So brown they’re nearly black.
And . . .
He’s looking at me. At me!
And although she stuffed it deep as soon as it seared across her mind . . .
He’s beautiful. I want him.
“So sharp!” He’d lazily lifted off from the wall and sauntered closer, one corner of his lips still twisted upward in amusement. “Don’t you know laurels aren’t supposed to have thorns?”
She never directly addressed Amaryllis’s guests if she could help it. Her shyness made it impossible to say anything sensible, so she preferred to hide her timidity in a stony silence. She liked to think it was interpreted as cool superiority—although she suspected that she never quite carried it off.
Now, however, she tossed her head and looked the bold fellow in the eye. “Are you lost? I know it’s a confusing route to the front door.” It was all of twenty steps. “Perhaps I may show you out?”
That smile flashed again and her belly warmed. Or perhaps slightly lower. She found her gaze lingering on his bottom lip and forced her eyes back up to meet his knowing ones.
“Thorny little Bramble, as sharp as tacks. Who would have thought it?”
She’d lifted her chin. “My name is Miss Laurel Clarke. And we have not been introduced. You overstep, sir.”
He’d leaned closer and reached to tug on one of the long dark braids she wore to show her scorn for Amy’s elaborate hairstyles. His warm fingertips brushed the side of her neck. Did he see her shiver?
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” he whispered huskily, then laughed when she blushed furiously. “Come on, Bramble, show me the library, will you? If I have to outwait the brainless brigade in there, I’m going to need something to read.”
“You read?” This time she hadn’t meant to sound snappish. She’d simply been surprised.
“Oh yes. For months now.” He tickled her ear with the end of her braid. “And you can call me Jack. See, introductions tidily managed. No duennas needed.”
She reached her hand up to pull her braid from his grip. Their fingers brushed and she felt her cheeks pinken again as a rush of heat swept up her body. Jack.
This fellow was trouble on the hoof, she’d thought deliciously.
Too bad she hadn’t realized how true that was.
Jack pulled the door to the attic stairway shut and turned. Melody stood in the middle of the hallway, gazing at him with little frown lines between her wispy brows.
“Papa, why are you playing in the attic?”
“I’m not! I mean, the attic is no place to play. You know that, don’t you, Melody?”
She eyed the attic door warily. “The bad man took me to the attic. He took me to the roof!”
Where the villain, Lady Madeleine’s deranged and brutal late husband, had dangled Melody’s tiny body over the edge, threatening to fling her to shatter on the street below. Jack’s fists clenched. If the bastard hadn’t died on the cobbles himself that day, Jack would surely make it happen now. He hadn’t been here to protect Melody then and he should have been. If he’d not been so lost in his own misery, he would have known of her existence much sooner.
I’m taking her out of this place right this minute.
Laurel. Jack rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. He didn’t understand Laurel’s reasons, but he didn’t doubt her rage—er, her sincerity.
And she was truly enraged.
Which meant that he’d just locked a deeply furious woman in the attic. That suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.
Too late.
Wincing at the thought, Jack took Melody’s hand and walked her down to his rooms. He was going to have to deal with Laurel sooner or later. He wasn’t a man to put things off, but he needed to make sure that Melody was kept far away from anything so disturbing.
The first step—put Melody to bed. From the moment Jack had arrived back at Brown’s, Melody had insisted that he and he alone should have this duty. Colin had taken this rather well, considering he’d been the irreplaceable one until then.
However, although Colin might not be present, Colin’s stories were still entirely necessary. Jack didn’t know much about Colin’s pirates, but he’d had plenty of adventures at sea. Each night the tales grew a little longer and more detailed. Melody’s ability to listen, wide-eyed and breathless, did wonders for his strange inability to speak.
Everyone at Brown’s blinked in mystification but allowed Jack to take over this bedtime ritual.
This sounded easy enough, but he’d learned in the last week that though generally cheerful and full of fun, Melody was not what one would call easy. Always busy, always in motion, usually in danger, but never easy.
Well, perhaps when she was asleep.
An hour later, Jack gazed down at the sleeping child. She wasn’t his. The thought didn’t want to stick to his mind. It kept sliding away, as if unable to take purchase in his brain.
She isn’t mine.
Yet, apparently, she had something to do with Laurel.
It certainly explained Melody’s resemblance to Amaryllis, although now that he’d seen Laurel again, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of her in the first place. Melody was so obviously like her—clever and curious and prone to displays of affection.
None of which applied to Amaryllis.
Lifting Melody’s limp, warm body and draping her against his shoulder, he stood to carry her to her own room. Madeleine and Aidan had set up a nursery for her in their chambers. After Jack had tucked Melody into her small bed, he straightened to assess the latest additions.
There was a little chess set on a side table. That was new. Jack lifted a piece to examine it. The knight had been carved as a pudgy pony with large expressive eyes. Each piece was a charming toy, and the kings and queens were absolute treasures of detail.
Another gift from Lord Bartles and Sir James, Jack had no doubt. Those old codgers were shameless in their efforts to win “favorite grampapa” in Melody’s estimation. Soon there wouldn’t be any room in the nursery for all the bribes—er, presents.
Full night had come while Jack put Melody to bed. Now the clock chimed half past ten. He blinked. His stories were most definitely becoming longer. Odd. He had probably spoken to Melody tonight more than he’d spoken in the last year.
Why was it she was the only person he could order his thoughts into speech for? He certainly hadn’t been able to muster any such basic skill with Laurel.
Laurel.
Oh, hellfire, what had he done?
You’re still at war. Still making peacetime decisions with wartime extremity.
Still mucking up in a grand fashion, that was for sure.
Yet compared to his previous crimes, kidnapping was next to nothing. He was not the man his friends thought him to be.
He was barely a man at all.
Sinking into the overstuffed chair that Madeleine had added to the room, he didn’t even pause to think what he might look like lounging on the puffy pink seat cushion.
Rubbing one hand over his eyes, he tried mightily to remember the last time he’d seen Laurel. She hadn’t been at that final, humiliating house party.
Or had she?
Think.
He had been so lost in darkness, so under the rubble . . .
His friends commanded him to attend the house party, to see his girl, so he’d gone. He’d had the most amazing night of his life, which left him feeling almost human again. Then his heart had been ripped out once again.
Then came the two foggy months, lost in the bottle, flailing in the darkness. Colin and Aidan had convinced him that suicide was selfish. Too many people needed him to be a good master for his ailing uncle. Jack had responsibilities. This realization stabilized the darkness, but he remained lost in the gray. Until Melody.
And now Laurel had come to take her away.
Outside the door, Colin and Aidan lingered in the upstairs hallway.
“He’s putting her to bed right now,” Colin told Aidan quietly.
“Poor bastard. I’ve never seen anyone look so shattered as he did when he came through the door of the club.”
Aidan eyed Colin for a moment. “I have.”
Colin looked away. “I’ll be all right. It’s Pru and Maddie I worry about. And Jack.”
Aidan nodded slowly. “I hate to see Maddie so sad, but she’s been through many difficult times, as has Pru. Jack . . .”
Colin rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Jack walks a bit close to the edge as it is.”
“He was getting better the last few days.” Aidan let out a slow breath. “I thought having Melody was almost like . . . redemption for him.”
Colin gazed into space. “A life for a life, you mean.”
Aidan looked down at his hands. “We don’t know that.”
“No.” Colin didn’t meet his friend’s gaze. “We don’t know anything of the kind. Not for certain.”
Across the hall, in the rooms occupied by Colin and Pru, the door was slightly ajar. On the other side, Pru pressed a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
A life for a life?
Five
Upstairs in the attic, outside the locked chamber, Jack hesitated. Should he knock? Feeling foolish, Jack tapped on the door. Pressing his ear to the door, he could barely hear her reply with a derisive snort.
“Oh, please do come in.” Not even the thick oak could dampen the irony in her tone.
The heavy key was warm from his pocket. His face was warm from a combination of embarrassment and shame, mingled with a dash of irritation. That made three more emotions in one moment than he was accustomed to feeling at all.
He turned the key and pressed the latch, pushing the heavy door open slowly. He was barely able to duck the flying splinters of porcelain as a piece of crockery exploded against the door frame next to his head.
“Oh, pooh. I missed.” She sounded deadly calm. Seething.
Jack hesitated behind the safety of the door, then shook off his own cowardice. He’d done this. He had to face the consequences.
The consequences began to fly rather quickly right about then. He held his arm up to protect his eyes as more pottery shards took flight. “Damn it, Laurel!”
“You wanted to come in. Come in, then.”
“Stop.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of actually hurting you, Jack.”
He stepped into the room, only to duck wildly as a cracked plate spun through the air toward his head. “Oy! I thought you didn’t want to hurt me!”
Laurel paused, one hand poised to lob a handleless teapot his way. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want, as a matter of fact, to kill you.” The teapot arced through the air, narrowly missing his shoulder as he twisted out of the way.
She glared at him. “Stop moving.”
He held up both hands placatingly. “Laurel, I know I was wrong to put you in here—”
In a blur of motion, she reached down to a pile of discarded crockery at her feet and flung a soup tureen at him, grunting with the effort. This time Jack kept his stance, knocking the bloody thing away with his forearm.
That hurt.
He must not have shown it, however, for her eyes widened in surprise and she hesitated in her next barrage. That was her first mistake. Like a soldier springing an ambush, Jack was across the room in an instant, pulling her away from her arsenal, pinning her flailing arms to her sides.
“Let me go!” She kicked wildly, but her skirts protected him.
He held her close, her back pressed to his chest, his arms wrapped about hers, keeping her immobilized.
She smelled exceptionally good.
Irrelevant. Except that it reminded him of something. . . .
Laurel struggled against tears as she fought his grasp on her. Weeping did no good. She ought to know, having shed enough tears in the past four years to thoroughly test the premise. Staying angry—that most definitely showed promise. She’d never felt such a towering rage in her life, or at least she had not allowed herself to acknowledge it before.
But this man, this most unbelievable blackguard, had stolen so much—
Her body began to tingle in response to his size and strength.
No. She broke from his hold even as a long-held sob broke from her throat. Clamping her jaw against another such self-betrayal, she backed away from him, hands outstretched behind her.
Anything she could reach, anything, a teapot, a broomstick, a fireplace poker . . . she would happily brain him with, and then she would take her baby and disappear, leaving Lord John Redgrave broken and bleeding in her past.
He stood before her now with that same distant and puzzled look on his face. She’d remembered him wrong somehow. The laughing young man of her girlhood had become a figure of sly manipulation in her memory, of course, but her vengeful memory had conveniently misplaced the broken, grieving man she’d spent that single night with. She could see that man now, a ghostly figure still wretched, still lost, as if his shadow were permanently attached to the hollow, distant fellow before her.
She shook off the image in her mind. She must cling to her fury. Only rage made her strong enough to do what she must do. Understanding and empathy were worthless, weak emotions that had landed her in this pickle to begin with.
No, in this case she would be like Amaryllis. She would keep her eye on the main chance, dealing the best hand to no one but herself.
For her daughter, she would do anything, even emulate her heartless sister.
“Give her to me.” Was that her voice, that maternal growl? “Take me to her now.”
“What do you mean to do?”
Her chin lifted defiantly. “Run. Run far away and never come back. By my reckoning, you have lost all rights to our child!”
Our child. Shock echoed through Jack. Ours? But—
Laurel went on. “This attic stunt is only the latest of your sins, my lord, and whatever future you envisioned with Melody, I shall—”
He held up one hand to interrupt, still reeling. “Wait—”
Something came to hand at last, a long stick, a laundry paddle, leaning in the corner of the room. The dry, elderly wood drove splinters into her hand as she gripped it tightly behind her back. A true weapon, at last. Could she kill a man?
She could kill this one.
Well, she could quite happily knock him unconscious and then step on him a bit.
He stepped closer. Taking a firm grip on the paddle, she inhaled deeply. One more step . . .
He took the step, his hand at his brow in evident confusion. Now, strike now—
The paddle swung. He saw it a moment too late and ducked, but the blow landed hard on his shoulder. Battle instinct took over and he ripped the paddle from her grip and rushed her. Pinning her with his body, he pressed her to the wall and secured her hands safely over her head.
At this intimate distance, however, more danger lurked. The feeling of her pressing to him, the way she writhed against him in her struggle, the scent of her body and the feeling of her breath upon his skin as she fought him . . .
I recognize her.
Then, from somewhere deeper and darker . . .
I need her.
He held her still and made no move, but there was nothing he could do to suppress his desire. His cock hardened to iron, trapped painfully within his trousers. His heart pounded, the sound loud and alarming in his ears. His skin went hot and his vision narrowed. Need. Want.
Now.
He could feel her struggles slow. He could hear her furious cries fade to small, broken noises of protest.
He could smell her desire.
Dropping his head, he hovered over her upturned face, his mouth an inch from her lips. Her eyes were huge and deep, pools of sky that a man could fly into. He needed to know . . .
When Jack kissed her again after so long—oh God, it had been so long!—Laurel wanted to fight him, to push him away, to bite his invading mouth. Yet even stronger than the urge to cause him pain was her deep, aching need for his kiss.
His mouth was hot and hard and familiar and strange. When she opened her lips to get a better taste of that strangeness, she felt a growl tear through him and rumble into her.
He raised her trapped hands higher and pinned them both in one large fist. Laurel had to rise to her tiptoes, which only brought his mouth harder onto hers. He wrapped the other hand around her jaw and angled her face to deepen the kiss. It was scorching and wet and she kissed back just as hard. Thrusting tongues warred and tangled and her moans went unheard into his mouth. The will to fight left her body and she shamelessly let herself fall into the kiss.
Jack’s hand left her face and slid down her neck, testing her pulse and teasing at the sensitive place where her neck turned to shoulder. Then his big hot hand covered her breast, pushing it high.
There was nothing she could do. She was trapped, pinned . . . blameless. Anything that happened from this point onward could not be her responsibility. The cry that rose in her throat at that thought was a noise of pure animal arousal.
His hand tightened on her breast when he heard her moan. Then his hand slid down her body, over her buttock, and down her thigh. His mouth left hers for a moment and she let her head fall back, panting and ashamed and shaking with need. When she felt his hand slip beneath her gown and slide over her knee and up her inner thigh, she closed her eyes and relaxed her stance, letting her knees widen. She hated him. He’d ruined her life. Her need for him was mortifying, insane, and entirely beyond her control.
His hard, hot hand cupped her mound and his mouth fell back onto hers. As his tongue slipped back between her lips, his long finger followed suit below.
He knew what to do to a woman. Laurel was well aware of that. His touch was sure and firm, gentle but not to be denied. He took her with his hand, stroking his finger deep into her, then sliding it out slowly, dragging the wet length of it upward against her clitoris. Then he stroked down and in once more, setting up a rhythm that matched the way his tongue invaded her mouth again and again.
It began within her, starting from that single spot and spreading outward. First heat, then chills until she shook from it. She made noises into his mouth and he swallowed them, taking them as a signal to increase the speed of his touch. She hung from his grip, impaled first by one finger, then by two together. The long thickness of his fingers opened her. She tightened convulsively around them, increasing the friction, increasing her own pleasure.
Scoundrel in My Dreams Page 6
