by Lisa Bingham
Chelsea watched him in tortured silence. He would never know how much she wanted to rush into his embrace, to feel his arms close around her tight and strong. But quickly upon the heels of such a thought came another, stronger memory of a man quietly bleeding to death from a bullet to the temple.
Jaime. Her ardor was doused by an icy terror. She had to get Richard away from here. She wouldn’t see him hurt. She wouldn’t see him die.
“No.” The word surprised her because she’d spoken it aloud. Trying to release herself from his grasp, she added, “I’ve nothing to say to you.” Her spine grew rigid, her voice cool, as she relied on years of experience to guide her back into a role with which she was no longer comfortable. “What happened was a mistake.”
But Richard sensed her intentions immediately. “Damn it, don’t shrink into that prim and proper cast-iron mold! We both know how poorly it fits you.”
“Don’t you dare patronize me!”
“Why not? From the moment we met, you’ve been patronizing me. You treated me like a little boy or a family pet. But when you let your guard down enough to be a real woman and I responded, you couldn’t bear it.”
“What I couldn’t bear was your deceit!”
“A transgression I have already explained and for which I have apologized. The circumstances of my silence do not negate the passions and emotions involved when we loved each other last night.”
Chelsea steeled herself to speak the very words she wanted to leave unuttered. “Love. What we shared wasn’t love, it was a mating. An animalistic satisfying of urges.”
The lie scalded as it passed. But it was the only thing she could say to kill the light kindling in his gaze and drive him away forever.
Richard dropped her hand as if it had grown red-hot. Without a word, he turned, leading the horse into the stone stable house at the side of the cottage.
Chelsea was left alone in the shadows. So cold. So miserable. The sharp echo of her words rebounded in her head. How consummate a liar she’d become. How petty. How mean. Yet, in order to protect him, she couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t unravel her past transgressions and her present turmoil. She had to keep her own counsel. Remain quiet.
Just as once, in order to protect himself, he’d been forced to keep his silence.
Chelsea didn’t know how long she stood there, how long the soughing wind moaned its mournful tune. She only knew that she had lost something. A precious diamond of hope for the future. All that remained was to garner the will to see things through. She might never defeat Nigel, she might never see justice served. But at least she could thwart his plans to kill the true Sutherland heir.
She bit her lip in hesitation, then followed him into the stables.
The mews were quiet, dark, warm. Richard had removed the horse’s tack and had begun to curry the animal with a competent ease. Far from seeming ill suited to the chore, there was something about the calming sweep of his hands and the soft tones of his voice when he spoke to his mount that proclaimed him a man of education, of breeding, of experience.
Chelsea felt a softening, but she steeled herself against it. Horrifying visions kept springing to the fore. Not of Jaime but of Richard. Twisted, bleeding. Dead.
“Biddy said that you wish to return home,” she said quickly, needing to get him out of England while she had the power to see him go. “I’ll make the proper arrangements for you to leave this evening.”
He didn’t look up, betraying quite effectively that he’d been more than aware of her presence.
“I won’t be returning to Isla Santiago so soon.”
Her stomach clenched at his reply, but she managed to maintain her outward facade of calm. He couldn’t stay. He had to leave now while she had Nigel conforming to at least a portion of her wishes.
After several minutes of silence, she asked, “When will you go?”
“After I’ve finished what I came here to do.”
“But you were brought here by force! You couldn’t possibly have had reasons of your own to—”
“Couldn’t I?” His stare took on an unfamiliar glint, shining with an inexplicable hint of ruthlessness. He knew something, sensed something.
“Where have you been today, Richard?”
He patted the horse on the rump, secured it in its stall, then closed the gate. “Visiting family.”
Chelsea couldn’t even force a puff of sound from her tight throat. Finally, she managed a choked “Where?”
“Lindon Manor.”
Chapter 18
The color bled from Chelsea’s skin. She grasped the post support to keep from falling. “No.” The panicked word was barely audible.
Alarmed by the way she suddenly swayed on her feet, Sullivan reached out to steady her. To his infinite amazement, Chelsea dropped all pretense of cold formality. She hugged him close, clutching his shoulders.
“What did Nigel say? Did he hurt you? Did he tell you—”
“Chelsea!” Sullivan cut into her nervous babbling with a single word. He held her trembling form tightly to his own. “I didn’t talk to Nigel. I merely went to his house.” What he didn’t tell her was that he had talked to Lady Sutherland, thereby sowing a seed he hoped would prove fruitful sometime in the near future.
But Chelsea was far from comforted by his words. “You’ve got to leave this place. Tonight.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask questions, just do what I ask.” Tearing free, she backed toward the stable door. An alarming chalky pallor kissed her cheeks.
“Go. Leave. There’s nothing for you here. You said that yourself.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Stop it! This isn’t a child’s game of King of the Hill.”
“I never thought it was. I’m deadly serious in my intent.”
His choice of words drained her face of what little color was left.
Richard snagged her elbow. “What are you so afraid of?”
“You! What he’ll do to you.” She clapped her hands over her mouth as if regretting that she’d said that much.
At last, he was seeing the woman he loved and not the cold-hearted stranger who had greeted him upon his return.
“What could Nigel ever do to me that would frighten you so?” When she tried to shrug free, he held fast, knowing there was a motive for her odd behavior. He had not imagined her passion, her caring. He would not—could not—believe she didn’t return his love. Such an idea was at odds with everything they’d shared. They had set the foundations for a life together. It was up to him to determine why she was denying their destiny.
She tried to dodge away, but he pinned her wrists to the wall on either side of her head.
“Damn it! Tell me.” His voice rang with suppressed anger, a violence turned inward at his own impotence to fathom her change in moods.
The fight drained from her stance when she realized he was not about to release her. She finally admitted, “Kill you.”
A tenderness flowed into Sullivan’s soul. She did care for him. Why else would she fear so deeply for his safety? She was so steeped in her role as his governess, she hadn’t realized that he didn’t need her protection. That he was more than aware of the dangers present in consorting with the present Earl of Lindon.
“Do you hear me, Richard? He’ll kill you.”
He wasn’t concentrating so much on her words anymore. He was wondering what it would take to bring the blush back into her cheeks. To make her realize that he was a full-grown man, more than capable of taking care of himself and of her.
“I doubt that,” he replied lazily, leaning forward to tease the tip of his nose across her cheek, her jaw. She smelled so good. Like a dew-moist garden. “He hasn’t got the brains or the nerve.”
Chelsea wriggled from his grasp and planted her fist against his chest. “How dare you be so flippant! You’re mortal! Mortal! It’s time you faced that. Nigel Sutherland will see you
killed. He knows a hundred different ways to do it so that no one will ever suspect he’s responsible—and none of those methods will be quick or painless. But I won’t let you do it. It was because of me and my stupid pride that you became involved. I will not have your blood on my conscience, too.”
Sullivan drew back, seeing that she would not be so easily distracted. Shadows lingered deep in her eyes, eyes that were normally so clear and guileless; he could only wonder what secrets had dimmed their clarity.
“You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?”
She opened her mouth to refute such an idea, paused, then sagged slightly as if in defeat. “Yes. I am afraid of him. I’ve seen enough of Lord Sutherland’s methods to learn I have reason to be afraid. So do you.”
“How did you receive such an intimate knowledge of the man?”
She rolled her face away, but he forced her to look at him.
“How do you know him?”
“I’ve … worked with him.”
“His son, Cecil, is older than you. Nigel would have no need of your services as a governess. I repeat: How do you know him?”
“It’s not important.” Her response was filled with such vengeance, such loathing, Sullivan wondered what Nigel had done to merit such a reaction.
“It is to me. I sense something has occurred between you.” He added pointedly, “You once mentioned a debt of cruelty. Was Nigel responsible?”
“Yes! Yes, he was!”
“Then help me to defeat him, Chelsea.”
At his softly spoken challenge, she wilted even more. “He cannot be defeated. Don’t you see? Your only choice is to leave.”
“Run?”
“There’s no shame in saving your own life.”
“I’ve spent the last few years evading this man. He won’t give up so easily.”
“He won’t follow you. I can arrange that much at least.”
Sullivan straightened. Restlessly, he prowled down the length of the cobbled aisle between the stalls before facing her again. “Won’t follow me! How can you be so naive? I’m the one person who threatens his current life-style. He won’t rest until he sees me dead.”
“Once you’ve left here—”
“Once I’ve left here, he’ll merely send his bloodhounds after me. Again.”
“Again?”
“I’ve been dodging the good earl for years now, living on the run, moving from place to place, job to job.”
“But he didn’t know about you.”
Sullivan issued a short bark of laughter. “Oh, he knew. He even tried to kill me once. Sent a pair of men to do his dirty work—but they won’t be coming back here. Not in this life, anyway.”
He could tell his succinct retort surprised her, even scared her a little. “I’m tired of hiding, Chelsea. I won’t live like that again.”
“He won’t follow you!” she insisted again, desperately this time. “You have my word.”
“How could you possibly guarantee what Lord Sutherland will or will not do?”
She didn’t reply, but he could see that she believed her words to be true.
Her militant manner nudged at a shred of information he knew he should remember. Why did the mere mention of Nigel Sutherland make her seem so frightened? What had chased away his indomitable British governess? What had stripped away her innate courage, her overwhelming pride, and left her completely frantic?
“Does Sutherland have some hold over you?”
“No.”
“Has he approached you?”
“No!”
“Then why, Chelsea? Why would you dare to speak on his behalf?”
She stubbornly pressed her lips together.
“Why aren’t you willing to help me defeat him? Why are you so certain that your way is the only way? Why do you seem so confident one minute and bullied the next?”
“I don’t.”
“Damn it, Chelsea! You two have obviously talked. Have you bargained with him? Have you traded some sort of information to exact his promise?”
“No!”
He gave her a slight shake. The fragment of memory that had evaded him all evening wriggled into his head. He searched her features with infinite care. “How long have you served as a governess?”
His sudden change of tack confused her.
“What?”
“You’re quite experienced. How long have you served as a governess?”
“A little more than ten years.”
“Where were you before then?”
She wriggled free and moved away from him, fiddling nervously with the top button of her bodice.
“I was being educated, of course.”
“Where?”
She adopted a guardedness of her own. “Where?”
“Where were you educated?”
“In England.”
“Then you’re not from England originally.”
“N-no.”
“Where were you taught?”
She stormed to the door, but he stopped her by slamming it shut with his palm. “Do you know that when you’re angry, there’s a slight deviation to your pronunciation? A lilt. As if the woman you used to be has not been completely hidden.”
She blanched.
“Where were you educated, Chelsea? Or should I say by whom?”
She shook her head in denial.
“Tell me, did you once reside with our esteemed Lord Sutherland? Were you his ward? Did you eat the same meals, discuss the same politics, share the same roof?”
“Stop it! Stop!”
“Greyson mentioned today that Nigel once had a ward. Was that you, Chelsea? Did he bring you here to England? Did he set you up in his house? Wine you, dine you, and tutor you? Did he instruct you in the finer points of art, literature, and debate? What else did he teach you, hmm?”
At his words, the color sprang back into Chelsea’s cheeks. A defiance shored up her posture. She could see the disgust, the disdain, just as she’d feared. He didn’t mind that she knew how to arouse a man. He didn’t mind if she acted the wanton. As long as Nigel wasn’t the reason. As long as she hadn’t been his whore.
“Damn it, Chelsea, what did he do to you?”
“Do you want to strip me bare? Is that how you prove your own worth?” Disappointment tainted her tongue. Dark. Dank. Once again, she’d been tried, judged, and found wanting. She was nothing more than Nigel’s plaything. His doxy. Angrily, she began ripping at her buttons. “Fine.” She quivered openly now. A sob caught in her throat as she tore the gown from her body. Her shoulders were blurred in twilight. The tight cinching of her corset thrust the mounds of her breasts against the tatting of her chemise.
Sullivan watched in astonishment as she stripped to her shift, removing the corset cover, the petticoats, and the stays. In the shadowy interior, her skin glowed with a pearlescent luster. He could see the shape of her naked body under the delicate silk of her unmentionables. Although she was angry, she possessed the power to arouse him, excite him. She was slim, her bosom firm and rounded, her hips lush and inviting.
Before he could fathom her purpose, she pulled him to the far end of the stables. Her entire demeanor changed, becoming purposeful. He followed in a daze, the tempted trailing the tempter.
Once at the far side of the mews, she stopped, standing directly beneath the high barred window that allowed the warm, musky night air to drift inside. The last sheen of sunset seeped over the ledge and filtered to the floor in trickling dust motes of gold.
When he would have spoken, she dammed his words with her fingertips, then shifted to stroke his jaw, his neck, his chest. There was a lingering reverence to the caress, but at the same time, it was jaded by a blatant, calculated thoroughness. He was at once intrigued and repelled, enticed and put off. This wasn’t love that dictated her actions. It was something sharper. Baser.
With each second that passed, each blatant overture, it became quite obvious that s
he knew just what to do to a man, just how to make him beg. But while she had performed such intimacies through a mutual desire the previous night, now she approached it like a duty.
She unbuttoned his shirt, one inch at a time. Slowly, tantalizingly. As she exposed an ever-widening ribbon of flesh, she bent forward to trail a string of kisses from his throat to his sternum, then down, down, to his navel. She teased the edge of the indentation with her tongue as she breached the barrier of his trousers to trace the sensitive crease of his flanks.
Slowly and deliberately drawing away she spread a tack blanket on the straw behind her, knelt, and reached for the placket of his breeches. She didn’t unfasten the buttons but ran her thumbs down the seam, seeking, finding. Her fingers spread wide, wrapping around his pelvic bones, pressing into his skin. She tarried there, dallied, stroked, kneaded. All with the skill of a well-kept courtesan.
Sullivan fought the response he could not contain. He didn’t want her like this, her attitude bleak, her efforts practiced. But at the stirrings of his arousal, she lay down on a mound of straw. Her arms rested wide above her head, one knee crooked so that the fabric of her shift draped low over her thighs.
“Have it your way, Richard Sutherland. Men have used me to gain their own goals before. Why should you be any different?”
Chelsea fixed him with the practiced stare of a whore, all glitter and cold emotion.
Her transformation withered Sullivan’s instinctive response and killed any ardor he might have felt. This wasn’t the woman he’d come to admire, adore, and cherish. This was a stranger. A cold, unfeeling stranger.
He took a step back, wrenching away from her gaze. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Not without exploding in fury. Or was it disappointment? Or hurt?
Sullivan stormed from the stables and slammed the door.
Behind him, Chelsea sank back into the straw, curled into a tight ball, and began to cry. Damn you, Nigel, her heart whispered. Damn you for teaching me how to push him away once and for all.
