He wanted her to stay. Even though he had ordered her to leave.
He was being torn in two.
Just as she was being torn apart by her own conflicting emotions.
‘It is not just your hell,’ she said, stepping closer, sliding her arms about his waist, and laying her cheek against his rigid back. ‘It is mine too. I am in it with you.’
He spun round then, and took hold of her wrists, holding her at arms’ length.
‘You don’t burn for me, though, do you? Like I burn for you?’
She did not think he did burn for her, not really. It was the dead woman who held him in thrall.
‘That was not what I meant,’she protested. ‘You and I—’ she frowned, trying to find the right words ‘—we are both out of step with the rest of the world. It is as though everyone else is indoors, in a ballroom lit by a million candles, and they are all dancing a complicated minuet. And we are outside, on the terrace, in the cold moonlight, waltzing to a tune only we can hear.’
Some of the anguish faded from his face. He took her into his arms, and held her tightly.
‘I failed you tonight,’ he admitted. ‘The man could tell me nothing of any use. Oh, he talked.’ A shudder ran through him, and Mary responded by wrapping her arms round his waist, and hugging him for all she was worth.
‘He said a great many things I shall never repeat. Things that turned my stomach. God, that man is vile!’
‘It does not matter,’ she said, running her hands up and down his back, in an attempt to soothe him.
He buried his face in her hair, breathing her in as though his life depended on it. They stood like that, entwined in each other’s arms, for several minutes.
When he eventually whispered, ‘Let me kiss you,’ she had no thought of denying him. She simply raised her face to his in mute surrender.
He groaned in heartfelt relief when she parted her lips to let him in.
Mary was only startled for a second or two by the ridge of hardening flesh that she could feel pressing into her stomach. She had learned a lot from the girls she had worked with in that stuffy little workroom. They had sometimes giggled about that part of a man’s anatomy that ebbed and flowed with the tide of his lust. So she knew that it was the evidence of Lord Matthison’s rising desire. Just as she knew that the molten sensation she was experiencing between her legs was her body making itself ready to accommodate him.
‘I want you,’ he moaned into her neck, before pressing such a heated kiss to her throat that it felt as if he was melting her bones. He nuzzled the neckline of her gown aside, his fingers working frantically at the ties so that he could bare her breasts.
She gasped at the thrill that shot through her when his lips fastened round one pouting nipple, and began to suck. Now was the time to stop him, if she was determined she was not going to become his mistress.
‘Stop me now,’ he panted, echoing her thoughts, ‘if you don’t want me too. Or I shall not be able to stop.’ He ground his hips against hers, his hands cupping her bottom to hold her in place.
‘I don’t,’ she gasped, clinging to his shoulders, ‘I don’t want you to stop!’ she cried, suddenly convinced that this was one thing the saintly Cora would never have granted him. She would never have deigned to come to a man’s room, in her nightgown, and let him kiss her. Let him push her nightgown out of the way so he could feast on her breasts.
Before she had time to think better of it, Mary reached down and dextrously undid the buttons that held the fall of his breeches closed and delved inside. Molly had sometimes described the lengths she went to with Joe, in order to ‘keep him on a leash’. Mary had never imagined she might be glad to have learned exactly what she needed to do to pleasure a man. But now all she felt was exultation as he gasped, and groaned, and strained against her hand. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on his brow as he grew harder still. She knew he was really, really close to release.
And she had brought him there!
She, Mary the simple-minded dressmaker, was able to give him something his idol never could. Because she was alive, and real, and…in love with him!
That was why the thought of him being angry with her, of sending her away, had tormented her. Why she felt as though she would fall apart without him. She loved him.
She rained kisses over every part of him she could reach as he backed her towards the bed, feeling a sense of euphoria that she had roused him to such frantic urgency.
‘I need you,’ she cried as he swept her off her feet, and up on to the bed. It was as simple as that. He meant more to her than her pride, than her honour, than anything. ‘I am yours!’
He reared back, tore off the remainder of his clothes, and came down on top of her.
Chapter Eight
There was a moment of searing pain.
‘Cora,’ he gasped.
Turning her pain to agony.
She had thought she could make him forget Cora. But even though it was her body spread-eagled, naked, beneath him, it was her rival he was making love to. He could not have wounded her more deeply if he had plunged a knife into her heart.
‘My darling,’he murmured, stroking a tendril of hair from her damp brow. ‘My love, I never meant to hurt you. I would rather die than hurt you. I just never imagined…’He shut his eyes briefly. ‘Sandiford led me to believe that he…’
Her reticence to speak of what she could recall of her past had lent weight to Lord Sandiford’s graphic description of the rape he had boasted of.
But it had all been a pack of lies!
God, how had she managed to remain pure, given the circumstances to which she had been reduced? When he had seen her sitting in that gin shop, surrounded by jarveys, her eyes blank and weary, he had been ready to believe the worst. And ever since, he had been treating her accordingly. As a fallen woman.
Even though he had not held her to blame, at least, not for long, it had coloured all his actions. A man naturally thought of a woman with sexual experience, however gained, completely differently to the way he regarded a virgin.
But she had been a virgin. And rather than respecting her, he had just been so damned glad she was finally responding to him as he would wish, all he could think of was getting her to the bed before she could change her mind.
And now she was lying with her face averted, her eyes closed, her teeth clenched.
‘I have heard that the first time can be painful,’ he murmured, gently kissing her cheek. ‘I should have prepared you better. I was impatient,’ he admitted. ‘But now that I am inside you, the pain will ease, I promise.’
It was the genuine remorse she could hear in his voice that got to her. With one final whimper of self-pity, Mary turned her face so that she could return his kiss.
‘Yes, that’s my brave girl,’ he said, when she wound her arms around his neck. Though he instinctively wanted to bury himself deep inside her, he withdrew a little, and began to rotate his hips gently against hers. He wanted to give her pleasure, not just take his own.
It was not long before he could feel her tense inner muscles softening, her rigid body relaxing. He bent to suckle at her breasts, recalling how much she had enjoyed it when he’d done that before.
‘I love you,’she whispered, sweeping her feet up and down the backs of his calves.
‘I love you too,’ he answered, initiating a series of gentle, rhythmic thrusts. Far from tensing up against his intrusion, she undulated beneath him, sinuous as a cat, even to making little mewing noises. He matched his thrusts to her gyrations, resisting the urge to plunge deeply until her own movements became demanding.
When he felt her come to a rippling climax, his sense of elation surpassed anything he had ever experienced before. His restraint shattered, he only had to thrust deep a few more times to bring about his own heady rush of pleasure.
‘Cora,’ he groaned, slamming into her one last time before collapsing on top of her, utterly spent.
Mary ran her arms up and down his
back when she felt his hot tears scalding their way across her cheeks and neck.
It should have been her crying.
She knew she was not the first foolish, simple girl to let a handsome, wealthy man turn her head. But she guessed very few women would ever let a man use their body knowing full well he was in love with someone else.
She had nobody to blame but herself when he called out another woman’s name at his moment of crisis. He had never tried to deceive her. On the contrary, he had done all he could to make her believe she was Cora, so that she could more easily cope with the role he wanted her to fill.
‘What is it?’ he said, once he had got his breath back. ‘What is wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ She sighed despondently. ‘What could possibly be wrong?’
He shifted so that he could look down into her face.
‘I should not have done this,’ he said ruefully. ‘You trusted me, and I repaid you by taking your virginity.’
‘I wanted you to take it,’ she said, acknowledging to herself that this much, at least, was true. ‘I wanted you to take me to bed,’she confessed, remembering how she had naïvely thought that, by doing so, she could defeat Cora. ‘I want—’ she blushed at the admission ‘—to be your mistress.’
One day he would come to his senses and realise she was not Cora. She would say something, or do something that would snap him back to reality where she was concerned. And then he would send her packing.
But until that day came, she would give herself to him completely. With her whole heart. No more qualms about the immorality of lying with a man to whom she was not married. She loved him. That was all there was to it.
‘You will not be my mistress!’ he protested. ‘We will get married. Just as we should have done seven years ago.’
‘I cannot be your wife.’She struggled out of his arms and sat up, pulling the sheets up to cover her breasts. ‘I am just an ordinary girl, and you are a lord. If you won’t have me as your mistress…’ The thought of parting from him was so appalling she promptly burst into tears.
‘I won’t let you go,’ he said, putting his arms round her and drawing her close. ‘You are mine now you have given yourself to me. Are you not?’
She nodded into his chest, clinging to him as tightly as he held onto her.
‘Then no more talk of parting. If I cannot convince you, once and for all, that you are Cora, then we will live together any way you please.’
They subsided back on to the pillows, wrapped in each other’s arms. It was pointless to worry about how long their relationship might last. So far as she was concerned, he was the husband of her heart. Making love with him had been her way of showing him she would belong to him until the day she died. Only him. She would never love another man the way she loved him.
Lord Matthison stroked her hair soothingly until she fell asleep. Then lay there just watching her, his mind racing.
She needed him, this woman, in a way nobody had ever needed him before. She had nobody else, not even herself. What must it be like, to have no memories? To not know who you were, and where you came from?
He frowned. He had not understood what she meant earlier, about dancing to a different tune to the rest of the world, but he thought he could grasp it now. She was utterly alone. And he was an outsider because of what people believed about him. If only his parents had stood by him, everything might have been different. But their attitude had only served to give credence to Robbie’s accusations. ‘He must have done it,’ people had said, ‘or his family would not have shown him the door.’
Only she had demonstrated any faith in him. Though he could tell it went against all her principles, she had yielded her virginity to him. Even though she still thought she was Mary, and it would be impossible to marry him. A less scrupulous woman would have turned what she saw as his delusions to her own advantage. But not her. She just gave, and gave, and gave.
He wrapped his arms round her, and buried his face in her hair, a wave of possessiveness sweeping through him. He was not going to let her go, he vowed, no matter who she was!
When Mary woke, it was to find Lord Matthison, clad in a black velvet dressing gown, sitting on the bedside chair, studying her with brooding intensity.
Hastily, she reached for the covers, and drew them up to her neck, embarrassed to discover she had kicked them aside in her sleep.
He shook his head. ‘I was enjoying watching you lying there, naked and flushed from our lovemaking. But you know—’he leant forward to tuck an errant curl behind her ear ‘—your instinctive modesty pleases me almost as much.’
He bent over and kissed her slowly, languorously on the lips. ‘You are completely delightful.’
He got up abruptly, saying, ‘But you must be hungry.’He straightened up and went to the bell-pull by the fireplace. ‘I shall have Ephraims bring our breakfast.’
When he saw her horrified gaze flick to the door, he said, ‘Just draw the bed-hangings round you.’
She was grateful for his suggestion, but she still did not like to think of being naked, even behind the concealing curtains, with Ephraims in the room.
‘My nightdress,’she said, pointing to where it lay on the floor. An understanding smile on his face, Lord Matthison picked it up, and had just handed it to her when Ephraims knocked on the door. With a squeak of alarm, Mary knelt up, desperately trying to pull the bed-hangings closed, whilst still clutching the blankets to her breasts with the other.
With a low chuckle, Lord Matthison shut them for her, before allowing Ephraims to enter. Gratefully, Mary scrambled into her crumpled nightgown, to emerge shyly only after the servant had deposited a breakfast tray on the console table by the door, and left again.
Lord Matthison was pouring her a cup of chocolate. ‘How long will it take you to be ready to leave?’ he enquired, handing her the brimming cup.
‘L-leave?’ Mary’s heart came to a juddering halt in her chest. She had thought, after all he had said the night before, that he meant them to stay together. How had she got it so wrong?
‘Don’t look so appalled.’ He frowned. ‘You must surely realise I want to get you safe out of London as soon as I can. You have too many enemies here.’ He broke open a roll, slathered it with butter and honey, as he explained, ‘Madame Pichot has already demonstrated how spiteful she can be. Lord Sandiford, should he ever get wind of news that the girl who fought back, leaving his hands permanently scarred, is within his grasp…’ He grimaced. ‘And let us not forget the thwarted ambitions of Miss Winters. She has already attempted to destroy you once. I will be better able to protect you at Kingsmede.’ He darted her an assessing glance, before adding, ‘And of course, once we are there, we might be able to trace that woman. The one who took you to Oakham Hall.’
Mary laid her cup and saucer down on the bedside table and slumped down into the chair.
‘We need to find her. Find some conclusive proof that you are Cora,’ he persisted.
‘Last night,’ she remonstrated, ‘you said we could live however I chose…’
‘Once we have established your identity, yes! But dammit, I want to marry you!’he snapped. ‘You should be able to take your rightful place at my side, not stay hidden away as though you have something to be ashamed of! And you told me that the only way you will agree to marry me is if I can prove to you that you are Cora,’ he pointed out.
Mary shook her head from side to side, tears pricking her eyes.
‘What are you so frightened of?’ he asked when she began to tremble.
‘That—’ she gulped ‘—that once we find out who I really am, you will send me away,’she finally managed to confess.
‘No!’ he bit out grimly. ‘I shall never do that.’ He came across to the chair, and knelt at her feet. With a visible effort, he softened the tone of his voice. ‘I have already told you I will always take care of you. If, by some remote chance, we find out that you are not Cora, but some girl who is all alone in the world without family, or
friends, it would be unthinkable to abandon you. You will need me all the more.’
He put his arms around her, and she leant forwards, resting her head on his shoulder with a sigh of relief.
‘So, now you have nothing to fear, perhaps you can find it in yourself to tell me what you remember about that woman.’
Lord Matthison would never rest until he had solved the mystery of her identity. No matter how hard she wished he would. For in spite of his promises, she had a horrible, sick certainty that the minute they had established who she was, and where she had come from, it would all be over between them.
But all the fight had drained out of her. His will was far stronger than hers. He would keep on and on asking questions until she gave in and told him all she knew. She might as well get it over with.
‘The first thing Iremember,’she sighed,‘iswaking up in a room that I have always believed was an attic. It smelled of dust and decay, and there was all sorts of old broken furniture stacked up in jumbled heaps. And no proper window. Just a skylight, at the far end, by the door.’
She felt his shoulder tense under her forehead. She knew he was thrilled that she was giving him more information, but she could not share his excitement. A pall of misery had descended over her.
‘She only came in once or twice a day, with a jug of water, and a plate of what looked like the leftovers from someone else’s meal. She thought me a great nuisance for being there. She never said, but I could tell. She would stand there, staring down at me as though she hated me.’
‘What did she look like?’ Lord Matthison broke in to ask. ‘It sounds as if you were in a biggish house. Perhaps I know her.’
‘She looked exactly how you would expect a female prison warder to look. Hard-faced, and hefty. Plain, serviceable clothing. Hard eyes. Hard hands…’
‘You are doing well,’ he said, running his hands up and down her back, and dropping a kiss onto her temple. ‘Can you recall anything else?’
With his arms round her, the feelings that usually swamped her along with her memories had far less power.
Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss Page 14
