“Don’t make light of survival.” He downed the last of his brandy. “Some of us don’t manage it at all.”
“There should be more to life than survival,” Sebastian mused.
“And so there is. But you have to fight for it. And the fight, my friend, is gone completely out of you.”
“I am not what she needs.” Sebastian stared at his hands clasped between his knees. He’d used those hands to kill the enemy in war, to earn a living once he cashed out, and to count his money once the earning was done. He used them to hold a sword, a shovel, a coin. He knew how to hold on to things. He had no idea how to let go.
“Then become what she needs. Or let her take on what she has decided to settle for, for herself and her son.”
Sebastian looked up at his friend. “You pretend to be an uninterested earl. They all count you useless and lazy when that is the farthest thing from the truth. Can you not pretend to love her? She deserves that much at least.”
“She deserves more than pretense. And I can no more pretend to love her than you can pretend not to.” Creighton raised an eyebrow, something he only did when he’d bested someone.
Sebastian found no words to strike back, at least none he knew were true. He didn’t know what the truth was anymore. For someone as astute as he was in matters of business it made him damned uncomfortable, which was precisely Creighton’s intention.
“One day,” Creighton said as he waved a hand at the papers and ledgers, the dark paneled walls, and myriad shelves and boxes of his monkish cell. “You will understand all of this, the why after all of these years. I just hope it isn’t too late, my friend. For your sake, I hope it isn’t too late.” He moved back to his desk and picked up another stack of papers. “Close the door on your way out.”
Sebastian left his friend to his search. The answer Creighton sought might well be in that cluttered monument to the late earl’s cruelty. Sebastian had no idea where his own answers lay. At least not any he cared to think on overlong. The truth was he’d lived so long this way he had no idea how to even contemplate another.
“There you are. I’ve been searching the house for you.” Fitzhugh strode down the corridor and grabbed Sebastian’s arm, towing him along in his wake.
“Where are we going? Fitzhugh, what is this about?” Sebastian stumbled along behind him as he dragged him towards the back of the house.
“All will be revealed in time. Here we are.” He stopped at the French windows leading onto the back terrace.
“Will you stop.” Sebastian shook his arm free. “You’ve wrinkled my jacket.”
“If you are fortunate, before the night is over you will be rumpled beyond repair.” He opened one of the French windows and handed Sebastian a note.
“What is this?” Sebastian broke the seal and unfolded the single sheet of foolscap. He recognized the hand at once.
“Don’t muck this up, Brightworth.” Fitzhugh shoved him out the door and closed it behind him.
Stealing Minerva: Chapter Eleven
Sebastian gazed at the note in his hand.
The temple.
M
He managed to cross the terrace and descend the steps as sedately as a man on a Sunday stroll in Hyde Park. The torches still lit the gardens in spite of the hour. He shoved his hands in his pockets and picked up the pace a very little. Fitzhugh, no doubt, stood at the French windows and watched. Grinning.
Once he was out of sight of the house, he ran. Down the hill to the path around the lake. Along the path in the dark, he didn’t slow down until he ran into a group of ducks making a slow progression into the water for a nighttime swim. He threw back his head and laughed as he ran through their midst and received a thorough quacking of a scold for doing so.
The moon loomed large and silent in the sky and bathed the ivory stone walls of the Grecian temple in a hazy river of light. The flicker of candlelight danced in the stained-glass windows set high on the round façade. The windows depicted a story if one bothered to walk all the way around the portico of the temple – the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. He and his friends had laughed at the tale as young boys. They’d ridiculed a man who descended into the depths of hell for the love of a woman. Sebastian wasn’t laughing now.
He stopped, one foot on the bottom step, and gazed at the graceful figure standing at one of the windows. She raised her hand and touched it to the colored glass. He’d walked away nine years ago. He wanted to walk away now, to leave her safe in Creighton’s keeping. Whatever she wanted from life she trusted his friend to give it to her and to her son. Sebastian knew better than any man the lengths to which a woman might go for her child.
What did she want for herself?
And how much of his soul was he willing to sell to give it to her?
He ascended the few stairs and walked quietly to the entrance of the temple. She sat on the Grecian couch in the middle of the temple facing the statue of Orpheus and Eurydice, their outstretched hands reaching but never quite touching each other. The long, thick braid of her burnished gold hair ran down the dark blue silk of her dressing gown and curled around her hip. She sensed him there and turned to look over her shoulder.
“Sebastian.”
Whatever else she wanted to say went unsaid. In two strides, he caught her raised hands and pulled her into his arms. He fitted her to him, the generous cushion of her breasts, the silk-clothed press of her hipbones, the lush softness of her thighs. He pushed the loose strands of hair away from her face and drew his hands around to cradle her cheeks. Her mouth formed a half-hearted protest. But her eyes, dear God, her eyes caught the light of the candles all around them and the colors of the stained-glass, and it was like falling into an autumn day – all golds, and greens, and ambers, and browns.
“Let me kiss you, Min. Let me or I will burn to ash on this spot.”
She smiled, a slow knowing curve of her lips. “Can’t have that, now can we.”
It was all the permission he needed. Their mouths met, he neither knew nor cared who met whom. His hand curved around to cup the back of her head. She lifted her arms and grabbed handfuls of his hair. He plundered her mouth and growled when she plundered his in return. He wrapped his arm around the curve of her buttocks and lifted her into his kiss. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, pulsed her lips around it, and nearly brought him to his knees. He stepped back to find the couch and when it bumped against the back of his legs he sank onto it and drew Minerva into his lap.
They stopped to breathe and she brushed her palm down his cheek. He turned his face to press a kiss into her hand. Her fingers traced feathery patterns across his brow, along his jaw and down his chin. Her dressing gown had come open and fallen halfway down her arms. Sebastian pushed it away and watched it slither to the marble floor. The rise and fall of her breathing pressed her breasts into the sheer fabric of her nightrail.
He kissed her again, gently this time with small touches to her brow, her eyes, the tip of her nose, each lip and her chin. He curled one hand around her breast and held it. He teased the outline of her mouth with his tongue. Her breathy laugh told him she was still a bit ticklish there. She relaxed into his arms and let him tempt and tease her to return his kiss and all the while he brushed her muslin covered nipple and caressed the curve of her breast.
She resisted his temptation and with a growl he scraped his teeth along her chin and down the downy soft line of her throat. He bit the ribbon at the top of her nightrail and tugged it free. She caressed his head and dropped her head back across his arm. He nipped the top of her breast through the muslin fabric. She gasped. He covered her nipple and drew it taut through the damp threads that covered it. Nothing on earth sounded as sweet as Minerva’s moan as he squeezed her breast and suckled, then let go to blow across her tempted flesh. She gasped and fisted her hand in his hair.
A madness seized him. Assured this was all a dream, he decided to make certain it was one she’d never forget. The need to brand her to burn his touch into her ski
n blotted out all thoughts of where they were and what might happen tomorrow. Tonight, she was his. He lifted her in his arms and stood her between his legs. She gazed down at him, her eyes shining with desire and questions. He drew her nightrail up her legs, her long beautiful legs, over the golden curls between the tops of her thighs, across the perfect curve of her belly, up until it fell behind her and left her as God made her. Made her for Sebastian’s eyes to feast on and never have enough. He pulled the ribbon at the end of her braid free and wiggled his fingers up the golden length to loose her curls in streams of gilded satin cascading down her body. He lifted a strand to his lips, kissed it while he inhaled the sweet scent of lavender and wisteria.
He splayed his hand across the small of her back pressed a kiss to the underside of each breast. She stroked his hair with one hand and let the other fall to his shoulder. Gradually he moved his kisses lower. Down her breastbone. Along her ribs. Across her belly. He traced the curve of each hip with his tongue and she shivered. He tucked one hand between her thighs and opened her legs just enough to press a kiss to her sex, a long lingering kiss. He set to work with his tongue, teasing and caressing. Her legs began to shake.
“I’d forgotten,” she gasped and clutched his shoulder.
“Forgotten?” He drew a line up her cleft with the tip of his tongue.
“How wicked you were.” The last word ended on a moan as she began to buck against him.
“With you, Min, I’ll always be wicked.” He seized her hips in his hands and set his mouth and tongue to a merciless rhythm. Every shriek, every groan, every panting breath only drove him to give her more. All of the passion she wanted to deny, wanted to consign to the past, he wanted it all. All of it and more until she understood how magnificent she was. Shivers turned to spasms beneath his hands. He did not need to look up. Minerva flying apart in his arms was a sight seared into his memory. He wanted to sear it into hers.
“Sebastian,” like the cry of a night bird she called his name and subsided into tremors beneath his fingers. He caught her up and draped her across the couch so that her hip brushed his where he sat. He retrieved the dressing gown from the floor and covered her with it. She threw it aside and pressed her fingers against the painful bulge behind his falls.
“What are we doing, Minerva?” He brushed his hand across her belly, back and forth because her skin drew him like a moth to a flame.
“More,” she whispered. “I don’t know what else I want or what tomorrow may bring. Tonight.” She unbuttoned one button and then another. “I want more.”
“Thank God,” came his hoarse reply.
This is why she’d sent the note. Minerva watched Sebastian, standing in the light of the candles and moonlight as he stripped off his clothes, and all the lies she’d told herself about meeting him tonight fell away like so much smoke and ash. The sculpted chest marred by the scars of war, the muscled legs that made something inside her clench and release in anticipation. His arms, powerful and comforting all at once, made so by hard work and an understanding of what it was to need comfort.
He turned around and the impressive evidence of her ability to draw this man to her set her entire body alight with desire. She had not called him here to talk or to settle the past or the future. The moment he stepped into the doorway all thoughts of promises to others, injuries of the past or the pain of the future had fled. There was only this roaring desire, deafening to all voices save his.
She raised her arms and he subsided onto the side of the couch and took her in his arms. The feel of his flesh pressed to hers – hard muscle to her soft curves and the delicious scratch of the light dusting of hair on his chest, and legs and arms sent a shudder of bliss through her body. A torrent of memory and heartache coursed in her veins. How could he have taken this from her? How would she live without it when he left her again?
She ran her fingers down the contours of his back and brushed against the small bandage over the spot where her arrow had struck him.
“Are you certain you are up to this?” she asked as she considered the questions about blood from torn stitches on the beautiful Grecian couch.
He looked down at his rather insistent erection and grinned. “As it is you who wounded me.”
Minerva shrieked as she found herself tossed in the air, only to land on top of Sebastian who had rolled beneath her to recline on the couch like some wounded Greek statue.
“I am yours to use as you see fit, my lady.” He ran one hand down her thigh as the other rose to cup her breast. “Do you remember how, Min?”
She planted her hands on his chest and straddle his hips. He moved his hand to position himself between her legs. With a slight gasp, she lowered herself, inch by inch onto him, stopping a time or two to let her body adjust to his as he entered her. She had to lean forward a bit to take him in completely and could only moan with pleasure once he was seated in her to the hilt.
From beneath her lashes she watched his head roll back and heard his dark groan. His fingers pressed into her hips on either side. Using her knees, she rose as high as she could and then impaled herself again. Sebastian growled and raise his hips to meet her. She undulated her body across his, dragging her sensitive breasts against the roughness of the hair on his chest. He planted his feet on the couch and began a slow rhythm of pulses which she caught and imitated. She pushed herself up on her hands. He caught her nipple in his teeth and tugged. A lightning bolt of sensation sizzled from the tip of her breast to the place where they were joined.
Frenzy took over. One word pleas – for mercy, for more. Sebastian’s gaze bored into her. He captured her with his eyes and held her with his body. He commanded her body, and her body obeyed. And all the while he was telling her, reminding her of who she once was. She saw the moment when he knew she knew. It infuriated her, but she was too deep in desire to stop. Even when the tremors began to take them both and he rolled her beneath him he told her with his eyes and his hands and his body pounding into hers.
Remember.
Remember.
She hated him for it. She had not meant for him to show her. She’d meant to show him. To test him and tempt him and to find out finally, what he wanted from her. And when her eyes closed against the blinding flash of light and stars and his hoarse cry echoed in her ears she knew he was the one who’d discovered all of her secrets. What was left to her now?
He collapsed on top of her, breathing like a racehorse. The coolness and heat of his body covered her in contentment. She wrapped her arms around him and allowed one hand to stroke the long, soft strands of his hair.
“I meant for us to talk,” she said softly as he rolled over and settled her on top of him once more.
“We said what we wanted to say.” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Now, all we have to do is decide what to say next.”
“It isn’t that easy, Sebastian. You don’t know everything.”
“Then tell me, Min.” He tilted up her chin to look into her eyes. “Tell me. We’re in a mess and I am fairly certain we just complicated it, but tell me. And let me decide.”
“It isn’t only your decision to make, Colonel Brightworth.”
“Fine,” he huffed and dragged the dressing gown atop their cooling bodies. “Tell me what I don’t know.”
“And after I tell you?”
“I’m probably going to make love to you again.”
Something was wrong. It tapped at her spine. Wandered through the back of her mind like the relative who comes to visit and never leaves. She’d set something in motion. She’d tell Sebastian what he needed to know. Yet, somewhere deep inside she heard fragile, balanced things begin to fall.
“I need to tell you about Roger’s brother and his plans to steal Edward from me.”
* * *
A summer rainstorm arrived an hour before dawn. Moments before, Minerva had slipped into the house by way of the conservatory. A quick trip up the hidden staircase and she managed to gain her chambers with
no one the wiser. She did not want to go to bed. Her body sang with the gentle sweetness of Sebastian’s second loving. He’d listened in silence to what she had to tell him about her reasons for accepting Creighton’s proposal.
“Thank you for telling me, Min. Trust me, all will be well. Never doubt it.”
He gave her no time to question him as to his certainty. He questioned her not at all. Merely caressed her into a luxurious haze of want and need and answered her body with everything she’d longed for in all the years they’d been apart.
Sebastian had watched her leave the temple, watched her all along the path around the lake, and across the lawn into the house. She did not look back to see. She simply knew. She’d left him standing in the doorway, with the light of the candles and the glow of the colored glass behind him. It might have all been a dream save for the tenderness in places she’d long forgotten she possessed. Roger’s lovemaking had been reverent, half-embarrassed, and brief. It was not fair to think of him now, nor to compare him to Sebastian.
She climbed into the large comfortable bed in the pretty yellow and green bedchamber she’d inhabited since she came to Creighton Hall several weeks ago. The fire in the hearth had nearly burned out. She propped the pillows behind her back and sat with her knees up and the thick white counterpane drawn over them and up to her chin. She’d been so warm in Sebastian’s arms and now, suddenly, she was cold.
And why shouldn’t she be? She was betrothed to an earl, a wealthy earl at that. She’d spent the night in the arms of his best friend. To be married in two days and she’d risked it all for a night of… heaven. If it made her a wanton, a whore, or simply a foolish, thoughtless woman – nothing changed what Sebastian had given her in the past few hours. She suspected even Creighton might understand. No, that was not what had her cold, and nervous, and unable to enjoy the comfort of this perfect bed in this perfect room.
Her Perfect Gentleman: A Regency Romance Anthology Page 73
