“I do.” She nodded, feeling fierce and certain. “I know you could never do that, never harm someone weak and ill.”
He appeared taken off guard by her ferocity.
“Do not paint me with gilded righteousness. There are things you do not know of me, Sarah. Things I did many, many years ago when I was a different creature than I am today.”
“Creature?” She laughed, the sound hollow in her own ears. “You say the word as though you are some ravening beast. You are a man.”
“I am many things. I have been many things.” He trapped her hand between his own, the action making her breath lock in her throat and her pulse leap wildly.
Leaning forward to rest one elbow on his knee, he released her and feathered the backs of his gloved fingers along her cheek.
Oh, the sweet sensation of his touch. It poured through her like rich, red wine. She read such longing in him, such pain, as though he was desperate for that contact. As desperate as she.
She ached for him to kiss her and hold her so tight against him that she could feel his heartbeat.
“Whatever you have been, whatever you are, I know you, Killian. I know you.”
He said nothing for a moment, then spoke, very softly. “I wanted to grab him by the throat and slam him against the wall when I heard from Mrs. Bayley that he had censured you.”
Mr. Simon. He spoke of Mr. Simon, who had sneered at her in a most demeaning manner after the constables had drawn Killian away.
Stunned by the ferocity of the sentiment, she could summon no reply, and so they sat for a moment in silence while she tried to gather her thoughts and emotions into some semblance of calm. Her world was coming unraveled at the seams, and she was not certain how to drag the edges back together. She was not even certain she wanted to.
He made a vague gesture toward the closed door of the carriage. “Would you prefer to wait while I have Jones pack for you, or shall we proceed and I shall send someone to fetch your belongings later?”
“Pack? I don’t…” I don’t understand. But she did. Killian meant to take her away from here. To bring her…where?
He lifted something from the seat beside him and extended his hand. She saw then that he held the pretty porcelain saucer that had been hers since childhood. He must have been in her room. How? She knew she had locked it when she left.
“How did you know that I would want this?” She took the dish from him and cupped it in her palms. “Of all the things in my chamber, this is the one that means something to me.”
“I know much about you, Sarah. It is there in every subtle glance, in the way you breathe, in the delicate sweep of your lashes. If I watch you, I see it all. And I do love to watch you. You are endlessly fascinating to me.”
His words made her heart race, and she had no need to wonder if he knew it, because he said, “I can hear each precious pulse, Sarah, feel each beat of your heart.”
Impossible. Surely he could not. But somehow she believed him. Believed he did feel her and hear her. Believed he knew her.
“Where do we go?”
He smiled at her question, obviously reading her acquiescence in her words. “We go home. My home, now yours.”
And all the arguments that tumbled to her lips died as he turned his gaze upon her.
“I offer you the world, Sarah. Anything you want.”
She believed him in that as well. “What do you demand in return?”
“Demand? No, I only ask. I ask for you. Your company. Your smile. Your eyes, dancing and pleased as they look to mine. Your intellect. Your valor. But mind me well, Sarah, you will need that valor. I am not an easy…man.”
The hesitation hung in the air, a warning, but not a surprise. She had seen from the start that he had depths like a roiling ocean in the midst of a storm. She sensed he meant it as a warning of something deeper, something greater. But he was not ready to tell her. Not yet.
He shared something of great import here, some secret that shimmered between them and slid away from her like smoke. She tried to clasp it, to see it clearly, but the meaning dissipated, and she was left with the certainty that his words revealed something she did not quite grasp.
“Well, I suppose that I am neither meek nor submissive, which makes me a somewhat difficult woman, wouldn’t you say?”
He made a soft laugh, his eyes glittering in the dim light.
“I would have you only as you are, and no other way. The thought of having you by my side, of sharing the world with you is a heady temptation. You are a balm to my loneliness, Sarah.” His tone turned muted and dark, his eyes bleak. “I have been alone for a very long while.”
She swallowed, mesmerized by the heat in his gaze. “I understand loneliness,” she whispered.
Again, that fleeting, dark smile, as though her words both amused and saddened him.
He reached down and lifted something else from the seat. The yellowed magazine that held the story her father had found so fascinating. Polidori’s “The Vampyre.”
Offering it to her, he held her gaze, and she sensed that unlike her candle dish, he had not retrieved this out of care and kindness, but for another reason entirely. Cautious and watchful, she took the pages from him, her pulse speeding up, her thoughts tumbling to and fro as a strange expectation suffused her.
Something clicked inside her, a key in a lock.
No. What was she thinking? It was not possible.
“The Vampyre.”
The smoky ideas that had eluded her a moment past coalesced, and she was left speechless and overwhelmed.
Impossible. And not. It explained so much.
He stared at her, unsmiling, severe. She had the thought that he knew the direction her suppositions traveled. That he wanted them to flow toward that impossible conclusion.
Her breath stuttered to a stop, trapped in her lungs, and she stared at him, suddenly certain. Certain of the impossible, the terrible, the mad.
Inexorably drawn, her gaze dipped to the magazine once more. The seconds ticked past, protracted and sluggish.
“You did not kill those people at King’s College,” she whispered, the words so soft she wondered that he could hear her at all. When he made no reply, she raised her head and realized that he waited only for that, that he wanted her to look at him as he made his response.
“No, I did not kill them.” His eyes, liquid mercury, gleamed in the dim light, boring deep inside her.
“But you could have.” She wrapped her arms about her waist and held herself tight. “You could have because…”
There was both sorrow and resignation etched on his face as he finished the thought that she dared not speak aloud. “Because I am…” He paused, and she waited, her breath stalled in her chest, then he shook his head and finished. “I am not like other men.”
And suddenly, that assertion was laced with a multitude of subtle inferences and implications that she was not yet ready to drag into the light.
In that moment, though she knew not its source, she felt his suffering as her own.
Whatever his tormented secrets, she recognized in him like to like, knew that whatever horrors he had known and seen, whatever mysteries lurked in his heart, he was even more alone than she.
That he needed her as she needed him.
Six
At his instruction, the coach set off. Killian closed his eyes and rested his head back against the velvet squabs, baring the strong column of his throat. Once, Sarah stretched out her hand, almost brave enough to succumb to the urge to lay her fingers against his neck and feel the steady, solid throb of the pulse that beat beneath his skin. In the end, she dropped her hand and contented herself with letting her gaze roam his features and her heart swell with the knowledge that he had come for her.
He had cared enough to come for her.
She concentrated on the wonder of that rather than the multitude of questions that their cryptic dialogue had skirted.
Mindful of the light, she leaned close to the win
dow and peeked through the lifted edge of the blind as the carriage rocked to a halt before Killian’s town house in Berkeley Square. His was the last in a row of very large, very tall houses. There was a black ironwork fence surrounding the entirety, with a break at the stairs that ascended to the front door, and another that descended to a servants’ entry.
Sarah counted four floors, each with three large rectangular windows across the front, save for the ground floor, which had two windows to the left of the door.
After a moment, the liveried footman opened the carriage door and waited as Sarah gathered her candle dish and the magazine. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, staring at the curled and faded pages…wondering…
Raising her gaze, she found Killian watching her, his expression bland and cool.
She turned away, and let the footman hand her down from the coach. Killian descended behind her. She glanced back to see that he had put his spectacles in place to shade his eyes. He kept his head bowed, his thick, honey gold hair falling forward to veil his features.
Without a word, he offered his arm, and she sensed that any questions she had would be better spoken indoors rather than out here, for even this dim, cloud-filtered light was uncomfortable for him.
They ascended the stairs and he did not wait for a butler or maid to open the door, but opened it himself and gestured for Sarah to precede him inside. The hallway was dark, but beautiful. Paneled walls of rich gleaming wood. A semicircular console table just inside the entry with a vase of deep red roses. There was thought and artistry in the presentation.
The scent of beeswax left a faint signature in the air, topped by the breath of the roses. Killian drew off his gloves and tossed them on the table, then swung his cloak from about his broad shoulders and handed it to a maid, who stepped forward and curtsied before taking the garment from his hands.
Sarah caught her breath as Killian stepped around behind her to stand close at her back. His breath fanned her neck, sending shivers of awareness dancing across her skin.
“May I?” he murmured, and she nodded, wordless. Boneless. Nearly swooning at the heat of him. She could feel it through all the layers of her clothing and his as he took her cloak. How long since she had been warm? Truly warm? Body, heart, and mind. She had been frozen for so long.
He twined his fingers with hers and led her through the house, up carpeted stairs with banisters of gleaming polished wood, through hallways lit only by lamplight, the heavy draperies pulled across the windows. The lighting here seemed to please him, for he had taken off his spectacles, and when he looked at her, his cool gray eyes sparked with a secret flame.
At last, they reached a heavy double door, and he threw it open, then drew her inside.
“My lair,” he murmured, and a trickle of apprehension crawled through her at his choice of words.
She hesitated, then stepped deeper into the chamber. The walls were covered in blue paper that had a subtle texture, like velvet. A thick, soft carpet of darker blue with a design of green and yellow birds covered the floor. There were two large chairs before the fireplace, each matched with a low footstool. A spacious room, handsome in appearance.
“You like fine things,” she observed.
“I do.”
“Yet you work in one of the poorest hospitals in the city.”
An instant of silence. Then, “Because they do not have fine things. I dislike the imbalance.”
She recalled the way he tucked shillings into the night nurse’s apron, and realized that she had already known this about him, though she had not defined it in such a pared-down manner.
Emotion bubbled to the surface, and she turned away lest he read it in her gaze. The feelings she had for him were too new, too raw. She was not ready to explain, perhaps to have them rebuffed. She did not think she could bear that.
Pressing her lips together, she shifted closer to the fireplace. Above the oaken mantelpiece was a large painting of a river. The dominant colors were blue and aqua and yellow and gold. She gazed up in mute wonder, drawn into the beauty and brightness of the watercolor.
“Turner,” Killian murmured from behind her. “Some call him the painter of light.”
It was true. The painting embodied light, captured it and set it free, pure and brilliant. And Killian hung it in his chamber, he who clung only to the shadows.
The thought made her sad.
“Do you long for it, for the sunlight? For the warmth of it on your skin?” She could not tear her eyes from the painting. She felt as though the sun’s rays poured from the canvas to touch her face.
“No, I do not long for it. The moonlight has a cool and wonderful beauty, the night its own sweet music.” He moved close behind her. She could feel the heat of him. “I remember the sunlight with a vague and hazy fondness, but I do not long for it. ’Twas a small sacrifice in exchange for all I have gained. I have learned to love the night.”
His words brought so many questions to her lips, questions she dared not ask, for she was not yet certain what she would do with the answers. She closed her eyes, every sense tingling with awareness, with the knowledge that he was so close. All she had to do was reach out and she could know the answers to untold mysteries. About him. About herself.
If only she dared.
Dipping his head until his nose grazed the skin of her neck, he breathed in, his nearness and his action combining to set her heart racing. She ached for the stroke of his hand, the feel of his lips.
He uncurled her fingers from about her porcelain dish and set it on the mantel, beneath the painting of light. The magazine, he took from her and tossed on one of the chairs. For an instant, she thought to cling to it, to ask him about subtle hints and meanings, and then she thought not. Whatever secrets Killian held, he would share them when he willed.
Closing her eyes, she leaned back a little into his embrace.
“Be certain, Sarah,” he whispered against the side of her throat, sending a tinkling cascade of sensitivity dancing through her.
She knew all he meant with those softly voiced words. Be certain it was this she wanted, him she wanted. The unconventional life he offered. She did not know where he meant this to lead, but she could not imagine he offered her forever.
“I am certain,” she whispered. She had no wish to cling to her past, had no idea of her future. In this moment she was changed from the woman she had always been. In this moment, she wanted only to live, to allow herself that luxury, that beauty. To know Killian’s touch, to offer him her love, even if this day was all she ever had of him, all they ever shared.
Tomorrow would come regardless, and it would hold the same fears and uncertainties whether she indulged her heart or not. So for one shining snippet of the unfurling ribbon that was her life, she would grab hold of what she wanted and take what she could.
Reaching up, she pulled the pins from her hair and let it fall about her shoulders and down her back.
“Your hair is beautiful, a sleek, dark curtain with just a whisper of wayward curl at the ends.” He stroked his palm down the length, emphasizing his point. That touch made her mouth go dry and her pulse jerk about like a skittish colt.
“You are beautiful, Sarah.” His words, and the rich, lovely cadence of his voice mesmerized her. “The pink flush of your skin”—he drew his thumb along the edge of her jaw—“the lush curve of your lips”—his fingers slid to her lips, rubbed, and stroked, and as her mouth opened on a gasp, the tip of his index finger dipped inside—“you are so lovely to me.”
On instinct, she licked his fingertip, then closed her teeth on him and bit down.
His sharp intake of breath stabbed through her, sinking to her breasts, her belly, her trembling legs. Because she knew she ignited him. There was a lush and heady pleasure in that.
“You bite,” he murmured.
She hesitated but an instant, then whispered, “As, I suspect, do you.” There. She had done it. Acknowledged the secret that hovered between them. On some level,
she understood. And she knew that he would not hurt her.
He pulled her around to face him then, taking her mouth in a hungry kiss, his tongue tasting her, his teeth nipping lightly at her lips. Pleasure spilled through her blood like a tide, making her breath rasp and her pulse race. Her skin felt too tight. Her clothes were unbearable fetters, and she hissed a sigh of relief as he loosened them and slid each piece from her, kissing and caressing every inch of skin he bared.
Modesty demanded she blush and protest. Desire demanded that she open her mouth and taste him as he tasted her. The flavor of his kiss was heady, more wonderful than the finest wine she had ever sampled.
The cool air in the room touched her, making her shiver. The sheets of his bed were even cooler as he guided her there and pressed her back against them, his fingers splayed lightly across her throat. She could feel her pulse drumming against his fingertips.
With a groan, he traced his tongue along her jaw, her throat, his mouth coming to lie against her pulse. He kissed her there, his mouth open, insistent. She arched her neck, the graze of his teeth making her gasp, sending spiraling tendrils of need winding through her veins.
Feeling weightless and dizzy and wonderfully alive, she lay back and watched as he dragged off his coat, then his shirt, pulling the cloth over his head and down his arms. He bared the wonderful mystery of his chest, covered in dark gold hair that tapered to a thin line down the middle of his taut belly.
“You are lovely,” she whispered. He was. But she had expected that, expected the lithe, lean lines and sculpted edges. She studied him in open curiosity, awed and amazed, and he laughed, a low wicked chuckle that stroked her senses.
His eyes never left hers as he prowled closer to rest his knee between her own on the mattress.
Her body arched of its own accord, instinctively seeking his touch as he trailed his fingers down her neck, along her collarbone, to the swell of her breast above the thin cotton of her chemise. Feeling like a bow drawn taut, bent to its limit, she waited to see what he would do next.
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