by Karen Ranney
He didn’t tell her what he’d heard about those places. Both the Union and Confederate prisons were renowned for their hideous treatment of prisoners. He suspected more men died than were ever released.
Minerva didn’t say anything. A moment later he heard the chink of china.
“Tea, Dalton?” she asked.
“Thank you. And a scone, if you don’t mind.”
Sometimes, hearing bad news was like that. It hit you all at once, but you tucked it away to examine it in bits, later. A corner here, another bite there. Little by little, so it didn’t destroy you.
He suddenly wanted to equalize their positions, give her a hint of the pain he felt so she would know she wasn’t alone.
“Did I tell you about Arthur? How he died?”
“No.” Her voice was lifeless, empty of that certain spark that made her Minerva.
“He was killed in a hunting accident. Only he hadn’t been hunting. I suspect that he was killed deliberately. I suspect that my brother, Lewis, killed him.”
Now that he said it aloud, it sounded even more terrible.
“What are you going to do?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said. He would tell her about James’s idea later. For now, it was enough that he had shared the mystery of Arthur’s death with her.
She startled him by beginning to cry.
He’d never known what to do when a woman cried, but this was different. This was Minerva.
He couldn’t bear to hear her sudden soft weeping. He expected violence in her grief, but this restrained, almost ladylike sorrow was a knife through his chest.
“That’s why I wanted to tell you here,” he said. “Not in public.”
Her weeping only increased.
“Minerva.” He reached out again, but this time she didn’t put her hand in his.
He fumbled for the tray, returning his uneaten scone and full cup. Standing, he made his way to Minerva’s side.
He reached down and pulled her up into his arms.
For a moment she resisted, then she stood, wrapped her arms around his waist and placed her cheek against his jacket.
Even preparing to travel on a train she hadn’t worn a hoop. His smile was a rueful admission of her iconoclastic nature. Yet as singular as Minerva was, she was not unlike any other human being. She loved, and because of that love she was in pain.
“Minerva, please don’t cry.”
Her crying terrified him. Not because he’d never seen a woman weep, but because he’d never been so affected by a woman’s tears.
“I’ll find him, Minerva. I promise. I’ve agreed to finance my cousin’s trip to America,” he said. “He has this idea of becoming a blockade runner. He needs cotton for his mill.”
She didn’t ask any questions and that surprised him. Minerva was invariably curious.
“He’ll be heading for the southern states,” he said. “Once we find out where Neville is, I’ll ask him to see what he can do. After all, Neville’s a British citizen. He should be exchanged or released. Hell, if nothing else, Duncan can help him escape.”
“You would do that?” she asked, her voice laden with tears. “For Neville?”
Not for Neville, but for her.
He held her close, content to do so for as long as she needed to be comforted. Until after her tears had passed. Until the day turned to night. Until her heart was eased.
The feel of her in his arms was somehow reassuring. She was a warm, pliant woman, a female who encapsulated all that was right about this new sightless world of his. He was no longer trapped in a black bubble because of Minerva. She brought him light. She made it possible for him to view what he’d ignored for so many years: how he, accorded privilege and wealth, had chosen to waste his blessings.
Or had that been why he’d gone to America? To make something of himself? To have his life count for something more than being the Rake of London?
For whatever reason, he was no longer Dalton MacIain, who’d won the round for drinking the most whiskey in a quarter hour. Nor was he the man who had charmed the Ice Duchess into his bed. Or the host of countless parties where debauchery ruled and licentiousness was the behavior of the day.
He was simply himself, stripped of everything but the essential man, capable of experiencing uncertainty and tasting fear.
This mortal man, this newly made earl, was somehow a better man with all his failures than the one who had ridden high on the crest of rumor and gossip.
HE WAS holding her, and for the first time in a very long time she felt safe. What kind of woman was she to feel comforted by the Rake of London?
“You aren’t who you’re supposed to be,” she said, pulling back.
She needed to step away from him, but she didn’t.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re supposed to be a rakehell, a wastrel, a degenerate. Instead, you’re kind and intelligent, caring and generous. Just when I think I’ve figured you out, you change.”
“You make me sound as boring as a minister.”
“You’re not boring at all.”
He confused her, startled her, made her lose her thoughts, stumble through words, but he’d never bored her.
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. At first it was a simple gesture of thanks for being so kind when she was crying. Of acknowledgment that he’d thought of her feelings in telling her about Neville. All too soon the kiss changed character, became less friendly and more passionate.
Several minutes were lost to the kiss, and no time could have been better spent. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, he broke off the kiss.
“I’m no saint, Minerva. Kissing you will lead to more.”
A warning, couched in a whisper.
She only reached up and kissed him again.
“I promised to seduce you,” she said a moment later. “I never got the chance.”
“And you would do so now? Here?”
She should ask him to take her home. She should retreat to her house, chastened by the Covington sisters and their fears for her reputation. She should do a great many things right at the moment.
Perhaps it was rebellion. Perhaps it was need. Perhaps it was simply that she wanted to touch him for however long she could.
“We need to get out of these wet clothes, Dalton.”
“Ah, that’s the reason, then. You’re concerned for our health,” he said, amusement coloring his words.
She couldn’t help but smile. “Lock the door, Dalton.”
He released her, went to the door and did as she asked, then returned to her side on the carpet in front of the cold fireplace.
“Have you ever loved anyone in your library?” she asked, her voice sounding husky.
“Never,” he said, concentrating on the buttons of her dress.
“No dalliances with bored wives or expectant virgins here?”
He hesitated at the third button.
“No bored wives. I never sought out a wife for dalliance, Minerva. Nor encouraged a woman to break her marital vows.”
“But you never refused them, either. And expectant virgins?”
“Frankly, the idea of schooling a virgin in passion is, well, tedious.”
“Then you’re glad I came to you experienced as I was?”
“You aren’t all that experienced,” he said. “You have a great deal more to learn.”
“Do I?”
He nodded.
He bent and kissed the tip of one breast through her bodice.
“You’re wearing a corset.”
“Loosely laced,” she said. “And a corset cover as well as a shift.”
“You’re impenetrable. You’re an ironclad vessel against which I’m a mere dinghy.”
She laughed, then reached out and unfastene
d his trousers with unerring fingers. When she placed her cool hand around him, he drew in a sharp breath.
“Does that hurt?”
“Good God, no.”
“Shall I remove my hand?”
“Absolutely not,” he said, bending to kiss her.
He trailed a hand around her waistband until he found the buttons.
“You don’t smell of your perfume today.”
“What do I smell of?” she asked.
“The far off scent of cinnamon. I’ll have to ask Cook to bake cinnamon scones every morning. That way, the spice will always perfume the air, reminding me of you.”
She didn’t need scent to think of him. Perhaps it would be wiser not to confess that.
He opened her bodice, separated the fabric and kissed his way from her throat to the lace of her corset cover. His tongue darted out, lightly touching and tasting her skin.
“I love how soft your skin is,” he said.
She reached up and placed her palm against his cheek in wordless thanks. He made her feel beautiful.
“How do we get rid of this?” he asked, pulling at the corset cover.
She abruptly sat up, pulling off the top of her dress, then making short work of the corset cover. He didn’t wait for her to unfasten the busk of her corset but did it himself until she was half naked.
She should have felt embarrassed. Or ashamed for her wantonness. Instead, she felt odd, unlike herself. Lighter than air yet weighted with worry. For a few minutes she wasn’t going to think. She wasn’t going to agonize. She wasn’t going to grieve.
While she was sitting up, she wiggled out of her skirt and removed her two petticoats.
His palms found her breasts, his fingers curving around them. He brushed his bristly cheek against her skin, smiling when she made a sound.
“Is that uncomfortable?”
“No,” she said, reaching up. Her fingertips trailed across his face. “Do you have to shave more than once a day? Do you do it yourself or does Howington help you?”
“Howington is no longer in my employ,” he said. “As for shaving, the first few weeks I was bloodied but unbowed.”
“Such a stubborn man,” she said softly.
“Says the woman who is just as stubborn. Or is it more proper to call you obstinate?”
“Either one will do,” she said. “But let’s not talk of character now. Touch my breasts again, please.”
“You’re nearly as ribald as a duchess as I once knew,” he said.
“Should you really be talking about a former conquest when you’re bedding me?”
“I seem to remember your remarking on a certain driver of yours when I was standing naked in front of you.”
“Turnabout is fair play, I suppose. Shall we make an agreement between us, then?”
“I shall never bring up another conquest.”
“Neither shall I,” she agreed.
“Good, because every time you mention Hugh, I want to punch the man in the face.”
“Truly? Why?”
He didn’t answer her, bending to nuzzle at her neck. Her soft sound became a moan.
“Do you really think I’m ribald?” she asked a few minutes later.
He raised up on his forearms and stared at her.
“If you’ll give me an exemption from the rule we just made, I’ll tell you that you’re unlike any other woman I’ve ever known.”
“Truly?”
“I like that you’re honest. I love that you’re direct. You startle me sometimes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I never know what you’re going to say.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, either. Forewarned is forearmed. If you surprise people, they normally give you the truth in return.”
“So that’s your strategy.”
“Actually, it isn’t. I don’t seem to have a strategy when it comes to you, Dalton.”
“I feel the same about you, Minerva. I don’t behave as myself around you. But there are people who might say I haven’t been myself ever since returning to London.”
She placed a hand on the back of his head, pulling him down for a kiss.
“Must we be so profound?”
“On no account,” he murmured against her lips.
He spent the next quarter hour kissing her everywhere. His fingers led the way over the curve of her shoulder and down to her arm. He hesitated at the inside of her elbow then traveled down her arm to the palm of her hand.
His fingers trailed to the end of each fingertip.
“You have calluses,” he said.
Her hand immediately clenched into a fist. He pulled her fingers free.
“They’re fascinating,” he said. “There an indication of how different you are.”
“Different is not necessarily better.”
“In this case, you’re wrong,” he said. “Different is most definitely better.”
Her heart was going to break, she was sure of it.
“DALTON,” SHE said, her voice catching on a sigh.
“Patience,” he said.
He didn’t need his eyes as he kissed his way from her waist to her concave abdomen. She jerked when he kissed her navel and touched his tongue there.
He smiled in response.
She had beautiful legs. He traced a path from her ankles to her knees, and then up her shapely thighs to the nest of hair.
He kissed the crease at the top of her thigh, then did the same to the other leg.
She whispered his name again, her fingers grabbing at his shirt.
He raised up and kissed her on the lips.
“Patience, dear Minerva.”
He had never wanted to extend his loving for hours and hours. He’d always been determined to find pleasure more than give it. But this was Minerva, and he wanted to erase the sting of her tears and bring her joy.
He tasted her, teasing her with his fingers and then his tongue. She widened her legs and implored him with a moan. For long moments he indulged himself in pleasing Minerva.
Her breath grew shallow, her moans louder. She reached down and pulled his hand up to cover her left breast. For a moment he abandoned his teasing to raise up, draw a nipple into his mouth, gently grazing it with his teeth.
When he returned to her intimate folds, his tongue and fingers flicking against her, she widened her legs, lifting her hips up to offer herself to him.
Her hand played in his hair; he could feel her fingers tremble.
The sound of her climax opened up something inside him, more elemental and less selfish than passion.
Raising up on his forearms, his hands clenched into fists, he entered her, surging into her heat with too much speed and need. An apology trembled on his lips as she raised her hips to meet him. He steadied himself, breathing hard, and remained motionless, the hardest task he’d given himself in a very long while.
He spoke against her ear. “I should have been slower, gentler,” he said. “Forgive me.”
“Oh, bloody hell, Dalton. I was just going to tell you to move. Harder, please.”
Her words surprised a laugh from him.
“What an astounding woman you are.”
She answered him by lifting herself up and then grabbing both his buttocks and pulling him down. He had never been coached so ably.
He laughed again, surging into her. The top of his head was about to blow off. His heart was beating like a stallion. His breath was stripped from him. All he knew was that he ceased to be himself but was part of her. Or she was part of him.
Then she was shattering in his arms and this time he accompanied her, a journey of a thousand breaths and a dozen lifetimes at least.
Chapter 31
Dalton wanted, in a way that was alien to him, to ask if he was a better lover than Hugh.
He wanted her praise. It was a sign of his vulnerability around her. If nothing else, he should have heeded the warning in that thought.
Instead, he rolled to the side, pulling her with him so they faced each other on the Aubusson carpet.
He wanted to give her more of himself, a feeling he’d never had before this moment.
“I think you must be magic,” he said. “I think you must have been directed to my life for a reason. First, to charm me out of my dour mood. Second, to enchant me completely.”
“I enchant you?” she asked in a breathless voice.
He leaned over and kissed her, smiling against her lips.
“Oh, you do, Minerva. You most certainly do.”
“A minister wouldn’t have bedded me on the floor of your library,” she said. “See? You’re hardly boring.”
“You have a heretical mind,” he said.
“I do?”
“You should sound disturbed by that, not delighted.”
Making love had either been a lark in the past or something fervently desired. Neither situation had involved his mind, only his loins. He’d forgotten the woman as quickly as the deed was done or he awoke wishing himself home.
He’d never felt anything but a certain fondness for the women in his bed.
Now? Not fondness at all. Something more. Something that rumbled through his life with the force of a wave or thunder. Something elemental, like nature itself.
He rolled to his back, staring upward, seeing the ceiling as a patch of white. Was it his imagination or could he see the plasterwork?
“You have a mistress.”
He turned his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“I saw her, Dalton. Your mistress. She’s very beautiful.”
“You have me at a disadvantage, Minerva. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Will you say that about me tomorrow? ‘You have me at a disadvantage.’ ”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a mistress.”
“I might be considered your mistress,” she said.
She was more than a mistress, and he’d never said that about another woman. Nor had he ever thought to contemplate the future at the side of one particular female.
What would life be like with Minerva?
