His gaze raked down her body, heating the skin wherever it lingered. Then he held up his hand to stop her as she reached for a garter. ‘Leave one mystery remaining. I will have time to uncover it later.’ He shrugged out of his coat and reached for the buttons on his breeches.
She watched in amazement as he stripped out of his clothes until he stood before her, unabashedly naked. When they were together before, she had not had the nerve to look at him. But now there was so much to see that she could not look away. He had a broad chest, strong arms and lean, well-muscled flanks. The plains and hollows of his body were sharply delineated in the glow of the bedside candles. And between his legs, in a cloud of hair, his manhood was already hard and growing harder as he stared at her body.
He gave her one more lingering look before closing the distance between them and taking her in his arms. She jerked in shock as skin touched skin and he backed away, raising his arms.
‘No,’ she said hurriedly, reaching for him. ‘It is all right. It was just...’ For a moment, it had been too wonderful to stand. She stepped into his arms again, giving a slight shimmy as the length of their bodies touched. She relaxed into the feeling with a sigh.
He laughed and kissed her, his tongue taking her mouth in slow, deep strokes as his hands ran down the length of her back. She responded the same way, tasting his mouth and smoothing her hands down to the dip in his waist and the round muscles beneath it.
The sensation of touching him and being touched by him was intoxicating and she could not seem to get enough of it. Then one of his hands came up to squeeze her breasts and took her to yet another level of desire.
‘This is what I should have given you from the first,’ he whispered. ‘This is what you deserve, every minute of every day. This and so much more.’ He scooped her easily into his arms and carried her the last few feet to the bed, dropping to the mattress with her and rolling to the middle. He kissed her again, on the mouth, on the throat and lower. She kissed his shoulder, urging him on until he worshipped her breasts with his tongue, sucking each of them until the flesh was tight and sensitive. Then his fingertips took the place of his tongue, playing with her nipples as his mouth moved lower.
Her fists balled in the sheets as his tongue found her pleasure and, for a moment, her body fought the onslaught of sweetness, back arching, hips rocking from side to side searching for escape. Then she surrendered to it. She released the cloth she held and twined her fingers in his hair to urge him deeper, riding the waves of passion he created until she collapsed, spent.
‘Not yet,’ he said, kissing the inside of her thigh. He rolled on to his back and made a coaxing gesture with one finger. When she didn’t immediately respond, he patted his thighs and held out his arms to her. ‘We are not finished. Come to me.’
She straddled his legs, lower at first. Then she slid forward on to his erection, letting it glide into the centre of her, filling her. She rubbed the place where they were joined, intrigued.
He sucked in a breath of air, his body tense. ‘Touch wherever you want. Move however you want. Let me feel you.’
She moved slowly at first, then faster, trying to remember the way he had thrust the last time they were together. She gave in to her own feelings, tightening her muscles, holding him inside her as she rode him. She touched herself where he had kissed her, then stroked the inside of his thighs, gripping to steady herself as her pace increased, knuckles brushing against his bollocks, a place she had yet to explore.
When she found her rhythm, she felt him moving under her, withdrawing only to thrust to meet her. The rest of his body seemed to grow as hard as his member, muscles priming for climax. As she felt him release, she drew a finger up to her own body, bringing joy to herself, trembling as he shook, crying out his name as he moaned hers.
She collapsed on to him as he had once done to her, allowing herself a breathless giggle before kissing his ear. What did one say at a moment like this? She settled on ‘Thank you’ since it only seemed polite.
He gave an exasperated sigh. ‘You’re welcome, I suppose.’ He kissed her neck, shaking his head.
‘I do not know the etiquette for such moments,’ she said, a little indignant.
‘There is none,’ he replied, ‘other than to follow your heart.’
She raised her head and gave him a sleepy smile. ‘My heart brought me here, to you.’
He smiled back. ‘I am glad.’ He drew the blankets over them, settling down to sleep. ‘We can discuss bedroom manners, tomorrow. We must make an early start. But there is still one more night on the road until we reach Newcastle.’
‘Another night,’ she marvelled.
‘And we will not waste a moment of it,’ he promised.
Chapter Eighteen
The Hospital for Lunatics at Newcastle upon Tyne was further than he’d planned to go to gather information on Scofield and, now that he could see it, he regretted his plan to bring Peg. It did not look like the sort of place that one brought a lady of any kind, much less the girl that one wished to marry.
As the carriage passed through the heavy iron gates and rolled towards the hospital proper, he could feel the despair hanging like a miasma over the grounds. Peg must have felt it as well for she shrank closer to him on the seat, shivering against his side.
‘I understand if you do not want to come in,’ he said, eyeing the coachman who had opened the door for them. ‘You can wait here, if you wish.’
She took a deep breath and let it out in a resigned sigh. ‘I have come too far not to hear the truth with my own ears. As you said from the first, you may need me to persuade the doctor to speak.’
‘It will be easier to have a member of the family present,’ he agreed, feeling guilty that he even needed her help. It might have been different had he not been asking about a duke. But when questioned about such an august member of society, it was hard to believe that the doctor would be free with his information if he had no incentive to talk other than to satisfy David’s curiosity.
They got out of the carriage together and entered a building that was almost as grim on the inside as it had been on the outside. Walls that had once been a pristine white were greyed with years of grime and there was a strange, lingering odour of mildew, burned food and unwashed humanity.
If the entry hall was bad, the rest of the place was most certainly worse. He turned to Peg again, ready to send her back to the safety of the carriage.
Before he could speak, she stepped forward, looked up into the stern face of one of the guards stationed by the door and said, with no trace of fear, ‘We would like to see Dr Phineas Dial, please.’
‘What’s your reason?’ the man snapped back at her, in a voice meant to intimidate her into silence.
‘That is none of your business,’ she said, staring back at him as if he was a speck of mud on her boot. ‘You may tell him that his visitor is Lady Margaret Bethune, sister of the Duke of Scofield.’ Then she dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief as if offended by the smell. ‘Show us to his office, or to a sitting room of some kind. I am not accustomed to being kept waiting in a common hallway.’
David tried not to start in surprise as the orderly snapped to attention and ran to arrange the meeting she requested. He had forgotten that the woman next to him, his dear, sweet Peg, was also a child of the peerage. She was not likely to be cowed by a person who was socially miles beneath her, even though physically he was a foot taller and twice as wide.
He leaned his head in her direction. ‘Very impressive.’
She blinked at him, innocent and unassuming. ‘One does not live in Scofield House without learning a few of its tricks.’
‘But I have never seen you use them before,’ he said, grinning.
She blinked again. ‘Do you wish me to stop?’
‘On the contrary, I wish you to continue.’ This was not the place to tell her that her asse
rtiveness was arousing, but he had hopes that in the future they would have more than enough time to explore it.
The attendant reappeared and led them down a hall to an office on the far end of the wing, opening the door and announcing them to the man who stood respectfully behind the desk to greet them.
‘Doctor Dial?’ David said with a bow and received a brief nod in response. He offered their cards.
The doctor examined his card and the more ornate card of Lady Margaret Bethune. His reticence dropped away, replaced by fawning respect, as he bowed deeply in Peg’s direction. He then turned back to David. ‘Please, sit down, Mr Castell. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?’
In David’s opinion, the sudden display of respect was overdone. But perhaps the fellow treated all guests that way, at least until he was sure that a donation to the institution was not forthcoming.
‘Thank you,’ he said, waiting until Peg was seated before taking the second chair in front of the desk. ‘As to the reason for this visit, I am a reporter for the Daily Standard.’
‘I see.’ The room instantly chilled as the doctor measured his worth and found it wanting. ‘If you think to come here and write a lurid story about your visit with the inmates, you are mistaken. Even Bedlam no longer allows such nonsense and we are far more strict than they ever were.’
‘That was not my intention at all,’ David assured him with a winning smile. ‘I do not want to bother your residents. In fact, it is you we have come to see.’
‘Me?’ He supposed the doctor had reason to be surprised, since they had appeared on the doorstep unannounced.
‘Indeed. You are possessor of some information that Lady Margaret and I would most like to have,’ he said, giving the doctor another smile.
Dial looked between the two of them again, then focused on David. ‘As I said before, the residents are not here to provide fodder for a London newspaper. I have promised their families privacy and they shall have it.’
‘This is not concerning one of your current patients,’ Peg interrupted. ‘At least, I do not believe so. I am interested in learning more of certain enquiries my brother, the Duke of Scofield, made to you, concerning problems that we have been having with a mutual friend.’
Now the doctor looked worried. It was easy to reject the questions of a journalist from a minor London newspaper, but much harder to deal with the sister of a peer. ‘I believe that His Grace intended that correspondence to be confidential,’ he said, giving her a nervous look.
‘Of course he did,’ Peg said with a firm smile. ‘But not from family.’
‘If he had meant you to know, would he not have told you already?’ the doctor asked, puzzled.
Peg gave him a pitying look. ‘There are no secrets in our family. But Scofield is far too busy for me to be bothering him about this matter, nor is he the best one to be handling it. I know he wrote to you and I know that you recommended commitment. I simply need to know how much information he gave you to be sure his facts were accurate.’
‘You doubt his understanding?’ the doctor said, surprised.
‘Now perhaps you can see why I cannot simply ask him about this,’ Peg said with a conspiratorial smile. ‘I am his favourite sister and am allowed some latitude. But one does not tell a duke that he might be wrong. Peers do not like to hear that.’ Her expression softened and she gave the doctor a melting gaze. ‘It would be most kind of you to set my mind at rest on the matter. Then neither one of us will have to bother Scofield with it.’
For a moment, the doctor’s eyes glazed under the weight of so much female charm. Then he replied, ‘I suppose it would not be breaking a confidence to speak to a member of his family about it.’
‘Of course not,’ she said, beaming at him. ‘Now just what did he tell you about the person that concerned him? He did not supply a name, did he?’
‘Of course not,’ the doctor said.
‘That is good to know,’ Peg said, placing her hand on her chest as if in relief. But knowing her as he did, David could see the faint flicker of irritation in her eyes that showed her disappointment that the matter could not have been settled simply with a single question.
She tried again. ‘And how did he describe the symptoms of the person’s malady?’
‘Normal behaviour and even temper ninety-nine per cent of the time, but with rare cases of unexplainable, unprovoked murderous rage.’
‘Unprovoked,’ she repeated, giving David a significant look to remind him that all his searching for motive in the crimes was useless if they were dealing with an unpredictable madman.
The doctor nodded. ‘He said she was totally normal one moment and the next—’
‘She.’ David could not help his explosive response.
‘She,’ Peg replied, with a smug smile, as if she had known it all along. ‘Was there anything else he enquired about?’
‘Mostly it was a worry that such madness might be passed to children,’ the doctor replied. ‘He was right to be concerned, for that is often the case.’
‘And he wanted to know if there were any progressive treatments you could recommend,’ she said to him.
‘Unfortunately, there are not,’ the doctor replied. ‘Perhaps, if we had stopped the patient before she committed the first act, we might have saved her. But after the second?’ He shrugged. ‘One does not proscribe treatment for a mad dog or a man-eating tiger in India. The threatening animal must be eliminated permanently or caged. If the full weight of the law is not brought to bear on the lady he is worried about, then all I can recommend is permanent commitment.’
‘And are there facilities for female patients?’ she asked. The tremor in her voice hinted that she was afraid to hear the answer.
‘We do not notice gender at such times as this. If the disease is the same, the treatment is the same,’ the doctor said with a firm expression.
Peg nodded in feigned approval, but her eyes were wide with fear. Then she asked, ‘Did you ever hear from my brother about a time or date for admission?’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ the doctor said. ‘He informed me that he was not ready at this time to remand the lady into our care.’
Either he did not want to think of his lover in a place like this, or he had no authority to do anything. The powers of a duke were great, but not infinite. If the woman in question had family, it would be up to them to see to her care. Scofield could not snatch her off the street and lock her away for his father’s murder without explaining all to someone and creating a scandal almost as great as the one everyone already believed about him.
‘Well,’ said David in a tone that implied he had heard all he needed to, ‘does that clarify everything to your satisfaction, Lady Margaret?’
‘I believe so,’ she said, looking over her shoulder towards the main part of the building and shivering. David agreed with the sentiment, for it was a relief to know that they would not be able to visit the mysterious woman that Scofield had wanted to commit. As much as he wanted to know her identity, he did not have the heart to see the conditions of her imprisonment in a place like this.
After one last glance behind her, Peg rose, forcing the men to stand so they could end the interview.
‘If there is anything more you need,’ the doctor added, ‘or any help restraining the patient...’
‘We will come to you first,’ Peg assured him. ‘I am sure my brother was...satisfied with your answers and the facilities here seem most...comprehensive.’ It was obvious the place horrified her, but it was also clear that this man was proud of the work he did and could not see the problems with it.
‘We are also quite far from London,’ the doctor reminded her. ‘It is sometimes easier to keep problems distant from home, when one wishes to forget the tragedy of them.’
She shivered again and David tried not to think of what it would be like to be abandoned and forgo
tten in a madhouse, miles from friends and family. ‘I understand,’ she said, pulling her pelisse tighter around her as if fighting a chill. ‘But now I think, Mr Castell, it is time we returned to the carriage to continue our journey.’
‘Of course, my lady.’ David laid a hand on her elbow and guided her back through the building to the front door as quickly as they could without seeming rude.
* * *
When they were concealed in the body of the carriage, he shouted the single word, ‘Drive’, and they were off. He added to her, ‘I do not care where we are going, as long as it is away from here.’
She allowed herself another shudder. ‘That poor woman. I do not care what she has done, I cannot imagine sending her to such a place as this.’
‘Her,’ David repeated in an amazed voice.
‘A woman,’ Peg said, smiling in relief. ‘It was not my brother at all.’
‘That is why he told me he did not care what I wrote,’ David said thoughtfully. ‘He is covering for someone else. But who?’
‘Although Miss Devereaux might have the best motive for killing your friend, she was not Hugh’s favourite when Father was killed,’ she said. ‘As I told you before, there was someone in the house with us the night Father died. It might have been her.’
‘But what would motivate this woman to kill Sterling? The doctor did refer to two murders,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘She might have been trying to protect Hugh. Or, if she is truly given to bouts of madness, she might strike with no reason at all. And if this is the woman whose lock of hair we found?’ Peg sighed. ‘I can see why it would render a marriage between them impossible. Even if he was willing to have a relationship with a murderess, he could not risk that his heir might grow up to be a madman.’
David scratched his head, bewildered. ‘But we still have no idea who she might be. And I cannot ask the Duke for her identity, because if he feels we are too close to the answer, he might take the blame for the murders and we will never know.’
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