You heard what she means to do. The order is just. Be done with it.
Tanner paced the hall outside the room. She was on the other side of the door, sleeping in his bed. It was not supposed to be like this. This wretched need to be with her had lodged in his gut like an addiction.
Once before, Tanner had experienced an urge this powerful. The night Ida Reilly left Cornwall taking her natural son with her. He’d watched them escape from his window, expecting at any moment his stepmother would turn around and call up to him. He was ready to race down the stairs, slip out of the house and run away with them to London.
The expectation was so real. But it did not happen. His step mother walked out on her drunken husband without a backward glance. Branson looked. His nine-year-old stepbrother turned and saw Tanner standing at the window. His hope soared. Ida will send for him, he thought. Tanner nursed that fiction until he could no longer stomach it.
It was not being abandoned that hardened his heart. He’d have been better off if he’d never cared in the first place. It was the desire for love and the hope of receiving it that had inflicted the real damage. And here the blasted feeling had come around again, grabbing him by the balls.
Tanner bent over, unable to breathe, praying for Laura to open the door and free him. That phantom boy was longing for something he could not have. Wanting, desiring, longing—the joke was on him for he’d been cursed, but he had a fail-proof escape route this time.
This crime, of all those he had committed, would haunt him forever. He took cold comfort in knowing her murder would haunt him. He hoped it cut him to pieces. He hoped he suffered pain worse than he could imagine. It would be a way of holding onto her after she was dead.
Caine put up one last heroic struggle to escape his father’s curse.
And then it was easy—so easy—to slip into the villain he really was. The shred of decency he lay claim to in his loyalty to Queen Victoria would not serve him here.
Tanner snatched up the pistol, turned the knob and stepped noiselessly inside the room.
LAURA MAYHEW was equally beautiful in sleep as she was awake. There was little light to see by but it was sufficient to make out the shapes of the furniture. Tanner sat down in the chair in front of the window. Its diamond panes magnified the starlight in the inky night sky.
The pistol dangled between his fingers.
Laura sighed in her sleep. She was wearing a nightgown that had been left behind by a housemaid of the previous owner. Tanner had found it in one of the many empty wardrobes in the house.
He heard her sigh again. He had disturbed her. Her eyes blinked open and she rose up on one elbow. “Tanner, is that you? What is it—did you have the dream again?”
“No, not that dream. A different one.” He rose to his feet and came to stand at the side of the bed. Her hair was tousled and her eyes were sleepy. “Why don’t you hate me for what I did to you?”
“I—I did. I do.”
“Good.” Tanner Caine looked down at the weapon in his hands. “This will be easier if you hate me.” He lifted the pistol and aimed the barrel at her heart. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no choice.”
She began to shake. “Wait. I know you do not want to kill me.”
“No, I do not. But I will. Laura Mayhew, you have recklessly sought to undermine the integrity of the monarchy. As well, you have slandered Princess Louise and for this I am charged with the task of executing you.”
Laura quaked, tears burned in her eyes. “No, no, no, no ... not you!” she cried in a hoarse whisper. “It is not you she has sent—” Her voice choked off. “Say something, Tanner. Tell me you are not the Queen’s secret assassin!”
“I’m sorry.”
He was cold, mechanical. He had his objective and he would see it through. Laura was familiar with the protocol. The men who took Henry away were the same.
“I am a fool,” she said bitterly. “The lavender soap should have given you away. My stay at Hawthorne was obviously planned in advance. Well, why do you hesitate, Caine? Get it over with, betrayer!” She lunged up to slap him across the face and then burst into tears.
“I’ll do it, Laura,” he ground out. “Do not push me!”
“You lied to me! The wedding—the loss of my virginity—why? Why did you bring me here if you meant to kill me all along? Why not just snap my neck on the journey, or bash my skull with a rock? Why did you make me care about you?”
His fixed, hard expression flickered. He heard his voice as though coming from the bottom of a well. “I am loyal to few people in this world and Queen Victoria is one. It did not have to come to this. She had you put away for your own protection and you threw her mercy back in her face.”
“What do you want from me—a retraction? Go to hell. I was waiting for an assassin. I did not expect one so cunning.” Her voice broke again. “I thought you liked me, you stupid, evil man.”
Tanner raised his arm. A roar exploded from his lips and he hurled the pistol against the wall. He lunged at Laura, seizing her by the throat and tried to squeeze. Sweating blood, Tanner tried to force his fingers to tighten around her narrow neck to end her life.
“You won’t,” she whispered. “I know you won’t.”
Tears poured from her ocean green eyes.
“I don’t want you to care for me,” he spat out harshly. “I don’t want to love you! I don’t want to ever love you!”
He clutched her to his chest and kissed her fiercely.
§
MR. SCANLON was waiting in Her Majesty in her private quarters, Freddie announced in a hushed undertone. The hour was exceedingly late and Victoria had had little enough sleep in the past two days, but the thing must be seen through to the end. She adjusted her bed jacket and sat up to greet the fellow who had been summoned in the dead of night to Windsor Castle.
“I’ve had word from Sir Horatio Mayhew that his daughter is missing,” she said, getting straight to the point. “A man posing as an emissary from his lordship spirited Laura Mayhew from Gateshead Asylum yesterday afternoon. She has not been seen since. The man believed to be holding the girl is Tanner Caine.”
Mr. Scanlon appeared as stoic and unmoved as always. The man lacked the intelligence of Mr. Caine, but in this case, intelligence appeared to be an impediment. Tanner was a little too clever for his own good. There was a disturbing report from Dr. Rutledge that he had gone to the extreme length of marrying Laura Mayhew to bring about her release.
“It would appear I have lost my most trusted man to a nineteen-year-old half-wit,” she observed aloud. “I suppose it is my own fault. I introduced them. This was not the outcome I anticipated, though I do recall the girl is very pretty and he is only a man after all.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Laura Mayhew has vivacity. Young men find that sort of thing interesting. She manages to appear helpless while being nothing of the sort. Mr. Caine has fallen into her trap. Most unexpected. Most distressing.”
A ploy, Victoria was sure of it, but there had been no word from Hawthorne Hall to confirm this theory. Tanner Caine was aware how crucial this mission was to the Crown. There was cause for concern but Victoria had not entirely given up on him. The sensible course of action was to implement an alternate plan in case he had failed her. Scanlon was a heavyset man lacking in imagination and curiosity—exactly the qualities suited to this task.
“You will find Mr. Caine in Berkshire at Hawthorne Hall. I would be obliged to you, Mr. Scanlon, if you left straight away. I am depending upon you to assess the situation diplomatically. We don’t want to spook him or upset him. At this stage, I don’t know that Mr. Caine has done anything wrong. It might be just a jolly misunderstanding. See what you can find out and report back to me without delay. Do you think you can manage it, sir?”
Scanlon nodded his broad, bland head. He understood without it needing to be said that if he could manage to keep his mouth shut about this investigation, Scanlon would be well-rewarded.
&nb
sp; Victoria dismissed the otherwise uninteresting fellow, rolled over and valiantly tried to get some sleep.
§
“WHAT HAPPENS if you do not go through with it?”
They were sitting together on the rumpled bed, not touching. Tanner was exhausted, his body felt bruised and his eyes were raw from the tears he refused to shed. He hadn’t cried in seventeen years, not since Ida Reilly left him behind in Cornwall.
“She will just send someone else. He is probably already on his way,” he said wearily. “Jesus, I’m spent. I am almost too tired to care. I need a drink.”
They’d lit the candle and Tanner had kindled the fire. Laura sat on the bed with her legs tucked under her nightdress. He had told her everything. She demanded to know and he told her like a fool. Like an amateur. Tanner had lost the element of surprise and dawn was breaking. A decision had to be reached and soon.
There were two paths in Tanner’s divided soul. The one that beckoned brightest was by far the most pleasurable: Make love to Laura and to hell with the consequences. The other path was far less complicated and infinitely safer: End her life.
“Victoria will not allow our marriage to survive,” he said.
Laura left the bed and stood at the window. She wrapped her arms around her narrow body. “I thought you did not want our marriage to survive.”
Tanner wearily scraped his hair back and rubbed his eyes. “I want it to survive and I want you to survive, but I can’t have both. I told you. I was cursed with a curse.”
“I don’t believe in curses.”
“You should,” he said darkly. “What is this that has happened between us but a curse? You were too beautiful for me.”
“So you’ve said, but what good is beauty if I can’t make you believe me? After they took baby Henry away, it was such a cruel injustice—I had to get him back. I had to! Louise couldn’t do it, she was helpless. The dreams are real, and if the events have not yet happened, they soon will. And for this, the Queen wants me dead.”
Tanner joined her at the window and rested his hands on her thin shoulders. She was fragile, like a glass bird. He could snap her bones in two.
Laura turned in his arms and pressed the palm of her hand to his marred cheek. Her look was tender. The moonlight held her beauty fast in its blue light.
“You know I am not insane, Tanner.”
“If you are not then you are something worse—a liar. I don’t know anything about a child. Your insistence on repeating this story puts the Crown in danger. I have only ever had one true friend in life—the Queen. She trusted me when no one else would. Victoria would not have ordered your death if it were not just. She would not lay that sin on my soul.”
“Maybe that is why you could not kill me.” Laura withdrew from his arms. “I will not force you to choose between me and your sovereign and I will not argue the point. I am ready to die for what I believe in.”
“Your reaction is rare.” He ran his finger over her lush lips. “I have seen it in a few marks, usually political dissenters; men dying for a cause. Never in a woman.”
She lifted her mouth to his. “Kiss me then and say good-bye for I will not be bullied into denying the truth. If I live, I will try to find Henry.”
“Don’t,” he said brokenly. “You know I won’t stop at a kiss.”
“What do you mean?”
He made a sound, like a groan or an oath. In the candlelight, he could see Laura was watching him closely, like a doe scents danger in the forest. The image he presented should alarm any young girl. Tanner’s white shirt was open to the waist, exposing his chest, and his breeches were tight and revealing. A shank of black hair hung in his eyes, concealing his hungry gaze and his thoughts that were hot and coarse.
“This has to end between us,” he said. “This must end tonight.”
Tanner took her hand, led her to the chair and sat down. He put his hands on her narrow hips and drew her to stand between his knees. His shoulders were tense.
“Did I hurt you earlier ... when I ... took you in the window seat?”
“Yes. No.” The expression on her face was solemn, shy and conflicted. “It hurt but I am quite all right now. The pain was not of long duration.”
“That is good. I’m glad.”
His long fingers could reach almost to her buttocks. The nightdress was sweetly old fashioned, tied with satin ribbons. Her hair was loose, freshly clean and hanging to her shoulders.
“You must help me, Laura.” He pulled her even closer. She rested her hands on his shoulders.
“How, Tanner?” She bit her lip. “I don’t know what you need. You will not tell me.”
He tugged on the satin ribbons and the nightdress fell open. He pushed it off her shoulders exposing her perfect breasts. The loose gown fell in a soft heap to the floor.
“I need this,” he said thickly. “Turn around.”
She turned her back to him and Tanner traced the long, slim lines of her nubile body from her shoulders to the curve of her waist, to the firm round muscles of her buttocks. He pulled her down to a sitting position on his lap.
Laura stiffened. He knew she expected to die tonight and yet she did not resist the man who would execute her. She was beautiful, young, and trusting ... so trusting.
He dared not look at her face. It was the only way Tanner would get through this. The pistol was in the corner of the room. No good to him now. He’d likely damaged it when he threw against the wall.
The girl surprised him by leaning back against his chest, her body languid and soft against his. Her arms came over her head and wound sweetly around his neck. Laura parted her thighs. Sinewy, naked, offering her perfect body up to him for no other reason than she believed him. Tanner did not believe such faith could exist.
Laura pressed her cheek against his and pinched his earlobe tenderly. “I need this too, Tanner. The way I feel when I am with you ... touch me ... please....”
He slipped his hand between her legs to stroke her velvety slick flesh. He kissed her ear and drew the soft bud of her lobe into his mouth and bit it as gently as a cat.
Her chest lifted. Her eyes fluttered closed. She moved sensuously against his body. Tanner’s shirt was open and her fragrant, cool skin pressed against his. He fingered the erotic nub between the puffy folds of her vulva. Petting her firmly, rhythmically until she was wet and her opening stretched wider to admit a man.
Then he slid his finger inside her.
Laura choked and made a satisfying high-pitched mewling sound.
He plundered her tight vagina with deliberate, exploratory strokes, then crooked his finger inside her, finding the one place few men knew about and even fewer women. Tanner massaged the hidden spot and chafed her clitoris at the same time with his thumb. Courtesans and madams had knowledge of this pleasure. Not virgin girls of Laura’s class.
Her response was electric.
Chapter Four
LAURA’S TOES curled. She stiffened, rising up slightly. Her voice whimpered in his ear, begging him to stop, and then she howled, a keening moan like the wind in the sails before a storm. Laura gripped his neck in a stranglehold, her hips bucking as Tanner fingers worked feverishly to keep pace.
He crushed her against his chest when she climaxed, one hand squeezing her breasts while the other dove between them to open the tie at his waist. He reached between his legs and freed his cock. Before Laura could object, before his conscience could stop him, Tanner positioned her over his rigid member, and in one deft movement, shoved upward penetrating her tight wet core.
“Laura ... oh god, Laura....”
Her pussy was still in the final wave of climax and so wet and soft and welcoming. Tanner filled his mind with every disgusting thing he could concoct to keep what he felt about her in check. He guided her slim buttocks up and down, riding his cock like a jockey. Her thighs clenched deliciously and once again, she leaned back against his chest exposing the full length of her body to him. By God, she made him wild!
&
nbsp; He loved being inside her, giving her pleasure and watching her erotic response to being fucked. Tanner fondled Laura’s tits boldly, while kissing her neck and tonguing her ear. Her tight womanhood squeezed his cock, pulsating and wetter with each stroke. The tension in his balls became too much. He felt the climax rushing toward him and Tanner ground his teeth against it. Not yet. Not yet!
There was no controlling it. He gripped her hips, lifting her and slamming her down on his shaft faster and harder. Her breasts bounced with each thrust, her head fell back in ecstasy. The pleasure consumed him, transported Tanner to another time and place that only existed with Laura Mayhew.
His head jerked back, his face contorted to a grimace and his lower belly contracted.
Tanner gave out a cry of anguish and sweet release and exploded in climax deep inside her womb.
§
HE HELD her tight. She felt boneless in his arms. When his limbs stopped shaking, he carried her to the bed, laid her down and then staggered to the fire to catch his breath. This feeling between them was worsening by the hour. Tanner thought a lesson in coarse sex would dissipate it. It had only made it worse.
“Is it always like that with husbands?” Her spent, awed voice reached him across the room. “The sex act, I mean. You may speak frankly. Human biology does not shock me. After witnessing the birth of Henry, I have become blasé about the facts of reproduction.”
“You are not as prudish as I would have expected,” he said, grinning with the understatement. “It helps when the lady is as enthused as the man.”
“Have your ladies always been enthusiastic?”
Laura waited for Tanner to answer and when he did not, she sat up straighter to look at him.
His expression had changed to an emotion Laura could not define. Then the moment passed and Caine was restored to his customary black stare, glowering into the fire.
Mark of Caine Trilogy: Book Two: Whispers in the Shadows (Victorian Villains) Page 3
