More Than Willing

by Laura Landon

  “Obviously.” He stepped into the room.

  Maggie was afraid he’d close the door behind him but he didn’t. Instead, he walked to the fireplace and stirred the dying embers until the flames came to life.

  She could feel the heat where she stood, but more enveloping than the warmth was the effect of the flickering firelight that illuminated the rugged features of his face. A heavy weight dropped to the pit of her stomach and her heart tightened with an agony that went bone-deep.

  When would the pain of wanting him go away?

  “Have you heard from your aunt and sisters?”

  “They write nearly every day.”

  “How was the Duchess of Sherwood’s ball?”

  “Felicity wrote a six-page letter describing everything from the decorations to the food to the gowns.” Maggie smiled. “I can even tell you what selections the orchestra played and what color livery the footmen wore.”

  “Which young beau has caught your sister’s eye?”

  Maggie watched Gray’s jacket pull tight across his shoulders when he propped his elbow against the fireplace mantle. The glow from the flames made his complexion seem even darker, more bronze, more…beautiful.

  He’d cut his hair before they went to Mayfair but that had been nearly three weeks ago and it had grown out enough that the back almost reached the collar of his shirt. Oh, she wanted to run her fingers through it; she wanted to cup her hand against the back of his head and bring his lips down to hers.

  Maggie pulled her thoughts away from such decadence. It was foolish to remember how he’d felt in her arms; inside her.

  She spun away from him and clutched her hands to her middle.

  “Has she said?” he asked.

  What did he want to know?

  “I’m not sure if any gentleman in particular has caught Felicity’s eye,” she said in a voice that sounded unnaturally raspy. “But she did mention a certain Earl of Landsdowne.”

  “Ah, Downey.”

  She turned back. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes. He would make an admirable match. And without a doubt, a good husband.”

  “She also mentioned the Marquess of Farnsdell. He has paid her special attention and made a point of dancing with her.”

  His features changed. “Write your sister in the morning and tell her not to encourage Farnsdell. In fact, tell her to avoid him at all cost.”

  Maggie heard a note of warning in his voice. “What do you know about him?” She knew if a man with Gray’s reputation thought someone a bad choice, he must indeed be bad.

  “Let’s just say the terms ‘kind’ and ‘gentle’ are completely out of his realm. The last… ahem… ‘lady of the evening’ he visited was taken to hospital where she remained for more than a month.”

  “Oh, lord,” Maggie said. She was tempted to sit down tonight to pen Felicity a note. “I’ll make sure she knows to stay away from him.”

  “Good. Then tell her to smile an extra measure in Downey’s direction. The woman with whom he falls in love will be treated like a queen.”

  He stepped so close to her she felt the heat from his body.

  “What about your other sister?”

  “I’ve always known Lottie would be the more difficult one to see settled.”

  “Because of her hunger for learning?”

  She nodded. Oh, she wished he hadn’t mentioned hunger. At the moment she was starving, but her craving had nothing to do with food.

  “What are you hungry for, Maggie?”

  “Don’t, Gray.”

  “What do you want, Maggie, my love?” He lowered his head to nuzzle against the crook of her neck. “This?”

  He let his mouth linger on her sensitive flesh while his hands held her body.

  “Tell me you’re not willing and I’ll stop.”

  She tried to find the words but none would come. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t but that wouldn’t have been the truth. She was more than willing.

  “Tell me, Maggie. Tell me that you’re willing.”

  He dropped his arms from around her and she uttered an agonizing moan. She’d never felt so bereft in her life, never so alone, so abandoned.

  With a sigh that shattered the silence, she willingly stepped into his arms and pressed herself against him until she was almost a part of him. Then, she cupped her palms on either side of his face and tilted his head downward.

  “Kiss me, Gray. Please, kiss me.”

  “Yes, Maggie, my love. Yes.”

  His mouth moved over hers. His lips touched hers, tasting her, devouring her. His hands moved over her body, setting her on fire wherever he skimmed across her delicate flesh. She wasn’t sure how she’d survived this long without him. She wasn’t sure she could have survived even one more day. Or one more hour.

  There were words with which she’d lectured herself, words of warning combined with strict instructions to never give in to him again. But those warnings seemed wrong somehow. The instructions as useless as bad advice. So she ignored the little voice that whispered in her ear and gave in to him completely when he deepened his kisses.

  Cool air brushed her flesh and she knew he’d unbuttoned her gown. He touched her breasts through the thin fabric of her chemise and she wished he’d removed it. Just like she wished the rest of her clothing was gone. And that his shirt was away from his body and she could touch his warm flesh.

  As if her thoughts propelled her fingers to action, she separated the front of his shirt. She skimmed her hands over his chest, then down his arms. She roamed across his shoulders and around his torso to his back.

  He moaned and she felt him shrink away when she touched his back but she didn’t let his protest deter her. His back was a part of him just like his arms and his legs and his hands. Perhaps some of the women he’d been with had found his scars repulsive, or maybe all of them had, but she didn’t. This was the part of him that had formed him into the man he’d become. The tragedy that had earned him his scars was why he needed her. She would not let him push her away.

  She moved her hands over him, memorizing the feel of him in her arms, then opened her mouth as an invitation that she needed more of him.

  The feel of his tongue touching hers was like liquid fire raging through her that ignited every inch of her. Oh, she wanted him. Wanted him even more than she had the first time. Because now she knew what to expect. Now she knew how magical it was with him. She’d gone too far forward and it was too late to go back.

  Together they moved across the room to the floral sofa Maggie sat on when she needed a moment or two to rest her eyes after the numbers in her ledgers blurred. He lowered her to the soft cushions and came down over her.

  Their lovemaking was swift, their need as insatiable as a drowning man’s thirst for air. One spasm after another shook her body and a second later he shuddered above her. When he collapsed against her she gathered him in her arms and cradled him as if she’d never have to release him.

  “I need you, Maggie, my love,” he whispered against her neck. “I’ll always need you.”

  Maggie’s thundering heart skipped a beat and for one second she realized that a life with him might be possible. It had to be possible because she couldn’t imagine living without him. In the same breath, her mother’s words sounded with amazing clarity when Maggie had asked her why she’d married Maggie’s father.

  Because I couldn’t live without him.

  Maggie finally understood what her mother had meant. The same was true for her. She was just as sure she couldn’t live without Gray in her life. The monumental risks that had held her back before no longer seemed important.

  She opened her mouth to tell him she loved him, but she didn’t have the opportunity to say the words. Before she could answer, the loud clanging of the alarm bell shattered the silence.

  Gray rolled away from her and with a muffled curse pulled on his clothes.

  “Stay here until I find out what’s wrong,” he ordered her as he grabbed h
is jacket and ran for the door. “I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

  Maggie quickly dressed, then threw her cloak around her shoulders and ran out of the room. This was her brewery. Staying here was not a consideration.

  She raced down the stairs and out the lower level door. She looked around when she reached the brewery yard but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Maybe the alarm hadn’t been sounded for an emergency inside the compound but outside.

  Maggie picked up her skirts and raced to a side exit the workers used when they went home.

  The minute she stepped beyond the brewery wall she knew why the alarm had sounded. One of the brewer’s cottages was on fire.

  Men raced back and forth from the nearest well with buckets of water but it was obvious they were fighting a losing battle. They seemed to realize it too because before long they stopped and stared at the flames shooting high in the air.

  “Whose cottage is on fire?” she asked the first group of women she met.

  She asked even though she already knew. She’d been to Gray’s cabin before, the day she’d come to care for him when he’d been injured. It was in his cottage that she discovered how much she really cared for him. But she couldn’t reveal that to anyone. Especially now.

  “That’s where Mr. Delaney lives,” Roddy Mulgrim’s wife said, shifting her toddler from one hip to the other. “He must have gotten out though ’cause that’s him standing by Mr. Murdock.”

  “His guardian angel was watching over him real close,” Sally Briggs said, pulling the light coat she wore tighter around her shoulders. “I don’t know how anyone could have survived a fire like that.”

  An icy shiver heated Maggie’s spine. No one was supposed to have survived the fire. That had been the objective. Someone still wanted Gray dead. And if he’d been asleep in bed like whoever started the fire thought he was, he would be.

  “Look, Mama,” Roddy Mulgim’s five-year-old said. “Nobody’s putting any more water on the fire. Now the house is gonna burn for sure.”

  “I know, sweetheart. They can’t save it.”

  Someone wanted Gray dead, and if he’d been lying in his bed instead of her arms, he would be.

  Maggie kept her eyes focused on Gray and the men surrounding him. One of them could have been the person who’d tried to kill him. But why would any of them want Gray dead? There was no reason. Only one person would benefit if Gray were dead – her cousin. And she was the reason he’d resorted to murder.

  The flames were almost out now and most of the people had returned to their own cottages to get out of the cold. But Gray stood close to the charred timbers in a battle-ready stance, with his legs braced wide and his arms stiff at his sides as he watched what was left of his home sift to ashes. Then, in a movement similar to an attack of fury, he spun around and headed for the stable.

  “Gray,” she called, hurrying toward him. “Don’t. Wait until—”

  He stopped her words with a slash of his hand and covered the ground to the stable in long, angry strides. Maggie had to run to catch up.

  “Wait, Gray. Let me go with you.”

  He didn’t answer but threw a saddle on one of the horses and led him outside.

  “Gray, don’t.”

  “Go home, Maggie! Now!”

  “Gray—”

  He ignored her plea and swung up on the horse and galloped out of the brewery yard.

  Maggie watched him go, knowing that when he came back nothing would be as it had been before.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Maggie sat on the bench beside her mother’s final resting place and looked at the beautiful marble cross her father had put at the head of his wife’s grave. To the right of the perfectly manicured plot was a small patch of uneven ground that indicated the spot where she and Aunt Hester had buried her father.

  “It won’t be long before you have a marker too, Papa,” she whispered as tears swam in her eyes. “Or before the girls and I can mourn your passing as we ought. As soon as Felicity and Lottie are safely wed, everything will be as it should.”

  Except she knew nothing would ever be as it should. Not if Gray killed Lyman.

  She buried her face in her hands then wiped away the tears that spilled over her lashes. Now she knew what her mother meant when she said she couldn’t live without the man she’d married. Maggie knew she couldn’t live without Gray either.

  What if Gray killed Lyman?

  Every possibility raced through her mind. They’d have to leave. Run away where no one would ever find them. Someplace where he would be safe.

  She thought of how she’d pushed him away. He’d told her that he wanted to marry her; that the brewery had nothing to do with the reason he wanted to spend his life with her, but she’d refused to believe him. He was Grayson Delaney, one of London’s most notorious rakes. He was a man so closely resembling her father they could have been one and the same. And yet…

  He wasn’t at all like her father. For months he’d worked in the brewery alongside the other laborers, putting in the same long hours, working at the same difficult tasks, never once using to his advantage the fact that he was the Earl of Camden’s son.

  He’d never said he loved her but that didn’t matter. Just like her mother, nothing mattered as long as she could spend the rest of her life with him.

  She tilted her chin upward and let the mid-morning sun shine on her cold face.

  “You’re going to freeze to death if you stay out here much longer.”

  Maggie jumped up with a small cry of relief, then raced to Gray and threw herself in his arms. “Are you all right? Is he dead? Are you hurt?”

  “Shh, Maggie, my love.”

  “We’ll leave before anyone knows what happened. We can go to New York or Boston or—”

  “Maggie, no.”

  “Yes.” She cupped her palms to his cheeks to emphasize her determination. “Somehow we’ll get the money to start a brewery. I know everything there is to know about running one. I’ll take care of everything. You’ll see, Gray. We’ll—”

  “Maggie.” He grasped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “I didn’t kill him.”

  She let his words register. “You didn’t?”

  “No. Lyman wasn’t there. He’s in London. He left more than a week ago.”

  “A week ago? But the fire—”

  “He didn’t start the fire. Someone else started it.”

  “But who? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She stepped back and looked at him. “There is no one else. No one else could possibly want you dead.”

  “Someone does. Enough to have tried to kill me twice.”

  “But why!”

  A twig snapped in the grass behind them and they spun around. Henry Tibbles stood a few feet away.

  “Henry? Is something wrong at the brewery?”

  Henry shook his head. “The brewery’s fine. I need you to step over here, Miss Bradford.”

  “Why, Henry? I thought you said—”

  “Now!”

  Henry lifted his hand and pointed a gun at Gray’s chest.

  “Do as he says, Maggie.” Gray grasped her upper arm and attempted to push her away.

  “Move, Margaret. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Maggie refused to step away. “What is the matter? Why do you need a gun?”

  Henry shook his head. “This is for your own good. I’m saving you from making the same mistake your mother made.”

  “Move, Maggie.”

  Gray’s voice held a firmness she wasn’t used to hearing. She looked at the scowl on his face then turned away. “I’m not making a mistake.”

  “You already have,” Henry said. The look of sadness and regret in his eyes was visible for the world to see. “I knew it the moment you set eyes on him. You had that same look your mother wore when she looked at your father.”

  “Maggie. Move, dammit!” Gray tried to separate himself from her as if distancing himse
lf could protect her. She wouldn’t let him, but angled herself between the two men.

  “She was never happy, you know,” Henry said. His tone contained a dark anger.

  “Yes, she was, Henry. She told me how happy she was with Father.”

  “No! She was miserable. And you’ll be miserable, too.”

  The expression on Henry’s face turned darker and Gray lifted his hand to draw Henry’s attention. “Don’t do anything while Maggie’s here, Henry. Make her leave first.”

  “I’d never do anything to harm one of Genevieve’s daughters. Or the brewery.”

  “Then why did you start a fire in the stable?” Gray said. “And try to ruin the wort?”

  Henry gave a snort of disgust. “That wasn’t me. That was Miss Bradford’s cousin. He thought if he caused enough accidents, she would realize how much she needed a man to help her. The fool!” Henry’s eyes shifted to her. “If he knew you better, he’d realize you didn’t need a man to help you run the brewery. Your mother gave you all the instruction you needed.”

  “What did you say to make him leave in such a hurry?” Gray asked. “His housekeeper said on the day he left he had a visitor in the morning and before noon he was on his way to London.”

  Henry laughed. “I simply told him if he wanted to live long enough to inherit Baron Bradley’s title it would be wise to leave for London as soon as possible.”

  “You threatened him?” Maggie couldn’t believe how complicated her life had become.

  “I didn’t have a choice. He would have continued to create trouble until someone got hurt. I was afraid that might be you.”

  The hand that held the gun lowered slightly and she felt a rush of hope that Henry would put the gun away.

  “You’ve always been my favorite, Margaret.” He paused. “Of course I love all of Genevieve’s daughters, but you were always special. I think because you’re the most like your mother.”

  “I know you were fond of Mother, but—”

  “Fond? I wasn’t fond of your mother. I loved her. I fell in love with her the moment I set eyes on her. She was the most perfect woman in the world. If it hadn’t been for her, your father would have lost everything years ago. That’s why after your mother died I came up with a plan to protect you and your sisters.”