
“Given the right opportunity, yes.”
“Not on my worst day, Annica. Now the rest makes sense—your shunning of callers, surrounding yourself almost exclusively with women, embracing unpopular causes in order to make yourself a social pariah. Oh, you knew just how to frighten men away, did you not? And now that I know your fatal flaw, you are an open book to me. You cannot hide from me again, Annica. Do not even try. Mark my words, we shall marry tomorrow, will you, nil you. Thank God for the special license.”
“Tomorrow? But…” She stopped, panicked, and he looked as if he would relent. Almost.
“Tomorrow. Morning,” he affirmed, running his hand down her arm.
She shivered with the new sensitivity he was awakening. “I am…likely to…shame you, Auberville. You will want to murder me two…weeks into our marriage,” she moaned.
His mouth lowered and he cherished the hollow of her throat. He trailed his tongue downward to the slope of breast above the flesh-colored silk, causing a weakness to invade her limbs. “I want to murder you now.”
“Oh.” She gulped, trying not to think of how her breasts were tingling and puckering in response to that calculated move.
“’Twill pass. You wanted to take risks, so ’tis time for you to learn what comes of visiting brothels in the middle of the night,” he whispered. “But in the morning you will stand before a minister and pledge your troth to me.”
But even as she shook her head, her hands cupped his shoulders to draw him closer. “I do not think I can—”
“You have got so completely out of hand that I dare not leave you on your own another day. We shall marry in the morning. Are we understood?”
Never. But there it was again—that fluttering, weightless feeling somewhere deep inside. “I…I really think that would be…ill-advised.”
Tristan broke the stitches on her other shoulder and peeled away the silken layer. His lips brushed the exposed skin. “Marry me, Annica,” he said again. “Come into the fire.”
Annica bit her lower lip to hold back her consent, and the gesture was so revealing that he nearly claimed victory. He read indecision in her eyes, uncertainty in her actions and utter fascination in her quickened breathing. She was a woman of her word and, once given, she would honor it. It was time to press his advantage—not to take pity on the little bluestocking.
“Say yes, Annica.”
“Tristan…oh, Tristan,” she moaned, when he bent to taste her lips again.
He was instantly tumescent at that soft litany, half prayer, half plea. Dear Lord, how he wanted his little bluestocking as he had wanted no other. A lifetime of self-discipline and caution came to naught when Annica sighed. When Annica smiled. When Annica laughed. “Marry me.” The words came from his deepest soul, not from his carefully laid plan, and he was surprised by his own fierceness. “Marry me.”
“No…never,” she murmured against his lips. Her arms clung to him as if he were her life. She turned her face to the side, giving him access to the soft, tender dip directly below her ear where her neck met her shoulder.
He ran his tongue over the spot
and she shivered, her whole body rising with goose bumps. “Marry me.”
“N-never…” she gasped. He kissed the spot again and she began trembling. “Tristan, please…”
“Marry me,” he insisted. He slipped a finger beneath the fragile fabric of her décolletage and silently thanked her dressmaker for the delicate stitches and fine fabric that split open with the barest insistence. One rosebud-crested breast lay exposed to his gaze. “Marry me, Annica.”
“I…never. No, never.” But she arched to his hand.
He covered the heaving peak with his mouth and nipped gently. She whimpered and tangled her fingers through his hair to draw him closer.
He was growing impatient with this game. His own need was threatening to take over. Firmly controlled and in charge of all other facets of his life, he was barely above savage when it came to making love. He’d managed to hold himself in check last time, when he knew it was Annica’s first, but the burning in his belly was raging out of control now, fueled by abstinence and need. “Say it, Annica. Say you’ll marry me.”
“If ever…I married…’twould be to you.” She writhed when he skimmed his hand down her belly, pushing the torn fabric aside. “Make love to me, Tristan.”
“That is what I want, sprite. To make love to you. Every morning, every night, all day. Always. All ways. Marry me.”
“’Tis not…a ring that binds….” she whimpered.
“’Tis a vow,” he finished. “Marry me.” His mouth went dry when his gaze swept the form he had just bared. More than life, he wanted to drink his fill of the wonder of her perfect body—the tender pink of her virginal breasts and the dark triangle of hair against the soft fairness of her skin. By all that lived and breathed, he needed her—now. This instant. “Marry me,” he groaned.
Trembling fingers slipped inside his shirt to push the fabric over his shoulders and down his arms. She blushed and gave a shaky sigh when, at last, he was naked and her gaze dropped to his erection. “Please,” she whispered in a faint, tremulous voice, never betraying what it was that she asked.
He wanted to oblige her, to drive into her with all the abandon of an unschooled youth, but he could not treat Annica like a bawd. Clenching handfuls of her glorious chestnut hair in his fists, he paused to worship at one heaving breast on his way downward, repeating over and over in his mind, Slowly…do not frighten her…patience….
Her small hands pressed him closer when he reached that sweet destination, and she arched her head back on the pillow. With a sudden change of mind, she slipped her fingers through his hair, tugging him upward, away from her mons veneris. “Please! Oh, please!”
“Do you like that, sprite?” She was an amazing creature, both courageous and cowardly, prim and sensual. Her unexpected contradictions fascinated him, and he could not live without her.
“Yes!” she gasped. “It…it is beyond anything!” He parted the fleshy petals with one finger and stroked the little nub. Annica uttered an incoherent cry. “And that? Do you like that?”
“Yes! Yes…”
He slipped his finger down and inward, entering the hot, wet center of her. “And that?”
“Yes!” She was crying now, with a need so intense that he knew she was on the brink.
Again he slipped his finger inside her, deeper this time. “And this?”
“Yes…”
He could feel her tremors begin, and pulled back, denying his touch. A soft scream ripped from her throat as she surged upward, trying to find him again.
“Marry me, Annica,” he moaned, and before he could prevent them, the words he had never said before were out. “I love you.”
“Yes! Now, Tristan…now!”
“Marry me, Annica,” he asked again, just to be sure.
“Yes! I said yes! Tristan—please…” She gave an inexperienced thrust upward with her hips in a blind search for the pressure that would give her release.
Tristan felt his tenuous control slip inexorably away as he moved up the length of her to fit his body to hers. “Christ,” he murmured when he sank into her, burying himself deeply within the snug warmth of her body. He moaned and jerked with the pure ecstasy of the joining.
Annica went very still for one endless moment and, jaw clenched, shaking with the effort, he prepared to withdraw. Her fingers bit into his buttocks, holding him to her, and her legs entwined with his, denying him exit. Her muscles convulsed around him. “Sprite?”
“Yes, Tristan,” she wept. “Yes, yes!”
He knew her affirmation had little to do with his proposal, but he reveled in it anyway, only a little ashamed that he had used her passion to gain his ends. He gritted his teeth and waited for her spasms to ebb. When her chest was no longer heaving, he withdrew slowly to the tip of his shaft and slid downward again, feeling goose bumps rise on his arms from the sheer deliciousness of the sensation. She was so tight, so hot and wet, that he feared he would lose control before he could bring her to that primal destination again.
“Oh!” she gasped. “There cannot…be more?”
“Do you want to find out, Annica?”
“Yes. Dear Lord, yes!”
All discipline, all restraint, vanished. Annica felt it, too, he saw—this wild quest for completion. He’d never known a woman who could match his passions as quickly and instinctively, never known anything remotely like the perfect joining of flesh and spirit he felt with Annica. He surged into her again, obeying her throaty pleas. “Marry me,” he moaned.
“Yes,” she cried in an unrestrained release as new, deeper, more intense, tremors wracked her body.
In a blinding, scalding rush, he spent himself within her. “My sprite,” he answered, his voice a hoarse cry of triumph.
Annica’s breathing slowed and evened to a sated level, and her erratically beating heart steadied in measure against his chest. He buried his face in the fragrant tangles of her hair and in every line of her body felt her surrender. Dear God! He had always meant to have her, but how had he come to love her?
Near dawn, Tristan’s coach drew up in front of the Sayles home and he lifted a drowsy Annica, wrapped in her heavy leper’s robe, down to the pavement. When she started around the house to the trellis, he took her arm and led her up the front steps.
“Tristan! They will know—” she protested.
He smiled at her, proud of the soft afterglow of lovemaking in her sleepy eyes. “’Twill make no difference at all, Annica. This time the error will be corrected before anyone knows it was committed.”
He knocked sharply several times before Hodgeson answered in his nightshirt and robe, a nightcap askew on his graying head.
“Hodgeson, I will be coming for Lady Annica quite early. We shall be married without delay. See that her bags are packed for the journey to Clarendon Place, and arrange for the moving of her personal items. You and her abigail will be coming, too. For the moment, see her to her room, please, and keep an eye on her.”
Hodgeson gave his mistress a wary look before he nodded. “I shall do my utmost, Lord Auberville, but that has not always been an easy task.”
“So I gather, Hodgeson. Together, you and I may yet make something of her.” He smoothed her hair back from her cheeks and gave her a teasing smile when she sniffed and looked away.
“Yes, milord. One can always hope,” the beleaguered servant sighed.
Chapter Thirteen
Lady Auberville? Soft candlelight played across Annica’s features when she faced her mirror. Could it really be true?
Mary brushed the elaborate curls from her hair, her expression dreamy. Annica’s glance kept wandering to the large bed with deep green hangings and the door to the adjoining chamber. How in God’s name had “No, never” become “Yes, oh yes”? Had it been his single, barely audible “I love you” that finally pushed her over the brink? And, oh, she loved him, too! Surely he knew that. He knew everything else about her. But now she was stuck with the results of her own recklessness. She certainly had not weighed these ris
ks!
She was grateful, at least, for the fact that Tristan was not the sort to gloat or wield control just for the sake of it. He had not denied her a single reasonable request when he came for her that morning. In fact, he had granted everything—except to recant her agreement.
He had collected her like a neatly wrapped parcel, taken her, along with the special license to marry without banns or delay, to his minister, married her without ado and deposited her on his doorstep. And he accomplished all this while Aunt Lucy and Uncle Thomas still slept. By the time they rose at noon, it was a fait accompli. With every appearance of deep regret, he said he had other business. Urgent business that he had neglected far too long.
She was left to conclude that he would not be an over-attentive husband, and she couldn’t decide if that fact relieved her or annoyed her. Roger Wilkes’s warning now gave her greater pause for thought.
Her breasts began to tingle with the memory of the previous night. She cringed at the knowledge of how Tristan could reduce her to a limp rag with a kiss and turn her into a demanding wanton with little more than that. She could not bear that he could have such power over her. Nor could she help it.
Her glance wandered to the bed again. The canopy was hung in heavy fabric that, when drawn, would hold back the daylight, and the surface of the bed looked exceedingly soft and inviting. Her whole room, in fact, was inviting. It had been decorated in evergreen and splashes of soft pink and white roses. A lovely vase of pink rosebuds and lily of the valley stood on the small table by her bed as a welcome from Tristan’s servants. Every detail was enchanting. Arranged by Tristan? Or his housekeeper, the quiet, motherly Mrs. Eberhart?
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