She twisted her head, but she was trapped. They were all around her, too close. She kicked and struggled, but it was all a drunken game to them. Women didn’t matter. Women were for fun.
She opened her mouth to scream. One of them fell onto her, knocking the wind out of her.
Panic swamped her mind. She struggled blindly, couldn’t think. She pushed at the boy and started to scream.
A roar drowned her out.
She looked toward the sound.
Longmore was bearing down, face dark, eyes glittering with rage.
“What the devil?” said the one who’d fallen on her.
Longmore reached out and picked him off her and flung him aside.
“No fair!” his friend cried. “We saw her first!” He tried to pull Sophy against him.
Longmore knocked him aside. Another came at him, and he backhanded him. The boy staggered backward and fell.
Another tried to take a swing at Longmore. He stepped out of the way. The fist kept going, taking its owner with it, through an awkward turn. Momentum carried him to the top of the stairs, where he collided with the head post, and sank into a heap.
The corridor fell quiet.
“Anybody else want to play?” Longmore said.
He could barely see them. The world was a red glare, and he could barely hear above the blood pounding in his ears.
His fingers flexed, primed for violence. Itching to break and crush.
He waited.
There was a flurry and a scuffling and they were gone.
“Cowards,” he said. He started after them.
That was when he heard it.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
He looked that way.
Sophy stood, her forehead resting on the door. He heard a catch and a sob, and another.
He saw her fist rise and go down on the door.
Thud.
Sob.
Thud.
Sob.
He forgot about the drunken gang.
He went to her. He turned her around. Tears streamed down her face. She was shaking.
“Are you all right? Did those bastards hurt you? I know they’re boys, but if they hurt you—”
She hit him. “You idiot!”
She set her forehead against his chest, the way she’d done to the door. She sobbed, and she beat on him, in the same way. Thump. Thump. Thump.
“What?” he said.
“Don’t help me!”
“Are you insane? Did they give you a concussion?”
Clara’s door opened and her nightcapped head appeared. “What on earth is going on?”
“Nothing,” Longmore said. “Go back to bed.”
“Harry, are you brawling again?”
“It’s over,” Longmore said. “Go to bed.”
“Harry.”
“Leave it alone,” he said between his teeth.
Clara glared at him. But she drew back into her room, and the door closed.
“We need to get out of the corridor,” Longmore said. “We’ve attracted enough attention.”
“I don’t care,” Sophy said. She still trembled.
He picked her up.
“Put me down,” she said.
“Stop it,” he said. “You’re hysterical.”
He shifted her to take most of her weight in one arm, and opened the door to her room.
When they were inside the room, he kicked it shut behind him.
“I hate you,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “Stupid, drunken aristocrats. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I know,” he said.
“I hate to be afraid.”
“I know,” he said.
He carried her to the bed. He was still shaking, too, with rage.
And fear.
If he’d fallen asleep, he mightn’t have heard.
The doors were thick. Sounds from the corridor were muffled. And it was an inn. Drunken voices were only to be expected.
If he’d fallen asleep, he wouldn’t have known.
They would have shamed her. Hurt her.
His gut knotted.
He sat on the bed, still holding her. “Why didn’t you scream?” he said.
“I thought I could deal with it.”
“Four of them?”
“They were drunk. Easily unbalanced. Easily diverted. But . . . I was slow.”
“You were tired,” he said.
“Don’t make excuses! I’m not helpless!”
“I know,” he said. He wasn’t sure what he knew, except that she might have been hurt and she’d surely been afraid, and she had every reason in the world to be wild and unreasonable.
A lot of boys, down from Oxford or wherever, drunk and looking for fun. And she’d looked like fair game: an expensive tart—the disguise she’d adopted to help him find Clara. He felt sick.
“I went for my hatpin,” she said. “But they were all jostling me. So many of them, the clumsy oafs. I dropped it.”
“You should have screamed for help, straight off,” he said.
“I never had to scream for help in my life,” she said.
What hellish kind of life had she led? She was a dressmaker. By the sounds of things, the profession made war look like a tea party.
“There’s always a first time,” he said.
“I was going to scream,” she said. “But that numskull fell on me, and he knocked the wind out of me.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure you could have got out of that on your own,” he said. “But the bumping and bumbling and such had already roused me from a pleasant doze, and I wasn’t about to stand idly by when a fight was on offer.”
“Yes.” She clutched her head.
He brought his hand up and covered hers and gently pressed her head against his shoulder. “You had a bad moment,” he said.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I always know what to do. It’s a horrible feeling, not knowing. Being helpless. I hate it.”
“You’re not helpless,” he said. “You’re too unscrupulous to be helpless. You’re temporarily at sea, that’s all.” He paused. “Not only about those oafs.”
“No.”
“About Clara.”
“Yes. She’s one passenger. On my boat—the one that’s tossing on the sea, rudderless and doesn’t know where it is.”
“What else?” he said.
“You know,” she said. “Your mother. How to bring her round.”
“Hopeless cause,” he said. “Throw her off the boat.”
She pushed his hand away and lifted her head. “She’s making our life so difficult,” she said.
“She does that to everybody,” he said. “Tackle something you can manage. Adderley, for a start. Fix your busy mind on him. Forget about my mother. Forget about those spotty boys. They don’t know how easy they got off. Another minute, and you’d have thought of something, and they’d wish some big fellow would come along and knock them about.”
She was looking up into his eyes, and he saw something change. A flicker, a light, like the first star of evening.
Then her mouth slowly curved upward.
And while he watched that slow smile, the tension he hadn’t known he was holding began to ease.
He saw the devil lurking in her eyes and in the edges of the smile, where it lifted the corners of her lips.
He was so tempted to touch his lips there.
Too crass, probably.
But he was a man, and she was in his lap, and she was warm and soft. And now that her distress was sliding away her body relaxed, too. Now he was acutely aware of every curve and exactly where each part of her touched a part of him.
She bent her head and lifted his hand and held it against her cheek.
His breath caught.
“You’re impossible,” she said softly. “Just when I want to strike you with a blunt instrument . . . you say things . . . do things.”
“It’s all part of my cunning plan,??
? he said. He’d said whatever came into his head. If it happened to be the right thing, that was an accident.
“You don’t give up, do you?” she said.
“Obstinate,” he said. “It runs in the family.”
“Yes. Things run in my family, too.” She sighed.
She turned her face into his hand and kissed the palm.
The touch jolted through him like a lightning bolt.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said. “No one ever did that before.”
“Why the devil not?” he said.
“They weren’t you,” she said.
She came up off his lap and onto her knees, straddling him. She rested her hands on his shoulders and leaned in as though about to tell him a secret . . . and she kissed his cheek. It was the lightest touch, like a butterfly, but it was a shock again, and then his heart was beating too hard, pumping blood everywhere but to his brain.
Great Zeus.
She kissed his earlobe.
She thrust her fingers though his hair.
“Oh,” she said. “This is intolerable.”
“What is?” he said thickly.
“Self-restraint.”
“Then throw it off the boat,” he said.
“All right,” she said.
And she grasped a fistful of his hair and held him while she kissed him, firmly, determinedly . . .
Exactly the way he’d kissed her.
Exactly the way he’d taught her.
Only better.
Chapter Twelve
In examining their own conduct, analysing motives and correcting errors, repressing those faults to which they know that they are prone, and resolving to cultivate virtues in which they have proved themselves defective,—females, at all ages, are, it is evident, exceedingly well employed.
—The Young Lady’s Book, 1829
She’d been too demented before to take any notice.
But a few minutes in his arms, listening to his low voice sort out the world in a way only he could do . . . that had brought her back.
To him.
He’d taken off his coat and neckcloth, and his black hair was tousled. The lamplight made his shirtsleeves almost transparent, revealing the outlines of the muscled arms holding her. Her cheek had lain against his silk waistcoat. She could smell him and she could feel him: the big shoulders and lean torso under waistcoat and shirt. Her gaze had drifted downward, over the fine embroidery, glimmering in the soft light.
She was aware of his strong thighs under her and below them the long legs in tight trousers that left one nothing to imagine.
Her insides were vibrating.
She’d been so wretched and wild.
But he’d rescued her and he’d said things, and her mind had come back and her confidence, too.
And desire.
She wanted him. She’d wanted him from the moment she’d first seen him storming through a corridor of Clevedon House, looking like murder.
And now she wanted him with a craving fiercer than anything she’d known before in all her life. Even the shop dimmed in her mind, next to him.
How long was she supposed to wait?
Why did she have to be good?
She was a Noirot.
She threw self-restraint off the boat.
She kissed him fearlessly and deeply, the way he’d taught her. And while she kissed him, she let her hands rove over his big shoulders, where his shirt’s thin linen allowed her to feel his skin’s warmth and his muscles’ tensing under her touch.
The pleasure of it was almost unbearable. It was as though her insides held a sea of feelings, all in a beautiful storm, rocking her this way and that.
She rocked, too, in his lap, letting the wonderful feelings carry her along. She felt him stiffen and start to draw away.
“Wait,” he said. “Wait one . . .”
“Wait for what?” She nibbled his ear.
“You need to tell me . . .” his voice trailed off.
“What shall I tell you?” she said.
“Never mind. I forget.”
He wrapped his arms about her, and kissed her back. No waiting, no hesitating. Bold and straight to the point, as direct as a blow to the head.
She was dizzy, but she knew what to do. He’d taught her.
They kissed like a dance and like a duel: advancing, retreating, circling, in a world that grew steadily darker and hotter while thought drifted beyond reach.
She found the button of his shirt and unbuttoned it. She slipped her hand into the opening to touch his skin, and it was a shock, feeling his throat and collarbone under her palm. It was a shock to him, too, making his body go rigid. But he didn’t push her away. He tightened his hold, bringing her closer. She could feel his arousal under her. She knew what that was. She would have understood even if her sister had never explained it. He wanted her.
She wanted him.
That was all.
Dangerous. Wrong. Reckless.
Irresistible.
She pushed, and he loosened his hold and looked at her. His eyes were so dark, black as midnight, black as the sin they promised.
She pushed again, hard, leaning into the push. He finally got the hint and gave way. He fell back onto the bed with a choked laugh.
“Sophy—”
“Oui,” she said. “C’est bien moi.”
“Sophy,” he said, in the low, lover’s voice. Tingling sensations traveled up and down her spine. They set off things inside. Heat. Impatience.
She crawled over him. “What do I have to do?” She started unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“You devil,” he said. “Come here.”
Her pulled her down and kissed her, but this was different, more tender. He kissed her forehead, her eyebrows, her nose, her cheeks, her chin. He kissed her ear and then her neck, in the sensitive place under her ear. She shivered.
He kissed her in this way until she was trembling and dizzy. Then he brought his big hand flat against her back and rolled her onto the bed, changing their positions. He was on top, looking down at her, and all she saw were fathomless black depths, hot and promising sin and sin again.
Her heart raced like a mad thing.
He drew his hands down from her shoulders and down, slowly, deliberately, over her breasts, and she went hot everywhere, down to her toes. She let out an aching sigh that sounded like a moan in the quiet night. So quiet it was. They might have been far away, only they two, and no one else in the world.
They were quiet, too. Nothing broke the night’s silence but sighs, murmurs of wanting and pleasure, and the rustle of clothing and bedclothes.
Lower his hands slid, over her belly and down to the place between her legs. She stretched and moved, seeking more, as a cat did when petted, though no cat could feel like this. His hands—cunning, capable hands—tracing the shape of her, learning everything about her, all the private places her beautiful dresses hid.
Then he was turning her onto her side, and she felt his hands moving over her back, over the fastenings. She remembered this morning, and a wave of heat flooded her.
In a moment he’d loosened her bodice. There was a flurry of movement, and she was aware of tapes coming undone while he kissed her neck and shoulders. He drew away to pull the dress over her head, moving her this way and that, as if she’d been a doll. He threw the dress aside and she heard the whooshing noise it made as it slid to the floor.
Her shoes went next. The sleeve puffs flew away. He quickly undid her corset, which came undone easily, as it was made to do. With a few flicks of his fingers and a twist of his body, he shed his waistcoat.
His shirt hung open where she’d undone the button. She slid her hands over the fine linen, tracing the warm ridges and planes of his chest and belly. Under her touch, his muscles tensed and flexed.
She touched, and he answered. She wasn’t helpless. She’d never be helpless again.
She had power, over this big, dangerous man.
She was dimly aware of h
er petticoat sailing away, and her chemise following it. Her garters came undone and her stockings slid down. She didn’t care. She was wrapped up in him. She’d watched him fight. She’d watched him drive. She’d watched him walk. She’d watched him move. Whenever he was in the vicinity, she’d never been able to look away. And now she couldn’t stop touching, and wondering at him, at his strength and beauty, at everything that made him what he was and who he was.
Like all her family, she’d always dared and gambled and risked. She dared now, running her palm over his trouser front, over the fascinating ridge there, hot and pulsing against her hand. Cousin Emma’s voice sounded in her head, but the warning was too faint, stuck in a distant corner of her mind.
There was too much of him, overpowering reason. To much rampant masculinity overwhelming her senses. Too much wanting, overruling her good sense.
He bent and kissed her, and the kiss made her ache. It blotted out cousins and Paris and London and every ordinary thing.
She cared about nothing but this moment between them. All the world shrank to him: the taste of him and the feel of his mouth . . . the way he was rough and gentle at the same time . . . the weight of his body when he pressed against her.
He kissed her everywhere: her face, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts—and that made her want to cry again, and laugh, too. Down farther he went, kisses like little fires over her belly, while she tangled her fingers in his hair. And down farther still he went, to the place between her legs.
She felt his hands gripping her thighs while his tongue did to her most private place what he’d done to her mouth. Then nothing made sense anymore . . . and everything did, finally.
Everything changed. The world was another place, a great black lagoon on a sultry night. The air was thick, intoxicating. Pleasure grew and grew and an ache grew with it, for something she couldn’t name but needed to find, to reach.
She was aware of the movement and the rustling as he shed the rest of his clothing. Then he brought his nakedness against hers as his mouth covered hers again, and the kiss was so deep, so tender, and so endlessly sweet—
And he thrust into her, shocking her out of the lust-drunken stupor. The fog in her mind lifted and her eyes flew open. She was aware of the size and heat of his phallus . . . inside her. It was strange and uncomfortable and she felt trapped. And What have I done? she thought.