Angel In My Bed

by Melody Thomas

  She sat back on her calves, her violet skirt spread around her, achingly beautiful. “Will you help me find the locket?”

  A strand of her hair had fallen over her shoulder, and he brushed it off her face. A faint frown marred his mouth as he considered what she had yet to say. David angled his palm around her chin. “He gave you his word that he would not harm Nathanial. But he did not give you his word that he would not harm you. I won’t help you find the necklace.”

  Meg pressed her lips together. Her fingers folded into her skirts. She struggled to her feet. “I don’t need you to help me,” she said, sidestepping him. “I will search alone if I have to tear this place apart.”

  David watched her walk to the door that separated this room from her bedroom. She stepped over the threshold and pulled shut the door. The sound of a key clicking in the lock followed.

  David looked at the door behind him that led into the hallway. She had locked that door earlier. The key was not in the lock. He drew in his breath and, bracing his wrist across his thigh, swore before he rose to his feet. Did she even know she’d locked him in her sitting room?

  He sat on the chair next to the window and removed the locket from his waistcoat pocket. He turned it over in his hands, studying the intricate lily flower design.

  Something crashed to the floor in the other room. “Damn, damn, damn,” he heard the muffled feminine expletive.

  Returning the locket to his pocket, he walked to the connecting door. “Meg?”

  “Go away, David.” He could hear the scrape of furniture. “If you aren’t going to help me do this, I’ll do it alone.”

  “You’re not doing anything alone.”

  There was a long pause. After a moment, he pressed an ear to the panel. He could feel her doing the same on the other side and knew she could feel him, too. “Just open the damn door, will you? I’ll injure myself if you make me break down this door.”

  After a moment, he heard the lock click and the door flung open. Meg looked past him to the other door before she deigned to give him her attention. When she did, he saw that her eyes were wet. Leaning a palm against the frame, he spoke without touching her. “You know I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” she answered.

  “You should not have had to face your father alone today.” This was his fault for allowing himself to get unfocused. For forgetting why he was here.

  “I wasn’t frightened for myself, David.”

  He touched her face. “That is what frightens me.”

  Tears clung to the rims of her lashes, and he took her into his arms. “Why?” Her voice was a whisper, but David heard the quiet mutiny framed by that one word.

  “Because you should be afraid. Because I love you and I would not lose you again.”

  “He knows where my mother is buried.” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. She curled her fingers in the cloth of his shirt. “He has always known.”

  David brushed the hair from her cheek. “Kinley’s people went through Faraday’s holdings before his trial looking for any shipments made during his tenure in India. Do you remember anything about your mother?”

  She shook her head. “I know that she and my father were married in Brighton. My mother always talked about a chapel on the sea someplace.” Dabbing at her eyes, she studied him. “She loved the sea.”

  “Anything else?”

  Her smile wobbled a bit. “Are you interrogating me?”

  “Do you trust me to know how to help you?” He spoke against her hair.

  He felt the slight stiffening of her spine beneath his palm and felt her hand against his pocket. “Is this an issue of trust between a husband and his wife?” she asked. “I recall that you asked me that same question before, David.”

  That afternoon like a thousand days since, he regretted. He had destroyed her trust, and, carrying his son, she had walked out of his life. “I know what I said, Meg.”

  Taking his face between her palms, she pressed her lips against his and, after she kissed him, looked deeply into his eyes. “Then do you trust me?” she asked.

  “I trust you.”

  “Will you give me back my locket?” Her voice sharpened slightly. “The one you must have forgotten you put in your pocket?”

  Leaning one palm against the doorjamb at her back, he stopped her from reaching for his pocket. “Not in a thousand years, love.”

  “You want this to end as much as I do. If my father is ready to flee, then whoever is working with him will flee as well. We have to catch them all.”

  “I won’t let you be bait.”

  “Give me the necklace.” She nailed him with the tip of her finger. “This is my fight more than yours, Donally. I have to finish this for us.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he was a second too late in intercepting her hand. She grasped the pocket in his waistcoat, wrapped the loose fabric in her hand, and pulled the cloth. He enfolded his palm around her wrist, and they stood rooted to the floor like two battling warriors.

  “Let go, Meg.”

  “I will not.”

  He didn’t want to hurt her, but neither would he relent.

  She swore at him, but he was stronger and pulled her hand from his pocket, securing both her wrists. He pinned them to the wall at her back. And knew a slow sweet hunger inside. Her eyes glittered with their own searing fire. “I am part of this fight, David. I will finish it with or without your permission.”

  She was right, of course. Everything she’d said was correct, but he could not allow her sacrifice. If she stayed and helped him do this, he would have to turn her over in the end. He could not. Nor could he allow her father to get his hands on her.

  “You’re thinking like my husband, David.” The quiet intensity of her voice drew his focus back to her face. “You cannot.”

  He could.

  And he did.

  “You are my wife.”

  His mouth covering hers, he could think of her as nothing else. She did not twist away, and he kissed her deeply. The shocking hunger of his passion swept through his veins. It didn’t matter that he’d made himself vulnerable and in doing so found her vulnerable, too. Her mouth opened over his, and he thrust his tongue inside. He fit her there as he did everywhere else, and she kissed him back with dizzying need. When he broke away, it was to carry her to bed.

  “I think you are a witch,” he said against her lips, falling with her to the mattress, without minding that either of them had yet to divest themselves of clothes. “A sylph, nymph, my Lorelei, Meg.”

  She unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt, her hands needy and eager as he opened her bodice with an urgency that matched hers. He knew every inch of her limned beneath the thin cloth of her shift. She kissed him. “Then I am glad of it, David.” Moving across his body to straddle his thighs, she slid the locket from his waistcoat pocket.

  He snaked his hand upward and caught her wrist, entwining his fingers with hers, the locket pressing between their palms, as his other hand pulled her to his mouth and took the initiative from her. “No, Meg,” he rasped against her lips.

  Then he drank her protests and finally her surrender in a possession that was total. The soft inflection of her breath humming in his blood, he bore her beneath him, in a rustle of fabric, holding to their kiss. His knee insinuated itself between her thighs and found the slit in her drawers. He loomed above her, unyielding muscle to her softness. She saw the banked fire in his eyes, felt it in the tension of his arms, and let the currents rise between them. His shirt spilling around her, he pushed himself into her. She drew in a breath of air, her body contracting around him in an intimate embrace.

  Deep within his throat, he groaned. He withdrew, then rocked again. “I love you.” His voice a groan, he pulled back to look down at her, beautiful among the pillows, until his breath came in short rasps. Her half-closed eyes on his, she whimpered and slid her hands through his hair in a ragged cry, a sound that changed into pleasure against his mouth. Then neither
one of them was thinking about the locket or anything outside this room. His mouth sheered across her temple to slant against her lips. Her limbs twined around his hips. Reality ceased to matter.

  If only it could never matter again. He could not love her passionately enough. She wanted his kiss. So deeply that she grabbed his head and held him to her as he rocked against her again and again, his mouth on hers. Together they came hard in a shuddering climax, and he pushed inside her, drawing on her orgasm as long as he could.

  When it was over, he sank against her, his chest heaving, and she was clinging to him. He’d ruined her pretty dress, he realized. The skirt was crushed beneath him, and he promised her he would buy her another gown. “Ten gowns,” he said, after she laughed, but there was somberness in her tone. And he was smart enough just to let her cry. “I would take you away from here,” he said, pulling her against him.

  She did not ask why he had yet to tell her about his visit last night with Kinley and Ravenspur. “You didn’t come to the cottage last night.”

  “I came here.”

  “And sought out the locket. Why?”

  His hand smoothed the tangled hair from her face. “Kinley asked about it.”

  “They found the tunnel,” she said, her mouth pressed against his shoulder.

  “I know.”

  “What are we going to do, David?”

  “I’m going to get you, my son, and everyone else out of here.”

  Suddenly rising on one elbow, he looked toward her sitting room, leaving her staring at him. Then she heard what had drawn his attention. A horse was approaching at an urgent pace. David was already out of bed, pulling up his trousers.

  He walked into the sitting room to the window, and Victoria remained in bed, unwilling yet to move. “Bloody hell.” David was already shoving his shirttails into his trousers when he returned. “It’s Ravenspur,” he said.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Victoria had washed and changed her clothes. David had told her to stay in the bedroom until he came to her. But she was finished letting other people protect her. She had meant it when she told David this was her fight. After combing her hair, she’d pinned it in a chignon, and flung a red knit shawl over her shoulders. Clutching it tightly, she followed the sound of voices as she descended the stairs.

  David had taken Lord Ravenspur into the bookroom and closed the door. Rather than eavesdrop, she entered. Both men stopped talking and turned.

  David stood near the window, a hand on his hip, his eyes stark as they found her. The second man beside him, she assumed, was his brother-in-law, and she paused. His gray eyes were even now assessing her.

  He had the eyes of a hawk. Of a man who did not ask but simply took. A man who had just delivered some very bad news, she thought as David walked toward her.

  “What happened?” she asked when he pulled her to his side.

  “Nellis Munro was murdered sometime last night,” His Grace said when David would not, or could not reply. “It seems your husband was the last person to see him alive. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.”

  Chapter 22

  “Did you or did you not go to the town house last night?” Kinley threw David a scornful glance, his eyes amplified behind his spectacles.

  “Obviously you know that I did,” David said.

  “Witnesses claimed you threatened to kill Mr. Munro. You ordered him out of the town house,” snapped Kinley. “Did you see him later?”

  “Witness. I saw Agatha. And I was angry. But not for reasons you think. Does anyone want to tell me where Pamela is?”

  “Her room was not all of a piece. As of now, you are also a suspect in her disappearance as well.”

  “This is bloody rich and you know it.”

  Rain pebbled against the window behind him. Already Moira had lit the lamps in the room against the approaching night. Ravenspur faced him from across the room. “I have to ask this,” Ravenspur said, having patiently listened to Kinley interrogating him for the last two hours. “Did you go to Mrs. Rockwell’s bedroom last night?”

  “Ian and Pamela are married?” Meg quietly asked.

  “Yes,” David said to her, sitting with her hands clasped on the chair in front of him, then looked at Ravenspur. “No, I did not go to her bedroom. Yes, I have been in her bedroom before and she has been to mine. I had a room in the town house.” He raised his eyes at the ceiling at the banality of the next statement. “No, nothing ever happened.”

  “Pamela’s servants say otherwise.” Kinley had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Someone of your description has been seen there frequently—”

  “Do you think it’s possible that man could be Faraday?” David sat with his arms folded, leaning against the desk, half listening to Kinley and Ravenspur only because respect bid him to do so.

  He was looking at Meg. Her eyes on his, she had said little since Kinley’s arrival, and he’d listened helplessly as she endured insinuations that he was Pamela’s lover, and that he had snapped Nellis’s neck last night in a fit of jealousy, which was laughable if the whole thing had not been so bloody tragic.

  But whatever Pamela was, he had been at her town house in the middle of the night. He had ordered Nellis to leave. Someone else had been in the town house waiting for her when he was there. Pamela had practically thrown him out the door, he realized. “Have you considered that had Nellis gone with Pamela to her room last night as planned, he would have been killed there?” David asked. “Someone clearly wanted him dead.”

  “We need to find her husband,” Ravenspur said.

  “Ian hasn’t been seen since yesterday,” David replied. “He left after going into the tunnel. Something must have happened. I need to go down there and find out what it was he saw.”

  “No, you don’t, David.” Meg rose and shook out her skirts as she looked at Ravenspur. “My husband came home angry last night. He wouldn’t tell me what happened. I should have pressed for more answers.”

  David shifted his gaze in disbelief but she looked away from him. Red flags brightened her cheeks. “He wanted me to go away with him,” she continued.

  “What are you doing, Meg?”

  “Telling the truth for once,” she said in an uneven voice. “Look in his pocket. He has my locket. We were going together to find the treasure.”

  “Bloody hell.” Kinley set down the drink. “Is that true?”

  Meg saw the furious expression flicker across his face and folded her arms. He could see hurt and fear in her eyes and knew what she was doing, damn her. “It’s all true,” she said. “I feared he might even try to kidnap me away from this place.”

  The corners of David’s mouth tilted. “Did you now?”

  “Check his pocket,” she said. “I’m telling the truth.”

  David denied nothing. But telling anyone that Colonel Faraday had made contact with her that morning would confirm Kinley’s allegations that she was working with her father. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Meg,” he quietly warned.

  “I play no games, David. You’ve always known me for what I am.” Tilting her chin, she gave Ravenspur her full attention. “My father contacted me this morning. David wanted to protect me. I think he believes he can still save me. He has an unrealistic picture of the situation. Do you not think so?”

  Ravenspur looked at her closely and said, “I know what he’s asked for on your behalf.”

  “Then you understand that if it isn’t granted, I won’t allow him to sacrifice his future and that of my son. I won’t.”

  David came to his feet. “Don’t even think about removing me, Ravenspur.”

  “Do it,” Meg demanded. “I don’t trust him. He…he—”

  “Is in love with you?” David asked, pulling her around and looking into her eyes, willing her not to turn away. “I didn’t kill Nellis, Meg.”

  Tears welling, she shook her head. “This is my fault,” she told Lord Ravenspur, her eyes pleading. “My father will kill him. I don’t want David h
ere.”

  “That’s unfortunate, Meg. I’m not leaving. And you still aren’t getting the locket.”

  “Let go of me!” Her eyes flashed. “You are the most infuriating man I have ever known. I won’t forgive you your stubbornness this time.”

  Whirling in a flurry of lavender silk, she nearly made it to the door before David intercepted her departure. “You’re not leaving, love.”

  She tried to twist away from him. “Let me go.” When she spoke again, her voice was broken. “Please,” she whispered.

  David turned with her in his arms, his chest heavy. Ravenspur and Kinley were watching him, and he wrapped Meg to him as if that would shield her vulnerability from them. He didn’t want her so exposed and sought to protect her. “You said Nellis had struggled and had blood on him?” he asked Ravenspur. “I’m wearing the same clothes I was wearing when I left here yesterday. Would you not agree, Meg?”

  She wrenched her chin away. He merely pulled her along the length of his body. “Would you not think if I fought Mr. Munro they would be bloody or torn? Where are my wounds?” He held up his hands and turned them over. “No sign of trauma here. I am guilty of nothing but a moment’s rashness for going to the town house in the first place.” He looked into Meg’s eyes. “No one is taking me away from you. I did not kill Nellis.”

  “A man came here six months ago asking questions about the lady doc.” Sheriff Stillings stood outside the doorway. His wet cloak opened to reveal a heavy truncheon hanging from his belt. “Asking if she had lived in Calcutta before coming here. When we did not hear from him again, I assumed he had not found what he was looking for and left.” He looked at Meg. “Except I knew you were from Calcutta. Munro got it in his head to do his own investigating.” Stillings assessed David next. “He had his neck broke, like my men did when we found them on the old drover’s trail after the storm. Who knows how to do that? Kill so efficiently, my lord?” His brown eyes did not waver, and his smile turned unpleasant. “I’ve only seen one person fight with that kind of skill.”

  Meg took a swift step in front of him, but David held her back, his fingers wrapping around her arm tightly enough to warn her that she was finished fighting his battles for him.