Nicola Cornick Collection

by Nicola Cornick

  “Susanna?” Dev sounded lazy, drowsy with pleasure. “Come back to bed.”

  “Goodbye, Devlin,” Susanna said, reaching for the door handle, fumbling in the dark, desperate now to be away.

  “Susanna!” Dev shot out of bed. Susanna had never seen a man move so fast. She certainly had not known a man could dress so fast. Navy training, she supposed; so very useful for a rake to be able to get in and out of his clothes so quickly. Damn him. She slammed the bedchamber door behind her and started down the stairs, stumbling a little in her haste. A second later the door slammed open and Dev was coming after her, fastening his pantaloons as he did so.

  “Wait!” he said. “I wanted you for the whole night—”

  “You did not say,” Susanna snapped. “You should be more specific in your blackmail in future.” She reached the bottom of the stairs and burst into the taproom. “You’ve had what you wanted,” she said, well aware that they now had a very large and very curious audience but so furious with both herself and with him that she was powerless to stop the words flooding out. “You’ve had me. Now I’m going.”

  Several people whistled and catcalled.

  “Looks like your technique needs more practice mate!” someone shouted from the back of the room. Dev shot him a filthy look and caught Susanna’s arm.

  “Susanna, wait—” he said.

  “No,” Susanna said. She had reached the end of her endurance. The self-loathing washed through her, the hatred of all the lies and the deception and where they had brought her. She was afraid that she might cry. She could feel the burning tears sting her eyes. “You had better keep your promise, Devlin,” she said.

  She saw the wicked light leap into his face. He released her, folded his arms.

  “And if I don’t?” he said.

  It was the final straw. Susanna picked up a tankard of ale and hurled it at him. Dev ducked and it hit the wall. He had excellent reflexes.

  “You promised!” she said. She had never felt so angry or so out of control in her life before. It was terrifying yet oddly liberating at the same time. “You utter, utter bastard!”

  “Never trust a man when he’s driven by his cock, love,” one of the tavern wenches said sympathetically. She pushed another tankard toward Susanna. “Need another one?”

  “Good advice,” Dev said, smiling at the girl, who smiled straight back into his eyes.

  Susanna picked up the tankard and took a long draught. The alcohol went to her head like an infusion of giddy euphoria. The room swam before her view. She took a deep breath. She had a feeling she was about to make a monumental mistake but it was already too late because she had been pushed too far and too hard and she could not stop. She did not want to stop.

  “You had better keep your word, Devlin,” she said, “because if you do not I will tell everyone that we are married and have been for nine years and then there will be the most appalling scandal that will damage you all, Chessie and Emma as well as you. None of you will ever recover from it. You will all be ruined.”

  DEV LOOKED AT SUSANNA, met her gaze, which was a mixture of defiance and terror, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was speaking the truth.

  The inn had erupted into rowdy debate. “You’re in trouble now, mate, and no mistake,” one man opined, shaking his head.

  “So I think,” Dev said grimly.

  “Never thought she was your wife,” the man said.

  “Neither did I,” Dev said, even more grimly.

  He took Susanna’s hand and felt that she was shaking. Her gaze was blank, shocked. Dev realized that she had not meant to say it; only the extreme of her desperation had forced the words out.

  “Come along then, Lady Devlin,” he said, and saw the shock leap again in her eyes. “You’ve got some explaining to do,” he said roughly. “Not before an audience, though, this time.”

  He dragged her with him out of the inn door, almost forgetting to pay the shot on the way out and fumbling in his pocket for change, which he slapped down onto the counter. Out in the street he took several deep breaths of night air. It was cooler tonight with a cutting breeze off the river. Dev needed it; his head was spinning. First there had been his anger over Susanna’s blatant demeaning of herself to buy his silence. He had thought—no, he had hoped—that she was better than that. Then their exquisite lovemaking had washed away all his anger and frustrations, replacing them with the pure sweet sensation of rightness he had always found with her. But now this … He could barely believe it. Except that he knew, deep in his gut with a wrenching feeling of shock that this time Susanna did not lie.

  “I did intend to get an annulment—” Susanna began.

  Dev turned on her. He felt livid, almost beyond reason, and had to exert absolute control over his temper. “Hell and the devil, Susanna,” he said, “one does not simply forget a small matter like marriage! I might forget to attend a ball. I would not forget that I had failed to apply for an annulment!”

  Susanna stopped and pulled her hand from his, stepping back. She raised her chin and faced him bravely. “Did you never wonder why there were no papers to sign, Devlin? Did you just assume that the annulment had gone through and that you need do nothing?”

  The guilt shook Dev because that was precisely what he had assumed. As with many other things in his life he had been rash and thoughtless and irresponsible, pushing away the memories of his one night of marriage, swearing to wipe it from his mind and his life, ignoring it for the mistake it had been. Now he was richly rewarded for that carelessness.

  “Don’t try to blame me!” He wanted to shake her in his anger and frustration, and once again clamped down on his fury. “You wrote to me! You said you had already applied!”

  He saw Susanna make a hopeless gesture of despair. “I intended to do so—” Her voice faltered. Dev saw panic in her eyes and felt a sudden, unexpected pang of remorse. She looked as though she needed protection rather than blame, Susanna, who had always been so strong and so unashamed of all she had done.

  “It was more difficult to obtain an annulment than I had originally thought.” She made a pathetic attempt at dignity, drawing her cloak around her, holding it tight at the throat between clenched fingers. Her shoulders were hunched, thin. “It was complicated and I could not afford it and …” She gave a little, helpless shrug.

  “You could not afford it?” Dev reached out and touched the rich velvet of the crimson cloak. “What about all the money you made betraying people’s trust, breaking their hearts? Could you have not spared a little to get rid of me finally, once and for all?” He did not wait for a reply. He took a couple of sharp steps away, running a hand through his hair, turning back fiercely. “Devil take it, Susanna, I could have been married by now! You would have made me a bigamist. That is what really angers me!”

  “Yes.” Susanna’s voice was still hesitant. “But you are not.”

  “No thanks to you.” Dev smoothed his hair down. He was baffled, furious, but puzzled, as well. Something here did not feel quite right. There was the fear and the pain in her eyes—and the gaps in her story. They were little enough to garner his sympathy when she had treated him so badly yet they were sufficient to plant the doubts in his mind which, when taken with her desperate desire to buy his silence, her need for money and her shame and anxiety, told him there was a great deal here that he did not know.

  “You said earlier that you were working in a gown shop in Edinburgh,” he said, “when your plan to catch a rich husband did not succeed.”

  “I was.” He could feel her tension easing. She sounded relieved. He wondered at it. Was he asking the wrong questions? She was hiding something, he was sure of it.

  “So you were poor,” he said.

  “Very.”

  “And you could not afford the annulment.”

  “That’s right.” She sounded tired now, defeated. His anger and resentment bubbled up again to see her white, strained face. He did not know why he pitied her, did not know why he
wanted to protect her, when she had done this to him. Yet his feelings were irrefutable and they made no sense to him. Susanna had proved over and over that she was materialistic and corrupt, that she would stoop to blackmail, that she had no thought but for herself. So why this impulse to draw her close and defend her? He was bewildered to feel it.

  “Bloody hell, Susanna—” He turned away. “All the women I’ve had …” he said. He felt odd about breaking his wedding vows, all unknowing. He could not explain why he felt so disillusioned, so disappointed in himself, when he had not known he was still wed. He owed Susanna nothing, no loyalty, no fidelity, when she had misled him. Yet still he felt tarnished in some way.

  He felt her hand on his arm. “You were not to know,” she said. “It was not your fault, Devlin.”

  “I know that.” He shook her off savagely, rejecting her comfort and the unspoken apology. “Thank God I did not wed,” he said. “And that I never touched Emma.” He caught her shoulders again. “If I had …”

  “I know.” Her eyes were closed. He saw a single tear trickle down her cheek, silver in the moonlight. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  It was the first time that she had apologized for anything in the entire evening. He let her go, disturbed at the sudden impulse to pull her into his arms and offer comfort to her when he was so furious with her.

  “I need to think.” He looked at her. “Don’t believe that I will keep quiet about this just to save Emma’s reputation,” he warned, “or to protect Chessie. There has to be a way around this without hurting either of them. This ends here.”

  Susanna was silent. She did not try to persuade him.

  Dev took her hand again. “Come on.”

  She held back. “Where are we going?”

  “To Curzon Street,” Dev said. “I am coming back with you.”

  He saw her expression pucker in the moonlight. “But—”

  “I do not trust you an inch,” Dev said brutally. “I want you within sight at all times until I decide what to do about this.”

  The little maid was sitting on a chair in the hall when they returned, swaying with tiredness, stifling her yawns. The front door swung closed behind them and she leaped to her feet. “Will that be all, my lady?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Dev said, “thank you.”

  The maid waited pointedly.

  “Thank you, Margery,” Susanna said, giving her a faint smile. “Go and get some sleep.”

  The maid dropped a curtsy and went out. Dev looked at Susanna. There were smudges of tears beneath her eyes and he smoothed them away with his thumb, feeling the impossible softness of her skin. Anger and tenderness, frustration and gentleness warred within him. He could not understand it, still less explain. She had told him a story that made perfect sense; it all hung together—the failure of her plans for a rich marriage, her subsequent poverty, her desire for money. Yet something troubled him, something that still did not quite add up. He shook his head impatiently. What really mattered here was Susanna’s failure to sue for the annulment of their marriage. He must make that good at the first possible opportunity. Alex would lend him the money. It would be yet another debt but it would finally set him free to start afresh. Susanna, too—he would see that she was provided for because that was his duty as her husband. He would go back to sea and Susanna could also forge a new life, the one she had always wanted, perhaps, with a rich man. The thought did not please him.

  Susanna. His wife. It felt different, now he knew. He felt different. The possessiveness he had experienced when he had imagined her with another man had eased into something more profound, more disturbing, now that he knew she truly was his. His future life would have no place for a wife. Once he was back at sea the Navy would become his mistress once again. But for now Susanna was here and until they sued for annulment they were still wed …

  “Lady Devlin,” he said quietly. “That was what I wanted you to be nine years ago. But you did not want that, did you, Susanna? You never wanted to be my wife.”

  For a second some emotion shimmered in her eyes that he could not understand. He tugged the ribbon that fastened her cloak. It came loose and the cloak, rich and red in the candlelight, slid from her shoulders to fall at her feet. He heard her breath catch. Her eyes were very wide and dark, full of shadows.

  Dev bent and brushed his lips against hers in the lightest possible caress. Her breathing quickened, her eyelashes fluttered down. Her lips were soft and yielding beneath his. He wanted her then with a hunger so acute it felt like pain. He knew that he ought to despise her for all her duplicity and yet he seemed powerless to resist her even when he had made love to her less than two hours before. And now, of course, he could do it again because she was his wife. The thought slid into his head like the snake in Eden, impossibly tempting.

  “Come to bed,” he said.

  Her eyes snapped open. There was confusion as well as desire in them. He was reminded of the night in the garden when she had said that she could not resist him but she did not understand why. He felt the same. All he knew was that there was some powerful bond that compelled them together and that until their need was sated neither would be free.

  He saw Susanna bite her lower lip and felt his body jerk in response. “We agreed just the once,” she said, and he could hear the conflict in her voice, the longing mixed with denial, and knew with another surge of excitement that she wanted him. They were impossibly drawn to one another, trapped in their mutual desire.

  “That,” Dev said, “was before I knew you were still my wife.” He kissed the hollow of her throat and felt the hunger coil all the tighter inside him. “Now what was a pleasure has become a right.”

  “You are insisting on your marital rights?” There was shock in her voice. “But I thought we were to obtain the annulment?”

  “We will,” Dev said. “But until then we are still married.” He trailed a path of kisses to Susanna’s collarbone, running his tongue over the sweet, vulnerable curves, flicking over the pulse he found there.

  She pushed him away. “You are so damnably arrogant, aren’t you, Devlin? Has no one ever refused you?”

  “Only the Duchess of Farne,” Dev said. “And you, on that night you turned me away.” He stood back, put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Do you want to do that again? If you can tell me you do not want me, I’ll sleep alone.”

  The sensuality thickened about them like a spun web. He saw Susanna swallow hard. “Damn you, Devlin.” Her voice was strained. “I don’t understand what you do to me….”

  “The sentiment is mutual, sweetheart.” Dev pulled her back into his arms. “I’m sorry about earlier at the inn,” he whispered as his lips brushed hers. “That was not good enough for you but I was angry with you for bartering your body to me.”

  He felt her shudder in his arms. “I’ve never done that before,” she said. Her face was hidden against his shoulder. “I know you will not believe me, but it’s true.”

  “I do believe you,” Dev said. He thought of her untutored response to his kiss in the carriage and the innocence he had sensed in her when first they had made love. He ran a hand over her hair, soothing her trembling. She felt so vulnerable in his arms. Dev thought of her telling him how poor she had been, too poor to be able to afford the annulment. He thought of her forcing cream cakes into her reticule because she was still haunted by the need to steal food whenever she could find it. The compassion and pity swept through him. He could remember that sort of poverty, the sort where there was no food and the world went dark because you were so cold and hungry and exhausted. He had known that as a child and he had never forgotten. It had been the driving force in making him seek his fortune. So he could hardly blame Susanna for wanting to escape a similar plight. He could not condone her choices and a part of him was still furious with her, but equally he could not condemn her for fighting for her survival.

  “Thank you.” She sounded dazed. She kissed him, her mouth open to his, and his mind frac
tured and Dev forgot everything, almost forgot his own name in the hot carnal pleasure that swept through him. Susanna pulled away from him and took his hand, turning toward the stairs, but instead Dev drew her through the door into the sitting room. It was in darkness but for the moonlight that dappled the floor from the uncurtained windows.

  “Let me undress you properly this time,” he said. “Step into the moonlight.”

  Again he sensed the shock she could not hide and knew she had never played such dangerous games before as she played with him. She hesitated and he thought she might refuse, but after a moment she stepped deliberately into the shaft of moonlight and stood quivering beneath his hands as he slowly peeled off her clothes. She raised her arms, graceful as a dancer, to allow him easier access to buttons and hooks and the movement was so erotic he almost groaned aloud.

  He put up a hand and pulled on the ribbon in her hair and it tumbled loose, blue-black in the moonlight. He ran his fingers into the silky mass and kissed her like a starving man, until she was shaking and he was, too.

  He picked her up and carried her across to the window. She gasped as her naked back touched the cold panes. He spread her, his hands beneath her thighs and found her core and the heat that was a counterpoint to that cold. She writhed.

  “The window—” She sounded dazed.

  “Your garden is not overlooked,” Dev said. He kissed her again, dropping his mouth to the hollow of her throat and the slope of her breast. He kissed her until he felt her body tighten and heard her moan against his mouth. Her head was tilted back, her hair like a black waterfall against the darkness of the glass. Her upper body was arched toward him in mute plea, her legs tightly clasped about him. The lust drove him to take her but he mastered it, waiting until it felt as though she was wound so tight she would come apart in his arms. Only then did he loose the band of his pantaloons and thrust up and into her. The relief, the pleasure, was intense. She cried out, hot and sleek and tight about him. He drove into her until she came, her palms flat against the glass. She was like a wild thing in his arms, a creature of heat and passion, so sweet he wanted to devour her.