Thief of Shadows

  Something seemed to give way inside him. He reared and thrust into her, hard and fast. His eyes were locked with hers, determined, even as the orgasm took him, convulsing his features, tightening the tendons on his neck. He shoved into her one last time and held himself there, tight against her, as if to claim her forever.

  Her smile wobbled. Forever wasn’t for them.

  FOR A BRIEF moment in time, Winter’s mind stopped. All of his concerns and worries, all of his thoughts, simply ceased to be. He lay on the hearthrug, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and only felt the relaxation of all his muscles. The wonderful warmth of the woman lying next to him.

  Total peace.

  Isabel ran her fingers across his chest, tickling a bit. “Winter?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How did you come to be the Ghost of St. Giles?”

  He opened his eyes, thoughts and memories flooding back so quickly to fill his empty mind that it was nearly painful. “A man named Sir Stanley Gilpin taught me.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow, leaning over him. Her breasts swung gently at the movement, for a moment capturing his attention. “What do you mean?”

  Her hair was still confined in an elaborate coiffure and he wished she would let it down. He’d never seen her hair down. “Sir Stanley was an old friend of my father’s and the home’s benefactor before he died two years ago. He was a widower. When I was young, he’d come to our house to debate religion and philosophy with Father. They were friends from childhood, but very different.”

  “In what way?”

  He absently pulled a pin from her hair as he thought. “My father was quite serious.”

  She smiled. “Like you.”

  He nodded, finding and removing another pin. “Yes, like me. He worked hard all day and at night read the Bible and heard my brothers’ and my lessons. What spare money he had he saved and eventually spent to found the orphanage. He believed one should devote one’s life to helping others.”

  She folded her hands on his chest and laid her chin on them. “And Sir Stanley?”

  “My father loved him as a friend but considered him frivolous. Sir Stanley liked reading novels and poetry, enjoyed the theater and opera, and even wrote some plays, although I have to say they weren’t very good.”

  “He sounds a delight.” Isabel grinned.

  Winter blinked, his hands stilling in her hair. He’d never thought about it before. “I suppose he was. In any case, he was quite the opposite to Father, and I rather admired him as a boy.”

  He felt a familiar guilt. Father had been everything a good man should be—pious, hardworking, generous. In contrast, Sir Stanley had been flamboyant, full of extravagant ideas, not very practical—and oddly compelling to a young lad.

  “It would be hard not to be attracted to such a man,” Isabel said gently.

  He glanced at her face. Did she know the guilt he’d felt? He shook his head, returning to the story. “Sir Stanley was a canny businessman in his youth. He made his fortune in stock in the East India Company. Later I believe he owned a theater. In any case, by the time I was seventeen, I was helping Father at the home—”

  She suddenly pushed up on her arms. “You started so young?”

  He’d succeeded in freeing one long lock of hair. He wound it about his finger as he watched her. “Yes. Why? Many have a trade by that age.”

  Her fine brows knit. “Of course, but”—she shook her head, thinking—“did you have any say-so in deciding to be the home’s manager?”

  “You mean did I ever think to desert the home and all the children therein—”

  “Winter,” she chided.

  He gently tugged her lock of hair. “That’s what it would’ve been.”

  She looked mutinous.

  He found another pin and pulled it free. “If it makes you feel any better, I enjoy my work and always have.”

  “And if you didn’t?”

  “I’d do it anyway,” he said gently. “Someone has to.”

  She sank to lie on his chest again. “But that’s just it. Why must it always be you?”

  “Why not?” A second lock of hair fell to her shoulders, and he pulled it forward to run it over his lips. Her hair smelled of violets. “Do you want to continue to argue the point or hear about how I became the Ghost of St. Giles?”

  She wrinkled her nose adorably, and a single spark of pure, sweet happiness shot through his breast. “Ghost.”

  He nodded. “When I’d been working at the home for three or four months, an… incident occurred.”

  He concentrated a moment on untangling a pin from the hair at her nape, aware that he was stalling. She waited quietly, not moving or saying anything, and at last he met her eyes.

  Winter swallowed. “I’d been sent to pick up a child who we were told had been orphaned by his father’s death. When I arrived at the wretched rooms where he and his father had lived, he was being auctioned off by a whoremonger.”

  He heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Dear God.”

  Dear God indeed. He remembered the cramped room, the dozen or so adults crowded into it, and the terrified little boy. He’d been a redhead, his hair shining like a beacon in the midst of the wretchedness.

  “What happened?” she asked, her low, throaty voice luring him back from awful memories.

  “I attempted to stop the auction,” he said carefully, concentrating on the feel of her silky hair in his fingers. Ham-handed fists. The searing pain of broken ribs. The boy’s tear-stained face as he’d been led away. “I was unable to rescue the child.”

  “Oh, Winter,” she whispered. Suddenly she was kissing him, her soft hands cradling his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Each word was a kiss against his face, neck, and lips.

  He reached up and held her head still so he could kiss her properly: deep and frankly. The old pain mixed and merged with the present sweetness until at last it faded. A little.

  He drew back reluctantly, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Thank you.”

  She looked angry. “You never should’ve had to face such a thing when you were so young.”

  “What of the little boy?” he asked gently.

  She looked even angrier. “He shouldn’t have faced it either.”

  His smile was sad. Did she not know that such things happened every day in St. Giles? “In any case, Sir Stanley learned of the matter when next he came to call upon my father. He took me aside and asked if I would like to learn of a way to honorably defend myself. I said yes.”

  Sir Stanley had been about sixty at the time, and Winter remembered that his broad, red face, usually merry and smiling, had been quite grave.

  He withdrew the last pin from her hair and ran his fingers through the thick locks, combing and spreading them. “Sir Stanley invited me to his house and for the next year taught me how to use the swords as well as various acrobatic maneuvers. He’d learned it all in the theater and he was a rigorous master.”

  “But didn’t your father object?”

  “He didn’t know what I did there.” Winter shrugged. “Father was busy with his brewery and the home. I think he was glad that Sir Stanley had taken an interest in me. Sir Stanley may’ve also slightly altered the truth about what I did at his home.”

  She arched one eyebrow. “Altered the truth? Winter Makepeace, did you lie to your saintly father?”

  He felt his face heat. “It was wicked of me, I know.”

  She grinned and quickly kissed his nose. “I think I like you more when you’re wicked.”

  “Do you?” He searched her eyes. “And yet I strive to control the wicked part of myself every day.”

  “Why?”

  “Would you have me run the streets as a mad beast?”

  “No.” Her forehead wrinkled as she cocked her head, studying him. “But I think there is no danger of that happening. Doesn’t everyone have a small bit of wickedness in them?”

  He frowned. “Perhaps. But my wickedness is
dark.”

  Her hair was gloriously free about her shoulders. “The dark pit you spoke of before?”

  “Yes.” He grimaced. “Maybe. You once asked why my sisters were not as affected as I by St. Giles. I think there is something within me that absorbs the evil in St. Giles. There are times when I see someone being hurt or when a child has been abused that I have the urge to… kill.”

  “But you don’t.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t. I battle that urge and I fight it down and I’m very careful to hurt only those who deserve it.”

  “Have you…” Her brows knit as she reached out and stroked a finger down his breastbone. “Have you ever had to kill anyone?”

  “No.” He inhaled beneath her touch. “I’ve come close, but I’ve always been able to refrain.”

  She wrapped her arm across his chest. “And I think you always will. You may fear the darkness in you, but I don’t. You’re a good man, Winter Makepeace. I think you absorb the evil in St. Giles, as you put it, because you feel so deeply.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “There are many who have accused me of not feeling at all.”

  She gave him a knowing look. “Because you’ve made sure to hide your feelings—your emotions. Not all of it is dark, you know. Some of it might be quite… nice.”

  Was she right? He stared at the ceiling of her library, thinking. She might be. Isabel was a very perceptive woman, he’d found. But if she was wrong, if he let go only to lose control altogether… no, the risk was too great.

  “You don’t have to decide now,” she said. “Tell me about the harlequin’s costume. Whatever made you don it?”

  “It was Sir Stanley’s invention,” he replied, relieved by the change of subject. “He was the original Ghost of St. Giles, you see, in his youth.”

  “What?” She sat up again. “You mean there’s been more than one?”

  “Oh, yes.” He smiled at her incredulity “In fact… Well, suffice it to say that the legend of the Ghost of St. Giles has been around for quite some time. Decades, at least. Perhaps even longer than that. Sir Stanley simply took the legend and made it real. His theatrical background gave him the idea for the costume. People see what they want to see, he always told me. If you present them with what looks like a spectral figure, supernatural and possessing powers beyond the earthly, they will believe that is what they see. It’s a great advantage in a fight. Sometimes one’s opponent is so frightened by the mask and costume that they simply run away.”

  “Mmm,” she murmured as she traced a circle about his left nipple. He was aware that he was growing hard again and wondered if his randiness would dismay her. “And so by day you run the home and by night you run about St. Giles as the Ghost. Is that right?”

  He frowned. Her tone was carefully neutral. “Not every night, naturally—”

  “Oh, naturally,” she said, her voice almost a growl. “I suppose you must sleep some nights. At least one or two nights a week.”

  He watched her, wondering what had aggrieved her.

  She sighed and straddled his hips. He was immediately distracted, aware that her moist, feminine parts were very near his cock. “And will you always do this?”

  “What?” He brought his attention back to her face. She was scowling down at him. “Run about St. Giles?”

  “What happens if you’re wounded?” She leaned down, nearly nose to nose with him. Her breasts swung temptingly and he caught one in his palm, feeling the soft weight. “Winter! What happened after I brought you home wounded from St. Giles?”

  He shrugged, stroking his thumb over her nipple. “I came back to the home and rested, like the other times.”

  “The other times?” Belatedly, he realized he’d made a mistake. His admission only seemed to drive her ire higher. “How many times have you been wounded?”

  “Not often,” he soothed. Oddly her anger did not dampen his ardor. Quite the reverse, in fact. But even as new to lovemaking as he was, he knew that he would have a greater chance of repeating their previous encounter if she were in a softer mood.

  “How many?” she demanded, a nude fury.

  “Three, perhaps four times,” he replied, hedging the answer a bit. In reality, he couldn’t count the number of times he’d been wounded as the Ghost.

  “Winter!” She looked truly distressed. “You must find a way to quit this activity.”

  He arched his brows mildly. “Why?”

  She slapped her hand down on his chest rather painfully. “Can’t you see? Eventually you’ll be maimed or even killed!”

  “Hush.” He caught her hand and brought it to his lips, caressing her palm. “I’m well trained and I’ve done this for years before I met you, Isabel.”

  “Don’t brush my concern away like so much dust,” she said, her other hand coming down equally painfully.

  “Isabel.” He caught that hand as well and thrust her hands out wide.

  “Oof!” Overbalanced, she fell against him, her breasts pleasantly crushed to his chest. “Winter, you must—”

  He was weary of this useless argument, so he pulled her closer and kissed her. For a split second she resisted. Then, with a sigh, she submitted to him, her mouth opening beneath his, giving him what he craved. He made a sound at the back of his throat, a deep groan that was almost a growl. She stripped him of civility—of reason and will. All he could do was feel and act. His beast came roaring to the forefront. His hips were already moving beneath hers, urging her closer. He was so hard he could feel the beat of his pulse in his cock, the ache of want, of sexual need.

  He needed her.

  As if she knew his extremity, she made a soothing sound. At some point he’d let go of her wrists. She petted him, like a child soothing a savage beast, and one part of him wanted to laugh at the thought.

  Another only wanted to take what she offered.

  Thankfully she lifted and grasped him then. He gritted his teeth at her touch and opened his eyes.

  She was watching his face as she lowered herself to him. “Shhh. I have what you need.”

  Did she mock him? It hardly mattered. He’d accept her if she did or not—he was too far gone to deny either her or his own need.

  She engulfed the head of his cock and it was such bliss he nearly came at once. He bit the inside of his cheek to prevent the ignominy. To prevent this ending too soon.

  He watched her through slitted lids. She seemed lost in her own pleasure, her head thrown back, her lovely hair cascading down her back. Something savage and unthinking awoke at the sight. This was his cock she took within herself. His body that brought her such ecstasy. She might think this was merely a physical joining, but he knew far better.

  He was claiming her as his. He’d warned her once before what this physical act meant to him. This was a union. This was forever. But he had enough wits about him to know she didn’t yet see it as such. He must go slowly. Bide his time.

  And in the meantime, if she wanted him only for the sex, then he would use it to bind her to him.

  So he reached up with both hands and fondled her breasts in the way he now knew she liked, and when she gasped in answer, he knew a fierce joy. This woman. This woman was his.

  He trailed one hand down her belly to the fine curls that decorated her nest. Searching, seeking that little nub that she’d shown him. Circling, softly petting.

  She gasped again and opened blue eyes lit with erotic mischief. “Are you trying to steal the reins from me?”

  Even with his penis buried deep within her, even moments from climax, he arched an eyebrow. “You have them only by my permission.”

  “Watch.”

  She placed her hands behind her on his legs, her back slightly arched, her pelvis tilted, and slowly rose. The position gave him a splendid view of his glistening cock emerging from her delicate folds. He stared, unable to tear his gaze away as she slowly reversed course and his ruddy flesh bore into her sweet hole.

  “Good?”

  He heard h
er laugh breathlessly and looked up. She was flushed, a sheen of perspiration making her face glow. She was a goddess.

  A mocking goddess who meant to drive him insane.

  He moved without thinking, grabbing her hips, arching, turning. She lay flat on her back and he rose over her, having kept his place even as he’d repositioned them.

  He braced his hands on either side of her startled face and smiled—though it near killed him to do so. “Watch.”

  Her gaze went to where they were joined, and he felt himself flex within her. Slowly he withdrew, each inch a blissful agony, until only his head was still lodged within her. Then he reversed and slowly, deliberately, thrust back into her, all the way, until his hips met hers firmly.

  He leaned down, his mouth less than an inch from hers. Sweet. Tempting. And whispered, “Good?”

  “Oh, God, Winter,” she moaned, her blue eyes dazed with arousal, “do that again.”

  “With pleasure,” he ground out.

  And he did. Again. And again. And again.

  Until she was moaning with each thrust and withdrawal. Until his chest was so tight he thought it might explode. Until she clawed at his buttocks and begged.

  Until he could hold back no longer. Until he let the beast go and pounded into her, out of control, out of his mind with lust.

  In the end, when he arched in a rictus of honeyed pleasure, she looked up at him with swimming blue eyes and gently touched his sweaty cheek with one finger, and he knew.

  He’d poured his soul along with his seed into her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Next, the True Love took a little glass vial and sat down and thought about what the Harlequin meant to her and how she mourned his loss from her life. As she contemplated these sad thoughts, tears dripped from her eyes and each one she carefully caught in the glass vial…

  —from The Legend of the Harlequin Ghost of St. Giles

  It was still dark when Isabel mounted the stairs back up to her bedroom, but it wouldn’t be for long. She’d lain with Winter after they’d made love for the second time, dozing a bit, just enjoying being close. When at last he’d roused and dressed, she’d been loath to leave the library. Only the knowledge that the servants would find it strange that she’d spent the night there made her move. She trusted her servants—and paid them very well—but they were human, after all. No point in giving them more to gossip about than her actions with the Ghost of St. Giles already had.