“Well played,” War admitted as they slid into the crowd and found anonymity there.
She shrugged. “Aston snuck into a great many soirees over the years I was with him. Country events, of course, where he was shopping for someone to deceive with a story or rob outright. But we had our systems. A distraction at the door was a common device we used and the lady with the headdress mask made a perfect one.”
She pretended that what she had done at Aston’s side meant nothing to her, but he could hear the guilt in her voice and see the tangled pain in her eyes even behind the simple cloth mask.
“Claire,” he began, hoping to comfort her.
She shook her head. “Let’s look around, shall we?”
He hesitated before he nodded, sliding her hand through the crook of his arm and leading her forward. “I’ve never seen Aston before. What should I look for?” he asked.
She sighed. “Just another handsome fop, I’m afraid. Jon is a chameleon. Always willing to change his…” She trailed off. “Damn, it looks as though Edward and Mary are here.”
She motioned across the room to where the couple stood with another masked couple. “Likely they are with Mary’s sister Gemma and her husband Crispin Flynn,” War said. “You’d like Gemma, I think. I met her at Audrey’s wedding and she is a lovely woman.”
Claire glared at him. “Just how lovely?”
He laughed. “Not quite as lovely as current company, of course.”
“Well, I should hope not,” she teased. “Tonight isn’t the night to approach them, of course. I want to focus on Aston, not my family.”
“Probably best,” War said, steering her away from her brother and his party.
Suddenly she stopped as she scanned the ballroom floor. Her mouth turned down into a deep frown. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered.
“What?” he asked, looking in the same direction she was. He could see nothing out of the ordinary in the dancing couples.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just saw some old acquaintances I’m not fond of.”
“Claire?” he pressed.
She turned on him, her smile suddenly bright. “Will you get me a drink?”
“Now?”
“Yes, I’m parched. Please.”
He could see she was fidgeting, her gaze flitting around like a trapped rabbit in a room of wolves. But she had promised him she would not do anything stupid earlier. He hoped he could believe her.
“Fine. Wait here?”
“Of course,” she said. “Right on this spot.”
He frowned as he turned away to go to the table where the drinks were poured. After a few steps, he turned back and Claire was gone.
“Damn it,” he said on a sigh as he forgot about the drinks and began to search the crowded ballroom for her once again.
Claire ducked into the crowd, dodging drunken men blustering about politics and women judging the throng around them. They meant nothing to her. There was only one man in her sights. And he was just leaving the ballroom floor, a lady on his arm.
As Claire got closer, she gasped. The man was most definitely Jon. But to her surprise the lady Jack had told her Jon was courting was someone she knew as well.
“Letitia,” she breathed, despising Jon all the more.
Her own cousin Letitia most definitely stood at Jon’s side, smiling up at him as if he had hung the moon. That son of a bitch. He had to know who Letty was in relation to Claire. And he was pursuing her! For her riches, not doubt. Letty was a very rich widow, after all. Not to mention she was shy and a bit of an innocent, despite her years of marriage. Jon would call her the perfect mark for all those reasons.
But Claire had a suspicion that Jon had another reason for choosing her own cousin for his new schemes. He had to know she would find out. Which meant he was also sending a message to her. This was revenge, plain and simple, and he didn’t care if poor Letty was caught in the middle.
She ducked behind a pillar near the couple and dipped a hand into her bodice briefly, coming back out with a thin stiletto she normally carried in her boot. She’d managed to slip it into her gown after Mrs. Dayton dressed her. She palmed the knife and surged closer, close enough that she could hear them even as she hid behind yet another pillar.
“…truly beautiful,” Jon was saying, in that same deep and seductive tone he had used on Claire not that long ago. Only now her body didn’t react with pleasure, but with disgust.
“Oh,” Letty tittered. “You are too kind.”
Claire frowned. She heard the hope in Letty’s voice and she wanted to fold her cousin into her arms, protect her, comfort her. But she couldn’t.
“I see my father there,” Letty continued. “He won’t like it if I stay only at your side tonight. I should go say hello to a few friends.”
“Hurry back,” Jon said.
Claire peeked from her hiding spot and watched as Letty walked away. This was her chance. Claire slipped from the protection of the pillar and glided her way behind Aston.
“Good evening,” she said, jabbing the blade into the sweet spot between two ribs. Aston had taught her that. If her blade slipped in, she could hit the heart or the liver and kill him.
Aston straightened up, stiffening as she pressed harder, hard enough to jab through his clothes and poke the skin.
“Ah, good evening,” he said, the smile in his tone making her stomach turn. “I’m shocked to see you here.”
“Shocked to see me to or to feel my blade?” she asked, nudging at him so he’d start moving.
He did so without fighting, walking before her toward the door that led out of the ballroom and then down a hall to a parlor. She pushed the door open while keeping the knife at his side and then shoved him in. It created distance, but she kept the knife out, held ready to stab him if she had to.
“Are you going to close the door, Claire?” Aston asked softly.
She kicked it shut with her heel and then motioned with the knife toward a chair that faced her. Aston inclined his head and took his place quietly, staring up at her.
“You look beautiful Claire, my love,” he drawled.
She flinched at his endearment. “Shut up.”
“You stopped dressing so prettily for me months and months ago,” he continued. “I did miss it. As I’ve missed you.”
She shook her head. “When last you saw me, you threw me out of a moving carriage and drove away with my child.”
“We were both angry,” he cooed, his gaze still slipping up and down her body with the same possessive fire she had come to know from him. It gave her no pleasure. It hadn’t for a very long time. “You can’t say you made no mistakes. If you hadn’t tried to run away with Francesca, you wouldn’t have driven me to do what I did to you.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I have heard this tale from you for so long. That you were forced into what you did to me, to others, but it’s a lie. Jon, you have choices, you always did. You chose to take my daughter from me as punishment for the fact I wanted to leave you.”
“Come home,” he said, rising.
She backed away, knife still ready. “What?”
“We can mend what you broke, Claire. I want you back, despite what you’ve done. So come home with me.”
She shook her head. “No. Where is Francesca?”
His face, which had been so calm, now twisted in anger. An anger she recognized as easily as his lust. It had been turned on her before as well. She swallowed against her rising fear and stood steady in the face of his reddening cheeks and trembling hands, fisted and ready to strike.
“Francesca,” he spat. “All you care about is her.”
She nodded. “Yes. She’s my child. She’s your child, Jon. Is there nothing in you that cares for her? That wants what is best for her?”
He shrugged. “We’re good together, Claire,” he said softly, moving on her.
She backed up again, but found she had nowhere to go. She was pres
sed against the wall across from him. She could only stab him now. But if she did that, she would lose any chance of finding her daughter. Perhaps he knew that. He sneered as he edged nearer.
“You remember how good we were together,” he whispered, leaning in, smelling her hair, nuzzling his lips against her throat.
She bit her lip, not from pleasure, but from disgust. He wanted her. He had always wanted her, to the point of abusive obsession. She had turned away from it in her mind months and months ago. But now that she had experienced true pleasure, true love, true connection with War, she realized even more that she had never loved this man. She couldn’t even recall wanting him anymore.
But could she use his desire against him? Could she stomach that and betray War? Give Jon what he wanted in hopes he would trade for Francesca?
Aston caught her wrist suddenly and twisted, forcing her fingers open as pain shot up her arm. He caught the blade and spun it so it pressed to her side as she had pressed it to his earlier.
“What do you say, Claire?” he murmured. “Come home with me tonight? Come back where you belong.”
She heard the threat in his tone. She felt it even more as the tip of her own knife pressed into her flesh. But she had no opportunity to answer. The door beside them was suddenly thrown open, and before she could fully understand what was happening, Jon was tossed away from her by War.
War, who stood over him, punching him again and again until the knife flew from Aston’s hand and skittered across the floor away from them both.
Then War turned toward her, his dark eyes wild, his hair fallen from its queue to hang around his face. “Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for her.
Jon lifted up on his elbows, staring at the two of them. Claire saw his eyes go wide, fill with anger and jealousy.
“Who is he?” Aston bellowed as he struggled to get up. His eye was already beginning to swell and his nose bled. “Who the fuck is he?”
Claire’s lips parted as War returned his attention to Jon just in time to see her former lover reaching into his waistband. His eyes wide, War grabbed her by the waist and rushed from the room, dragging her as he went.
“No!” she cried out, trying to pull back against him. “If we leave he’ll get away!”
Partygoers in the hallway stared as War flipped her over his shoulder and carried her at a full run toward the door.
“If we stay, he may kill us both,” he barked as he flew out the door and ran full tilt toward the line of carriages.
“Stop!” she argued, tears streaming down her face as he tossed her unceremoniously into the carriage and shouted to his driver to go.
She threw herself against the window as they raced into motion, watching as the manor house grew further away behind them. Watching as her only chance to find her child disappeared along with the staring faces of those at the door.
Chapter Twenty-One
War caught Claire as she threw herself across the carriage at him. Her fists beat against his chest, bouncing off his muscles without doing any harm.
“Why?” she screamed, tears flowing down her face. “Why would you do that? I had him!”
“No, Claire,” he said, grabbing her wrists at last and holding them to her sides as she struggled. “He had you.”
“I could have managed him,” she said, her struggles fading and exhaustion filling her face. She pulled her arms away and reached up to tear the mask from her face.
“How?” he asked, his earlier terror now transforming to anger as he recalled just how he had found Claire and Aston.
To see that man, that brutal criminal, pressed against her, knife to her side, his intent ever so clear, it boiled War’s blood. It made him want to go back and destroy him piece by broken piece. It woke that side of him he had left behind when he left Jack years before.
“I could have done it,” she whispered, turning her face from his. “I would have gotten what I needed.”
“By bedding him?” he asked, keeping his tone cold and unemotional when he felt anything but.
She flinched but didn’t respond, and her silence was answer enough. To find her child, Claire might have traded her body.
“That was what he wanted,” War growled. “What he would have taken whether or not you gave it, Claire. And in the end, you know he wouldn’t have given you Francesca.”
She bit back a sob. “I would have had a chance, though. I want my daughter, War. Don’t you see I would do anything?”
“Yes, I do see, and it’s bloody terrifying,” he shouted, his loud tone making her jump. “We’re going to get to him, Claire. What must I do to make you have faith in me?”
She shook her head. “You were right earlier. You said if I approached him he might run. I did and he saw you, he saw me. You know he was enraged by that. Especially since I told him I wouldn’t go back to him.”
“That’s what he wanted?” he asked, red blurring his vision.
She nodded slowly. “Yes. He acted as though we’d just had a little row, that if I apologized he would take me back.”
“Well, I don’t think he’ll run,” War said, sitting back against the seat. “I saw his face when he saw me touch you. He won’t run. But if you’re going to get your daughter back, Claire, we must work together. You must trust me.”
“I do!” she burst out, sinking back against the carriage seat limply. “I do, War.”
“Do you?” he asked, looking at her face, remembering how afraid she was when he burst into that room. “You didn’t tell me you saw him tonight. You went after him by yourself. It’s only by luck that I noticed you were gone right away, that I began a search of the house and heard your voice in the hallway. If I hadn’t, if I hadn’t you might have…he might have…”
He trailed off, unable to say the words of what Aston might have done. Not just raped her, which was the next step. But he might have killed her. War had seen it before in men who harmed the women they claimed to love. Obsession could lead to murder easily, all in the name of staking a permanent claim.
The thought turned his stomach and War reached for Claire reflexively, needing to feel her warmth in that moment. Needing to remember that she was all right. At least for now.
She let him take her hand and scooted nearer to him with a long shiver.
“He didn’t hurt me,” she whispered. “You came.”
He nodded. “But what if I hadn’t?”
She moved over him, her face close to his in the carriage. “But you did,” she said, then lowered her lips to his.
It was exactly what he needed in that charged moment. To feel her pressed to him. Those horrifying thoughts of what might have been faded, replaced by a driving need to touch her. To taste her.
He cupped her hips, dragging her across his lap until she straddled him on the carriage seat. She pulled away from his kiss and looked down at him.
“I only want you,” she whispered.
He knew why she said it. It was to reassure him that any plan she had of giving herself away had never been meant as a betrayal. Just an act of desperation.
“Show me,” he murmured back.
She nodded and reached between them, loosening the flap on his trousers with one hand as she returned her lips to his. He drove his tongue into her hard, mimicking the way he wanted to claim her. Rough then gentle, taking then giving. She refused him nothing, sighing against the assault of his tongue and stroking his cock gently.
He lifted into her with a grunt of pleasure. God, she was a revelation, and he wanted to feel her so very much.
He pushed her skirts up, bunching them around her waist, and smiled. As always, she was wearing no drawers, and when he pressed a hand to her sex, he found her slick and hot.
“Hurry now,” she gasped. “Slow later.”
He positioned her above him and pressed up, slipping through her folds and driving home deep within her. She let out a great shudder as she lowered her forehead to rest on his.
For a moment, they simply sat like that, bodies joined, panting breaths matching in the quiet carriage. But the feel of her pulsing around him, her tight heat massaging him, was too much. He lifted up, thrusting into her, and she dipped her head back with a soft cry.
They moved together, grinding their bodies, her fingers digging into his shoulders, his bruising her hips as he guided her movements. She arched, her body gripping him, and then she gasped out sounds of pleasure as orgasm hit her. Her body milked him, drawing him closer to oblivion. When he found it, it took everything in his aching body to push her away, to spend outside of her heated heaven.
Slowly she adjusted her skirts, covering herself. Then she fastened his trousers again and rested her head on his shoulder as they made the rest of their silent way to his home.
Claire brought her knees up to her chest, holding them there as she glanced down at War. He was sprawled across his bed, half-covered in the tangled sheets, sound asleep. After making love twice more since they got home, she could hardly blame him. But sleep wouldn’t come so easily for her.
She stared down at him, so handsome in repose. It was hard to believe that just a few hours ago, they had been in such danger. Well, he had more than she had, no matter how it had looked when Jon had a knife in her side.
War was right that Jon might have taken what she would not give. She hated the idea, but it didn’t terrify her to think of Aston taking her. She could close her eyes and block that out. But the danger to War that night had been far more powerful.
She’d seen Aston’s eyes when War burst into the room to save her. She’d seen his jealousy, burning bright and hot and mad. He had been outraged that another man felt he had enough claim to rescue her. That put War in enough danger. But if Jonathon also figured out that War was related to Jack?
“You are ruminating,” came War’s muffled voice from the pillows. He lifted his head, opening sleepy eyes to look at her.
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