Beloved

by Stella Cameron

“Oh, Saber,” she murmured, and bent over him. She rested her cheek on his bared shoulder.

  “Get back!” he shouted, so suddenly, so savagely, she screamed.

  She had no time to cry out again.

  Saber shot an arm around her shoulders and swung her across his body. “Not again!” he yelled. “You shall not have more of them!”

  Ella fought. She struggled to grasp his collar. “Saber! It’s me, Ella!”

  They rolled, over and over, toward the lake, and Ella grappled with him. She kicked and wound her legs around his hips. “Saber! Stop it!”

  His fingers curled into the neck of her robe and gown, and he said, “It is my place,” in a deep, harsh tone. “I will do what I must do.” He ripped her clothing apart, bared her breasts, bared her body from neck to hip.

  Willow branches lashed across Saber’s back and Ella’s face. She flinched, and pummeled his shoulders. The wind and rain were a roaring scourge.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  As abruptly as he’d attacked her, he grew still—utterly still. He said, “Oh, my God,” very softly.

  Pinned beneath him, Ella stared up into his face. His hair fell forward and his eyes glinted. “Saber, what is it? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” he told her, and the fury of the gathering storm edged the word. “Why are you here? Why are you creeping around after me?”

  “Because …” Why was she here? Why was she creeping around after him? “I did not creep. I ran and shouted. I searched the whole house. When there was nowhere else inside to search, I came out here to look for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” She managed to push her hands above her head. Filling her fingers with his hair, she said, “I ran looking for you, through the house and out into the wind and rain, because I am married to a fool.”

  “I beg your pardon, madam?”

  “Do not presume to beg anything of me, my lord. It is I who will demand. Not beg, but demand. What sends you from my bed the moment I am asleep?”

  Saber gently freed her fingers from his hair. “It’s usual for a man and his wife to sleep in separate bedrooms, my love.”

  She wriggled and bucked—to no avail. “Except when the man wishes to…to…Well, when he wishes to. Then, when he has done so, he sneaks away? Why should it be so?”

  “Ella… There are things you don’t understand.”

  “You keep telling me that. So why don’t you explain?”

  Saber shifted his weight from her and rested his head on a hand. “I’ve wanted to,” he said, very low. “How I’ve wanted to.”

  So there was something. “Then tell me now. Let me help.”

  “I cannot be helped—only given protection.”

  “Protection?” Her mind refused to work. “What …? Protection from what, Saber?”

  “Those who would… Oh, Ella, I have wronged you.”

  The rain grew even heavier. Ella welcomed its cold bite upon her face. Their two soaked bodies drew heat, one from the other. She felt every inch of his solid muscles, every inch of his skin against hers. “You cannot have wronged me,” she told him. “You have rescued me.”

  “There is so much I want to tell you, and I will,” he said. “I shall ask much of you, Ella.”

  “And I will give much. I’ll give you all that I am.”

  He kissed her then, a soft, fleeting kiss at first, a slipping of his lips across hers, a trail of salty tenderness. Then the kiss changed. His lips grew harder, more insistent as his tongue probed her mouth.

  Ella’s heart thumped rapidly. She pushed her hands over the wet hair on his chest, across smooth, damp skin at his sides and around to his back where she began, as she always did, to rub his scars with loving care.

  “I need you,” he said when their lips finally parted. “Now.”

  “You have me, Saber. You will always have me.”

  “You don’t understand. I—”

  “I do understand. When you explain yourself, I understand.”

  “Very well. I want to make love to you, Ella.”

  “Here?” They were all but awash upon a sea of muddy grass.

  “Here,” Saber said, and kissed her again. He found a stiffened nipple and pulled it gently. “Is it the rain that makes your flesh leap?” he asked.

  Ella’s reply was to force a way inside his trousers and encircle his most sensitive part. “Is it the rain that makes your flesh leap, my lord?” Her breasts ached, swelled.

  “We both know what happens whenever we are together, Ella. I have only to look at you and I am lost.”

  “I have only to think of you and I am lost.”

  “I do not even … No.” He gave a short laugh. “That way lies a long, annoying discussion, and I find I cannot waste time at the moment.”

  Ella tipped up her chin. She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him, a long, lingering, deep kiss. She showed him how well he had taught her to kiss.

  “I once thought you had lain with other men.”

  Ella grew still.

  “I thought that when you were at that house you were used by men. The thought haunted me.”

  “Is that why you did not claim me, even though you had promised you would?”

  “In part. I am not proud to speak of it, Ella. But there must be no falsehood between us. At first I was angry, as angry that you had been used as I was for what I felt I’d lost. I was a fool.”

  He hunched his shoulders over her, just touching his chest to hers. The hair on his chest flirted with the tips of her nipples.

  “Saber! Oh, Saber.”

  “Yes, my sweet.” His hands went around her waist, beneath what was left of her gown and robe, and he turned them to their sides. Facing her, he stroked her bottom and dipped to take a nipple into his mouth.

  “I want you,” Ella said.

  “The way I want you?”

  “Always.”

  He shifted, dealt with his trousers, and pulled her leg over his hips. “Always and in whatever manner we can devise?”

  “Yes,” she sighed, amazed at the exquisite friction created by his slow, rain-wet penetration. He pulled her half over him and rocked his hips upward into hers.

  Ella arched against him.

  Saber used one hand to hold her bottom while he moved within her, and the other to play with her breasts. “There was never another woman for me once I’d met you,” he told her.

  Ella said, “I choose to forget how we wasted our love.”

  “Do you know what I’m telling you?” he asked.

  Each thrust brought Ella closer to the sweet release she must have.

  “After the night of our first meeting, I never took another woman to my bed. Throughout these years, I have waited for you, even while I thought we could not be together.”

  She searched his face. “I thought …” She trembled with her love for him. “I believed men always, well, that they always did.”

  He smiled and, as quickly, grimaced. “You have unleashed the waters that were held back, my lady. From this day forth, this man always will. Aah. In my heart, I married you one night, sitting at your side on a stone bench when you should have been in your bed. Aah, Ella.”

  Ella drew her leg more tightly around him. “So we came together new, my love.”

  “Who would believe such a thing,” he murmured, and a great spasm drove his teeth together—and drove words from Ella’s lips.

  Saber held her to him. She crooned little, unintelligible words against his neck.

  “I am a monster,” he told her. “I should get you inside and dry before this damp is the death of us both.”

  “Hold me,” she murmured.

  He held her, tightly, and remained buried inside her.

  He glanced away, and a spark of light off some object in the grass caught his eyes. Reaching, he pried the thing from the mud and turned it over in his hand.

  A button. One of their buttons.

  “No! Oh, God, no, no.”


  Ella raised her head to look at his face.

  “Where did this come from?” He stared down at her. “You? You brought this here to torture me?” There could be no other explanation.

  “I was looking for you—”

  “Do not touch things that don’t concern you.” As he struggled to calm his breathing and his thundering heart, his rod quickened within her. “Don’t! Do you understand me?” He began to lunge upward once more. He could scarcely breathe at all. The button seemed afire in his hand.

  “I didn’t mean … Oh, oh!”

  “Don’t!” He ground his teeth together and squeezed his eyes shut. Here, with her, joined to her, he could drive the memories away.

  Voices reached him gradually. Shouting voices.

  Ella pounded his shoulder with a fist and said his name over and over, each time more frantically.

  “Over there!” a male voice cried. “By God, I’ll kill him for this.”

  “Wait, Struan!”

  Then they were upon them. A hard forearm snaked around Saber’s neck, caught it in the bend of an elbow, and squeezed.

  “Careful,” another voice shouted. “Don’t break his neck.”

  The next sound was Ella’s scream.

  “The man’s mad.’’ Dimly, Saber recognized Arran’s voice. “Ravishing the girl like this. Poor child.”

  It was Calum who said, “Have a care, Struan. It’s all right, Ella, my dear.”

  “Papa!” she cried. “Oh, Papa!”

  Arran said, “She’s all but naked. Give me a cloak to cover her, Devlin.”

  Consciousness faded. Saber clawed at the relentless arm around his neck but could find no purchase.

  Devlin?

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Great-Grandmama pounded the carpet between her feet with her cane. “I will not have my decisions questioned,” she fumed. “This is an outrage. You have taken a woman from her husband.”

  “Your Grace,” Uncle Arran said, standing before the old lady, an elegantly massive man who dwarfed her. “I assure you we have only done what was best for Ella.”

  “Best to take her from her husband?” She shook her head in the beribboned nightcap she still wore, having rushed from her bed the instant she heard of Ella’s arrival with Struan, Arran, and Calum.

  Embarrassment so deep it rendered Ella speechless made it difficult for her to meet the gaze of any of the men. “There is a mistake,” she said softly. “A misunderstanding.” It was a fact she had pleaded incessantly, and to no avail, since they’d taken her away from Saber.

  They had waited only long enough for her to dress before leaving Bretforten—and leaving Saber, unconscious, in Devlin’s care. Throughout the day they had ridden and, when darkness descended, found an inn for the night. Setting off again early this morning, they’d made it to London and come directly to Pall Mall.

  “I did not want to leave Saber,” she told Great-Grand-mama. “They would not listen to me.”

  “Headstrong whippersnappers,” Great-Grandmama announced. “What right did you have to take Ella from her husband? I gave the marriage my blessing. All that was required. They were married in the eyes of the church. And what God has joined, let no man—”

  “This is not God’s work,” Papa said. Ella had never seen him so pale, or so angry. “The man is mad. He married my daughter to protect himself.”

  Ella’s face snapped up. Protect. Saber had used that word.

  “That’s outrageous,” the dowager said. “He married her because…he loves her, whatever that may mean. Where is he? Where is Saber? On his way here, no doubt. Should I prepare for a duel in me own boudoir?”

  Uncle Calum said, “Devlin North’s with him. Devlin understands the problem. Don’t know what we’d have done without him.”

  “How so?” Ella asked, finding her voice at last.

  Uncle Arran’s green eyes sought her. “It’s best that you leave these matters to men, Ella.” He was so handsome—and so overbearing.

  “I have asked a question,” she said, planting her feet firmly apart. “What has Devlin North done that’s so wonderful? Apart from helping you to separate me from my husband.”

  “I don’t know how you can speak so,” Uncle Calum said. His hair and eyes were so like mama’s. Dark hair with flashes of red, and serious, dark amber-colored eyes. “We will not speak of the condition in which we found you, but it was an ugly thing.”

  “Papa,” Ella implored. “Will you, at least, tell me the truth of things? It was Devlin North who secured Bretforten Manor for us. He has been Saber’s friend, or so we thought.”

  Papa touched her arm lightly. “You have always been too beautiful for your own good, my child. But that is not your fault. Neither is it your fault if men long to possess you. You should be grateful that Devlin came to us in Scotland—in a great fright, I might add—to explain what was happening.”

  Ella felt as if she were carved from ice. “Would you please share his insights with me? His insights into what was happening?”

  “You know what was happening. You are loyal to your husband—even though he has abused you, ruined you—and that is admirable. But you are aware of the circumstances in which we found you. Devlin had been afraid of just such a thing— that, and even more degrading behavior. He has been a friend to Saber for many years. He seeks to protect him and will do so now.”

  Protect again. “Protect him from what?”

  The three powerful men in the room glanced uncomfortably at each other. “From himself,” Uncle Calum told her. “Devlin came to inform us that Saber had engineered a marriage to you, but that Saber is caught in the web of some madness.”

  She made fists. “Saber is not mad!”

  “Not always,” Uncle Calum said, scrubbing at his un-shaven jaw. “It comes and goes. But when it comes, he is very dangerous. And his condition only grows worse. One day Saber will have to be institutionalized. Devlin could scarcely bear to speak of this to us. He believes you know of Saber’s condition but that you will try to hide that knowledge because you think you love him.”

  “I do love Saber! He has done nothing dreadful to me!”

  Uncle Arran swung toward her. “When we found you, you were naked, your clothing torn from your body.”

  “Lord Stonehaven,” Great-Grandmama said weakly. “I don’t want to—”

  “I am forced to say these things, madam,” Uncle Arran said to Ella. “Your so-called husband attacked you in the middle of the night, outside, in a storm, no less. If we hadn’t come upon you, God knows what might have happened. I shall always be grateful to Devlin North for what he did.”

  “And I shall always hate him,” Ella said. “He is a viper who used a good man’s trust to bring that man down. You do not know this, but Devlin North offered for me himself—in secret, inappropriately.”

  “I know.” Papa slipped an arm around her shoulders. “He told me as much, and he told me the reason. He thought it his duty to save you from Saber.”

  Ella gaped.

  “Now, now, don’t think any more ill of Devlin. He was quick to add that he would consider himself a very lucky man to be your husband. And, in fact, he has offered to take you regardless after all this is resolved.”

  “Oh!” Ella whirled away and back. She had never known such frustration, such desperation. “And you believed all this?”

  “Certainly,” Uncle Calum said, but his face was deeply troubled. “Not that you should think Struan has any notion of marrying you off to someone in a hurry just to save your—”

  “My reputation? Hah! My reputation is intact, thank you all. And you can hardly marry me again when I am already married.”

  Papa stood in front of her, blocking any view of the others. He ducked his head and looked seriously into her face. “You have been through too much, my child. Away to your bed. And do not concern yourself with this. Marriage to a man who is not in his right mind should be a simple enough thing to void.”

  She shrugged away from h
im. “Saber is in his right mind, I tell you. And the marriage shall not be voided. I love him!”

  “I know,” Papa said, clearly embarrassed. “Please trust me to do what’s best for you. What we know shall not leave this room, except for the necessary official business.”

  “And what of Saber? What will you do with my husband?”

  “He is not your husband,” Calum said, avoiding her eyes. “Your mama will arrive soon enough, and your aunts. We shall all help you through this dreadful thing. And we shall help Saber, too. Believe that we will.”

  They were immovable. Their minds were completely set on this, and Devlin North had been the one to plant the evil seeds against Saber.

  Ella looked to Great-Grandmama, who shook her head slightly.

  So there was to be no help there. “I think I’ll do as you suggest, Papa,” Ella said, making herself smile at him. “I’m very tired. I shall go to bed. Will one of you send Rose to me?”

  She left them amid a chorus of sympathetic sounds. Summoning Rose had been a precaution. As soon as she’d allowed the maid to think her mistress was tucked up in bed, Ella would find a way to leave Pall Mall and set off for the Cotswolds and Saber. She would have to consider carefully how she would divert Devlin for long enough to allow her to release her husband.

  Her stomach burned at the thought of her dear Saber locked away, yet she felt in her bones that the only way Devlin would contain him would be by force, and while Saber was unconscious.

  The buttons. Ella stopped on the stairs and almost turned back. Military buttons. When Saber had been suddenly awakened, he’d cried out, “You shall not have more of them,” or something similar. Was he remembering some horrible battle in India? The death of some of his men, perhaps? She carried on. All of these things would be made clear to her and she would help Saber overcome whatever troubled him so deeply.

  A fire burned brightly in her sitting room and in her bedroom. Rose was already present, her blue eyes anxious. “Are you all right, then, miss—I mean, my lady?” The girl tugged awkwardly at the cap she wore over her blond hair. “Just you tell me what I can do to ’elp, then.”

  Ella kept all emotion at bay. “I’ll go to bed, thank you, Rose. I’ve had a tiring journey. Where’s Max? Back at Oxford?”