“I should perhaps warn you that I am a trifle drunk.” The words were said carefully, and his hand came up to still her fingers, which were playing almost of their own volition with his chest hair.
Gabby glanced up at him. “Umm. You smell like a brewery.”
“And you smell like—vanilla.” A slight smile curved his lips. His eyes were mere slits now, gleaming in the firelight as he looked down at her. His hand lay atop hers, not permitting it to move but not lifting it away from his chest.
“It’s the soap I use. I had a bath before I came to bed.”
He said nothing in response to that. Beneath her palm, she could feel, very faintly, the steady beat of his heart. Wrapped so closely in his arms, besides the scent of brandy and cigars, she could smell the barest hint of leather and the faint, musky aroma that she had learned was man. Her shivers were lessening, eased by some combination of the heat of his body and the comfort of his presence. Her breasts were pressed flat against his side; one of his hipbones nudged her stomach. Her cold toes wedged between his silk-clad calf and the mattress, seeking heat.
Everywhere they touched, her skin tingled.
“Tell me about your nightmare.” His voice was low, slightly husky, and commanding for all that.
She took a deep breath, distracted from her growing awareness of her body’s response to his, and instinctively curled her fingers around the hair she touched; her nails lightly scored the surface of his chest. He winced, and, realizing that she was hurting him, she eased her grip with an apologetic caress.
“Gabriella.”
She shook her head, wanting the nightmare simply to slip away as it had so many times before, unwilling to extend its horror by putting it into words.
“Was it by any chance about Trent?”
She quivered, and glanced up at him, wide-eyed. His arms tightened around her, pulling her so close against him that she could feel the hard outline of his hip bone pressing into her skin.
“How did you—what makes you think that?”
His hand stroked the back of her head, found her braid, and slid down its length before toying with the end, which was bound with a scrap of blue ribbon.
“Servants are an unending source of information. When I saw how Trent terrified you, I had Barnet ask around. Trent was in some way responsible for your damaged leg, wasn’t he?”
Gabby’s breath caught on a little gasp. Her fingers clutched his chest hair again, but this time he didn’t seem to notice. His hand was at the base of her spine now, spread flat against the first gentle flare of her bottom, pressing her close.
“Tell me.” There was no doubt, this time, that it was a command.
For a moment Gabby hesitated. She couldn’t speak of what had happened, had never been able to speak of it. Not to anyone, not her sisters or Twindle or Jem. All these years she had kept the events of that night bottled up inside—and they had visited her in the form of nightmares. Over the years, though, the nightmares had become less frequent, and finally had nearly ceased altogether. The one tonight was the first she had had since her father’s death. It had been brought on, no doubt, by her hair-raising encounter with Trent.
Then she realized: here was the one person she could tell who wouldn’t be frightened by the knowledge or somehow put in harm’s way by it. Who was neither a servant nor a woman, and who was, moreover, only a visitor to their insular little world where wealth and nobility conveyed on one all the powers of a medieval king.
She could share her burden with him with really no more consequence than talking to herself.
“He—I—my father—I was twelve years old,” she began haltingly, loosing her grip on his chest hair and smoothing her fingertips over the abused patch. She did not glance up at him, but kept her gaze on her hand. The short black hairs curled around her fingers. . . . “My father had—house parties. He was confined to a Bath chair in his later years, you know, so rarely left Hawthorne Hall. His friends came to him. They were a raffish group: mostly noblemen and their mistresses. They drank, and gambled, and—and, well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what else went on.”
“I can guess.” His voice was dry.
“Yes, well, one night my father apparently ran low on funds. He invariably gambled away every pound of income the estate brought in; I am sure, if the property hadn’t been entailed, he would have lost that, too. It was past four in the morning when a servant came to summon me from my bed. My father desired to see me most urgently, he said. I was not even to take time to dress. Accordingly, I rushed to his side in my nightgown and wrapper, expecting to find him at, perhaps, death’s door. He was in his rooms on the second floor: by that time he rarely went downstairs anymore. There I discovered nothing more dire than my father and Trent playing cards. It was a few minutes before I realized that I was the wager on the table.”
He made an inarticulate sound, and his arms tightened around her. She took a deep breath and went on.
“My father had lost a great deal, it seemed. The pile of cash and vouchers in front of Trent was high. After a few minutes in which they both ignored me, my father beckoned me over and pulled me around to face Trent. Will she do, he asked. I was too young to really understand what was going on, but I knew enough to be embarrassed by the way Trent was looking at me. I was frightened of him, a little, but at that point my father frightened me more. So I just stood there as Trent nodded. My father wrote something on a piece of paper, said twenty thousand pounds against one virgin girl child in a gloating kind of way, and pushed the note across the table to Trent. They played, and my father lost. Then he went away. The wheels of his Bath chair squeaked as he left.” Gabby’s eyes closed. It was all she could do to keep her voice from shaking. “I can still hear the click as he turned the key from the outside. I was locked in, alone, with Trent.”
He made a sound under his breath. Gabby paused, her fingers closing over his chest hair again, suddenly unable to go on. She could hear his heart beating strongly beneath her ear. It was all she could do just to breathe.
34
“The bastard tried to rape you.” It wasn’t a question. His voice was harsh. Gabby could feel his hands ball into fists against her back, scrunching the thin lawn of her nightdress within them.
“He told me to take off my clothes.” Gabby’s voice was ragged. “He seemed to think that I would obey. When I wouldn’t, he grabbed me. I got away, but he hit me with his cane—the same cane he carries now—as I was trying to get out the door, and knocked me down. Then he hit me—again, and again. I managed to get away a second time, and get on my feet. When he came after me again, I—jumped out the window. It was a long way to the ground. I fell—I remember it was a beautiful, starry night, and warm for September, and for a moment I almost felt like I was flying—and landed on the terrace, which is made of stone. The fall knocked me out, and broke my leg. I—when I came to I was in terrible pain, and still so frightened. Almost too frightened to call for help, but finally I did. Nobody came until it was light. Then Claire saw me lying on the ground from the nursery window, and came running down.”
Gabby trembled uncontrollably at the memory.
“What the hell kind of father did you have?” His voice was harsh.
“A monster. He hated all of us, hated everyone. He—he blamed me, afterward, because the debt had not been paid, and he still owed Trent the money. I think he offered me to Trent again, when I was better, but Trent was not interested any longer because I was—crippled.” Her voice caught on the last word.
He swore under his breath with a fluency that should have shocked her, and cradled her against him, rocking her in his arms, stroking her hair, her back. His lips brushed her forehead, her temple, her cheekbone. . . .
But before she could allow herself to accept the comfort he offered, there was one more thing she had to tell him.
She took a deep breath in an attempt to steady her voice. “He—for some reason, now that we’re in London, he seems—interested—in me ag
ain. He—was at Almack’s tonight. He said—he said he still has the voucher. He said—he was coming for me, to collect on it. Soon.” With the best will in the world for it not to do so, her voice shook.
His arms around her were suddenly as taut as steel bands. The warm, resilient body she lay against stiffened and stilled. His breathing deepened in a way that spoke of anger being put under careful control. Gabby suddenly remembered her first impression of him: that he was a very dangerous man.
“Trent threatened you tonight?” His voice was surprisingly devoid of emotion.
Gabby nodded, swallowing. Her throat was too dry to permit her to speak.
“Don’t worry about it: I’ll kill him for you.” The words were said with as little force as if he were commenting on the weather.
Gabby’s eyes widened. He could not be serious—but she knew instinctively that he was. She went cold with fear as she imagined him making an attempt to do just that, and instead being killed himself.
Her hand closed quite unconsciously on his chest hair again as she glanced up at him in a panic.
“No! No, please don’t. Trent is very powerful. He is immensely rich, and besides that, he has—unsavory connections. I don’t want you to get hurt. Please.”
There was the tiniest pause.
“Gabriella.”
She could feel a lessening of rigidity in the arms that held her. His body seemed to relax a trifle, too. Even his breathing gentled.
“Yes?”
“Did you know that that’s quite the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me?”
In the midst of her panic, she was stunned at the note of amusement that had crept into his voice. His eyes glinted down at her in the familiar teasing expression. The smallest curve touched his mouth. She knew him well enough to know that despite his sudden levity he had not just abandoned his stated intention to kill Trent for her; clearly the problem was that he didn’t appreciate the threat the duke represented. Her fingers tightened on his chest hair. Her hands were suddenly very cold. In any straightforward confrontation with Trent, Wickham must inevitably prevail. But Trent was not straightforward. He was underhanded and evil, and with his power and resources he need do no more than express the wish to have Wickham killed for it to be done.
“Ow! You’re hurting me,” he complained. One hand came up to close over hers, gently causing it to flatten on his chest and thereby release his chest hair.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” she said desperately, ignoring his non sequitur as she lifted her head to look directly into his eyes. “You must stay away from him, do you hear? He’ll have you killed. He can order . . .”
“Gabriella,” he interrupted, still smoothing her hand. “You need have no fear for me: I can take care of myself quite well, thank you. Trent won’t harm me, and I will undertake to make sure that, if I let him live, he will never come anywhere near you again. You may safely leave the matter in my hands.”
“You don’t understand,” she protested with a catch in her voice, making an abortive movement to clutch his chest hair again, which his stroking hand immediately quelled. “He won’t do it himself. He’ll order someone to kill you, and pay them well. And they will. Please, please promise me you’ll stay away from him.”
“You must just trust me.” He sounded maddeningly placid as his fingers toyed with hers.
She made a despairing sound. “You are not invincible, you know, you big looby. Why, even I managed to shoot you.”
His smile widened. “True, but in my own defense I must point out that I was not expecting such a proper young woman as you seemed to be at the time to harbor such a nasty, violent streak.”
Gabby practically ground her teeth at his refusal to take her warnings seriously.
“Trent will stop at nothing,” she insisted, scanning his face anxiously for some sign that she was getting through to him. “Having you killed wouldn’t give him any more trouble than ordering the swatting of a fly.”
“Gabriella,” he said, and the glint in his eyes was pronounced now. “If I were conceited, I might interpret all this concern for my safety to mean that you have a care for me.”
Blindsided by the notion, Gabby could only stare at him for a moment, unblinking as an owl. That she had a care for him . . .
The suggestion shook her to the core. Because, she realized with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, it was too horribly true. She did have a care for him, and more than just a care. Over the course of their acquaintance, she had come, by the smallest of baby steps, to depend on him to a remarkable degree, to consider him a dear friend, and more. Although, in the cool light of day, she knew—knew—that he could disappear as suddenly as he had arrived, tonight, wrapped tight in his arms, she discovered that hot air and moonbeams were possessed of an irresistible magic all their own.
I’ve fallen in love with him, she thought. Her eyes, wide with her new knowledge, locked with his.
“I don’t even know your name,” she whispered, appalled, as the rational part of her mind screamed in protest over what her rash heart had done.
“Nick,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “My name is Nick.”
His hand cupped the back of her head, and slowly, oh, so slowly, he pulled her mouth down to his. Then he kissed her.
35
His lips were firm, and warm, and gentle. He kissed her softly, tenderly, with exquisite care, while her bones liquified and her blood turned to scalding hot lava in her veins.
Gabby closed her eyes and opened her mouth to his and let him steal her soul with nary a protest. Nick. It wasn’t much, and for all she knew it might not even be his real name. A good many unsuspecting persons knew him as Marcus, after all. But, she discovered, it didn’t matter. She was his, whoever he was, for however long he wanted her. Her body knew it instinctively. Her heart was a recent convert. Caught up in the heat of the moment, her mind accepted it, too. She had no thought of right or wrong, no thought of threat to the neat future she had struggled so hard to secure, no awareness of anything except him, and the way he made her feel.
Nick, she thought again, wonderingly, then said it aloud, and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him back. The kiss changed; suddenly it was no longer gentle at all. He rolled with her, so that she was on her back and he was looming above her, propped on his elbows. One hard, heavy thigh slid across hers, rucking up her nightgown as it went, and she quivered at the excitement of it. He kissed her as if he were starving for the taste of her mouth, and her heart began to pound. His tongue plundered and invaded, caressing hers, warring with it. She responded shyly at first, and then with increasing boldness as her breathing grew ever more erratic.
He tasted of brandy and cigars, and she couldn’t get enough of the taste. His jaw was prickly with bristles, and she loved the masculine feel of it brushing over her skin. His hands cradled her face, caressing her cheeks, her temple, positioning her mouth to deepen the kiss. She surged up against him in response, pressing her breasts to his chest shamelessly, wanting only to get closer to him yet. Against her hip, she could feel, hard and insistent, the turgid evidence of his desire.
“Gabriella.” He lifted his head then, and his voice was faintly unsteady. Her eyes fluttered open in response, and her gaze flickered over his face. Nick. Her impossibly handsome Nick. “Gabriella, I . . .”
“Shhh,” she whispered, one hand sliding behind his head to draw his mouth down to hers again. She no longer wanted to talk, or to listen to him talk. She wanted only to kiss him, to go on kissing him until she expired from the pleasure of it. She was on fire from his kisses, dizzy with them. . . .
“Gabriella, listen.” He resisted the pressure of her hand, keeping his mouth from touching hers even as she pulled his head down and lifted her lips to seek his. His eyes, glittering with the restless fire of black diamonds in the dim light, moved over her face. “I told you, I’ve had too much to drink. I can’t just play, not like we’ve done before, not tonight. I want you so badly
I’m hurting with it, and I’m afraid, if I don’t get out of your bed, right now, that when the time comes I’m not going to be able to get out of it at all.”
But even as he warned her, his gaze flickered to her mouth, and his hand slid sideways to trace the soft curve of her lips. As if it, too, had a mind of its own quite independent of his words, the hard bulge that was silent testimony to his desire rocked against her hip.
Lips parting instinctively as his thumb brushed over the line between them, Gabby looked up at him. Her breasts throbbed against the solid warmth of his chest. Her thighs quivered beneath the weight of his. She was mad for him, aching for him, starving for him.
Whatever happened, whatever the consequences, she could not just walk away from this. She might never again, the whole rest of her life, feel the way she felt with him.
“I don’t want you to get out of my bed,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady.
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Tomorrow . . .” His voice was hoarse.
She caressed the warm skin at the nape of his neck, and wound her fingers in the thick cool silk of his hair. With the best will in the world to resist, she thought, he was still allowing his head to dip toward her mouth.
“I don’t care about tomorrow,” she whispered, and lifted her head from the mattress to find his lips.
“Gabriella.” It was a guttural groan as her lips touched his. Then he surrendered. Suddenly his hands were all over her, caressing her breasts, sliding over her belly, stroking her thighs. Gabby was gasping, crying out, writhing, helping him as he pulled her nightgown up and off, quivering as she lay naked on the bed while he pulled his shirt over his head, then with quick, savage movements, freed himself from his breeches and stockings. Even before his knees slid between hers, her legs were parting to admit him. The man part of him touched her woman part, prodded, and she gasped at the burning, stretching sensation as it began to invade her most intimate flesh. At the sound he stopped. The muscles of his back seemed to bunch beneath her hands, and he pulled his mouth from hers to take a couple of deep, gulping breaths. His shaft was ever so slightly withdrawn.
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