Shock rocked Faith to her core.
“To get Beth back, I agreed, promising Beth and I would go away. I think Catherine was satisfied. But Vincent was not.”
“Where was Catherine when you…the last time you saw her?”
“Standing beside Vincent, a good fifty feet from the cliff.”
“I can’t understand, then, how she died.”
“I’d wager Vincent has the answer.”
Faith had lived in a world where no evil existed, and though Vincent had frightened her with his apparent madness…“It’s hard to believe anyone could be so evil.”
“I’m not sure your parents did you a service, keeping the world at bay. There are evils all about us. You have to realize that.”
“There is nothing wrong with raising happy children. My parents loved each other and all of us and we knew it. That’s an extraordinary legacy to pass on to your children.”
“Faith, you walked into the house of a murderer with your parents’ blessings. You almost helped him carry out his plan. You were too innocent to know what was happening.”
She pulled from his embrace. “My parents allowed … urged me to come and help you. I knew something was wrong, so I stopped your medicine. I saved your life, ungrateful man. I’m not a child.” She hadn’t helped him without help from above, she knew, but it was important Justin see her as a woman, not a child.
“Hush.” He pulled her back against him.
She should push him away. She really should. Instead, she punched him where she could hurt him, his kneecap.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked.
“No.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“You don’t. But I’m glad you told me. I hope you feel better for sharing your pain. Your nightmare is over, you know.”
“Is it?”
Faith knew, given Justin’s experience, that she would have to show him how good life could be. Telling him would be useless.
“Lie with me and let me hold you,” he whispered.
It was easy for Faith to comply. When he’d looked at her so blankly, she felt as if part of her had died, too. Right now, she most wanted to be in his arms.
Justin sighed in contentment. “You do know how to make a man forget his problems, Faith.”
“I try,” she said, knowing exactly what he meant.
Justin let Faith’s peace flow through him as her body settled along the length of his. “Are you certain you’re not hurt? I thought I was fighting a man, and I imagine I was rough.”
“I’m strong. I held my own against that demon inside you.”
“Aye, and I’ll wager you have the bruises to show for it. At dawn’s first light, Faith, I’m going to examine every blessed inch of you.”
“I’d like that.”
Oh, God. His body responded quick enough. Did she want him as much as he wanted her? “Then I’d as soon not wait for dawn.”
After several, long, silent beats, Faith’s gentle hands began to wander over his back, and her life-giving touch washed over him like sunshine after a raging storm.
Justin gave over to the sensations pulsing through him. “You are something,” he whispered against her hair. Intoxicated, he kissed the pulse in her neck. Then he pushed aside the fabric of her nightdress, the better to tease her with his tongue.
With a breathless gasp, Faith’s hands sifted through his hair, pulling him closer, urging him to continue.
He intended to fulfil her every unspoken request.
With his lips still at her breast, he slid his hand from her hip, ever so slowly, toward the inner silk of her thigh.
“What are you doing?” She stopped his hand’s journey, trapping it between her knees. “You can’t.”
“My poor innocent chi—”
“Do not call me child!” She brought his hand back to her breast. “Is this the body of a child?”
He kissed that very beautiful exhibit. “Most assuredly, you are not a child. But I am a cad. You have no experience of men. And I—”
“Have much experience of women. How many?”
“Does that matter?”
“What matters, I suppose, is that our lives have come together now. You startled me when you touched me there. I didn’t know…I don’t know…what to do, or what to expect.”
“Will you put yourself in my care?” he asked.
“There is no other to whom I could answer yes.”
He was as shaken by her easy trust as he was humbled by it.
“We’ve come a long way together have we not, Justin?”
“I’d like for us to go the rest of the way.” He brought her into a stream of moonlight so he could look into her eyes. “‘Tis more than a business arrangement I want, Faith. Become my wife in deed as well as name. I want us to raise Beth together, for you to be her mother. I never thought to want another by my side, but I want you. To share my life and learn the passion that can exist between us. May we begin now, Faith?”
“Yes, please.”
Justin gazed in awe at her curls crowning his pillow, her emerald eyes shimmering with passion.
Warmth purled through his ready body, and a sense of destiny engulfed him, as he recognized Faith as the missing half of him. He drank in the sight and scent of her. “I feel as if you’ve always belonged to me. Does that make sense?”
Faith nodded. “Don’t try to explain it. It’s…mystical.”
“Mystical,” he whispered sliding her nightgown up her legs, stopping at her knees, waiting for permission to continue. “May I?”
“I want our bodies to be as close as our souls are.”
Justin watched awareness, and full-blown desire, wash over her. He stroked her inner thigh again, until her whimper filled him with sudden, hard need. He wanted to bury himself in her warmth, to become one with her.
Leaving her gown at the apex of her thighs, he untied the last satin bow at her bodice. She helped him slip the gown over her head, and wonder filled him. Faith Wickham, a woman of innocence and passion, and all his.
Her gown got tossed and he gloried in her womanly form. “Exquisite,” he whispered palming her waist, then drinking from her lips again.
When he made to lay her down, Faith put her hand to his chest, in restraint. He stopped, wary, but her eyes danced as she raised his nightshirt over his head. Then she ran her hand along his chest, speeding his heart. “I’ve had the strongest notion to do this of late,” she said. “Do you mind?
“Only that you stopped. Touch me as you will. Anytime.”
“We’re agreed then. We both wish to be touched.” She budded his nipple. “And kissed and held.” She slid her hands to his shoulders and brought him over her.
Skin to skin, for the very first time, their sighs mingled.
Justin rolled them to their sides. “I don’t know how I survived until you entered my life,” he whispered.
“Barely,” was her pert reply.
This was the most splendid moment of Faith’s life. The man she had loved, from almost the first, gazed at her with passion. She cherished each angle and line of the scoundrel’s face.
He poised above her now, tense, anxious. “Would that I could take you without hurting you.”
“Come inside me, Justin. Please.” For you are my life.
He surged at her invitation, and though she suffered a moment of discomfort and amazement, Faith welcomed him with joy.
Justin moved slowly, until he filled her, the satisfaction of destiny and fate soothing her. And when her discomfort passed and she could feel him unmoving, for her sake, she raised her hips to take him deeper.
At the invitation, Justin buried himself in her. And when she sighed and relaxed, he slipped from her in one long, sleek stroke, her cry of loss bringing him back again. And again.
He touched chords never played and they made music fit to reach heaven. He showed her his rhythm, and as if she’d always known it, they swayed and dipped in harmony.
Justin led
her to a sparkling crescendo, bringing her so high, she feared to go beyond, and when she thought she could not, he made her soar again.
Faith followed her love to the brink of everlasting, and left the world behind. They shared a perfect ascent and surged to an all-consuming zenith where they marvelled and held. Then, at a contented, leisurely pace they returned to a world forever-altered. Faith luxuriated in the serene moments when their hearts beat apace, slowing, calming. And she slept.
“Faith,” her lover whispered, stroking her deeply and intimately. “Now you must marry me,” he whispered, not bothering to hide the satisfaction in his voice.
Faith’s bubble burst. “Must I?” Silent moments passed.
“It’s a good bargain, Faith, this marriage between us.”
Loathe to put space between them, she remained by his side. “Yes,” she whispered, sadly. “A bargain of an arrangement.”
“Then you agree?”
She couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat.
“Answer me, Faith. I’m a sick man, remember.”
“Yes,” she said swallowing. “Your infirmity was abundantly evident just now.”
He pulled her against his warm, delicious front and caged her legs with his. “Go to sleep, my stubborn lady. You will marry me, else I’ll tell Vicar Kendrick that you’re a fallen woman. Though I think he’s fallen a time or two himself.”
Heartsick, Faith could not work up the energy to be amused when she should. “Have you ever seen a man have apoplexy? It cannot be pretty. Best say I have fallen cap-over-tail for you.”
“Good,” Justin said, nipping her earlobe.
“Fine,” Faith returned. “I don’t like it above half, but we’ll lie.”
CHAPTER TEN
Harris returned early in the morning and headed for Justin’s room near eight o’clock. Though he carried a new vial of medicine, his intention was to keep Miss Faith from using it. There came a time in life, he decided, retainer or no, when one had to speak. And for him, today was that day.
The door to the bedroom was locked, but he had a key. As he used it, he saw the door had been broken and repaired. Odd that.
He went in, determined to speak his mind … and stopped at the sight of his bare-legged Mistress entangled with his near-dead master. The tray slipped from his hand.
At the resounding crash, his master sat bolt upright. “Have a care, man. You’ll wake the dead.”
Harris, hand on his pounding heart, fell into a chair. With shaking hands, he wiped his brow and stared at the vision staring back. “Wake the dead? I already have! You were damned near dead last time I saw you.”
“That bad, was I?”
Harris nodded, unable to believe he was having a conversation with his master. And that very ghost glanced at his wide-eyed nurse, covered to her chin, and grinned back. “I am recovered.”
Harris sensed the tension crackling between the two, and it was the kind shouldn’t be witnessed. He grinned. “I’m thinkin’ it must have taken somethin’ wicked to rouse you from hell.”
“Wicked, yes. Faith did it,” his master said proudly.
“Has my mistress found some miraculous cure, then?” Harris asked, laughter beyond his control.
The wicked nurse slithered low under the blankets, but his master pulled her against him, for all the world as if he owned her. “She has magnificent…curative powers.”
“Justin Devereux!” she screeched. “I don’t know which of you I’m angrier with. The smirking half-wit beside me … yes you, Justin. Or you, Harris, with your daft grin. If you will stop your gawking and childish humour, and depart, you may return in an hour. We’ll explain Justin’s recovery then.” She wagged her finger. “Mind, no one suspects Justin’s improvement so you had better—” She raised a brow— “Close your mouth. Now, Harris.”
Harris shut his jaw on a chuckle and retreated, laughing anyway when he tripped over their discarded nightclothes.
Justin caught Harris’s bold wink before he shut the door.
Back ramrod-straight, arousing as all hell, Faith rose, dragging the blanket with her, leaving him exposed, and wrapped it about herself, fury in her emerald eyes. “I can’t believe this!” She threw her hands in the air, almost losing the blanket.
He tried to help her catch it and she ripped it from his hand. “You enjoyed that, Justin Devereux. Sometimes you can be such a half-wit.” She strode from the room, majestic in her anger, making him laugh the harder, and want her the more.
He finally stopped laughing and grabbed his dressing gown from the bed. Perhaps this arrangement might be as beneficial to them—if he survived Vincent’s scheme—as it would be for Beth.
He had never felt this way, exactly, about another woman.
He desired Faith, yes, yet this was stronger, deeper, and both more and less sexual, than he’d ever known. It was not simple lust with Faith, though God knew, last night had been one of the best in his life. As if they had met on some remote spiritual plane at the same moment they melded on the physical.
Heady stuff, that, he thought, as he moved to his wheelchair and went to the windows. He watched the sea, but saw her face in moonlight, lips swollen from his kisses, parted and inviting.
Before long, her soft tread whispered of her coming. “Come to me, Faith,” he said without turning.
She stopped behind him, but he reached around and brought her onto his lap, cheek to cheek and lips to lips. But even after the kiss, she remained wary. “Forgive me?” he asked.
She considered his request for a moment. “Perhaps. Someday. Maybe.”
“It was only Harris, after all.”
“Your lack of perception boggles. You are such a birdwit.”
He nuzzled her neck. “You’re right.”
“And well you know it.” She rose at his body’s response, but he stroked the blond lace along her bodice. “You look fetching.” With quick action, he had her back on his lap and stole her lips.
Harris coughed.
Faith stood. “Harris,” she said. “You startled me…us.”
“Sorry. Old habits. From now on, I won’t come in till you open the door. Can you tell me about this cure, now?” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, true, how did it come about?”
They related the tale, Justin giving Faith credit, and Faith giving it back, Harris nodding all the while. “I can’t tell you how it was to walk in here and see you returned to the living.”
Justin tried to keep from smiling. “What did you find in London? Faith tells me you were searching for the doctor and the source of the poison you were feeding me.”
Harris straightened. “I didn’t know I was hurting you!”
Justin touched his arm. “No man has ever been more devoted. Thank you for what you did for me.” Justin took Faith’s hand and entwined their fingers. “Now then, tell us what you discovered.”
“Stevens, the doctor tended you in London, told your brother that with care, you could be hale and whole again, but he was dismissed with the excuse you were being brought here to recover. He warned against the move and he did not prescribe the potion.”
“Do you know anything about the doctor who did?”
“Old sot can’t tend animals, let alone people. Far as I could see, he only called himself a doctor. You were right Missy, about Blackstone having money of a sudden. Likely hired out’a gaol, cause that’s where he was cooling his heels before your accident, your grace. Ain’t no one thought much of his doctoring. Known better for his drinking and gambling.”
Harris turned to Faith. “You scared him, ringing a peel over him, cause after he left here, he took ship for America.”
“I chased him away!” Faith cried. “He can’t help us now.” Justin squeezed her hand. “We’ll come about. The medicine?” he asked Harris. “Did the apothecary say who sells it?”
Harris shook his head. “An apothecary in Seven Dials said an urchin from the Rookery, never the same one twice, comes to his door with your medicine every
few weeks. Likely enough vermin between buyer and seller to keep us looking for the culprit. I did find a bloke to give us a fair accounting of what’s in it.” Harris fished in his pocket. “Wrote it down.” He handed Faith the paper.
Captive Scoundrel Page 13
