“Why tennis, d’you ’spose?” the lower voice asked.
Samuel was threading through her maiden hair, his long fingers drawing nearer to that special spot. She clutched at his shoulders, distracted, confused, and incredibly aroused.
“I dunno,” Higher Voice replied meditatively. “Better than lawn bowls, surely? At least indoors it is.”
Samuel drew back his head and met her eyes. He grinned like the devil himself as his hand reached the apex of her slit. She had to consciously keep from moaning as he slid one finger over her clitoris. Gently he shook his head and at the same time circled that delicate bud.
“What about the windows?”
“What windows?”
“The windows in the great hall.”
“Well, what about them?” High Voice sounded peeved.
Samuel bit his lip as if to still a laugh, but Emeline was riding a wave of terrified bliss. If the footmen outside opened the curtain now, they’d discover her nearly naked from the hips down and with Samuel’s large hand working at her pussy. He inserted a thick finger into her core slowly, carefully, watching her face all the while. At the same time, his thumb pressed firmly down on that special bit of flesh. She opened her mouth in a silent gasp, glaring at him.
“Tennis balls would break them, won’t they?” Low Voice said.
Whatever was the man babbling about? Not that it mattered, as long as the servant was engaged. Samuel slowly withdrew his finger and then quickly thrust it in again, making her hips jerk in reaction. She couldn’t stand this much longer; she would give them away. She did the only thing she could do. She wrapped her hands about Samuel’s neck and drew his mouth down to her own. He began a rapid thrusting of his finger, and she opened her mouth and invited his tongue in. She needed him. The feelings, the emotions, were intense. She wanted to climb his body, she wanted to suck his tongue, she wanted to bring him to his knees as he’d brought her to hers. Why did this man, of all the men she knew, have power over her? She turned into a puddle of yearning want around him, and only he seemed able to fill the void at her center. Her breath caught because he was indeed filling her. A second finger had joined the first, and he plunged them into her together, then spread them, widening her. She was wet, and even that thought couldn’t bring her embarrassment right now. She was emotion and pleasure and never wanted this to stop.
“Best be back to work,” Low Voice said. A shoe scraped against the passageway’s stone floor as the man evidently put away his pipe. “Haven’t looked in the cellar yet, have we?”
“Don’t be daft, man.” The footsteps were receding now. “The tennis things won’t be in the cellar.”
“You’re such a clever one, tell me where they are, then.” Low Voice’s words floated back down the hall to them, and then there was silence.
Oh, Lord. Samuel had never stopped moving his fingers within her or kissing her open mouth all this time, and now she felt the first tremors start. She broke away and gasped, biting her lip, so that she wouldn’t cry out loud.
But he withdrew his hand from her suddenly, catching her about the waist and lifting and shoving so that her rump balanced precariously on a barrel. Then he was between her legs, and she opened her eyes to watch him frantically rip at his breeches.
“God!” It was a groan. He freed himself and thrust into her, huge and hot, in the same movement. “God!”
She sank her nails into the cloth covering his shoulders and hung on for dear life, wrapping her legs high over his hips. He jerked rapidly in her, thrusting again and again and again. Her orgasm had not fully crested and now it began anew on a higher, sweeter, almost painful note. He had one hand braced flat against the wall by her head, one at her hip, and his cock buried deep in between her spread legs. She tore at his coat, ripping it off his upper arm, and filled her mouth with clean linen and his shoulder. Her eyes closed in bliss as she bit him. She clung to him while his cock took his pleasure of her. He rode her hard, rode her until she wanted to scream, rode her until he grabbed the back of her head and kissed her, his mouth wide and gasping as he came, his great body shaking. She could feel the heat of his seed flooding within her. And she knew, even as she crested the wave herself, she knew.
This must be the last time.
“MAY I TALK to you?” Emeline asked Jasper that afternoon. She’d caught him in an upper hallway. The guests were beginning to linger by the dining room in anticipation of a late luncheon.
“Of course.” He smiled his wide, slightly lopsided smile, and she could tell that he wasn’t really paying attention to her.
“Jasper.” She touched his sleeve.
He stopped and turned to her, his bushy eyebrows knit. “What?”
“It’s important.”
His eyes searched hers. So often they were vague or camouflaged behind the fool he liked to play. It was rare for him to look clearly, for her to see the man who lurked beneath the mask. Now, though, he was looking at her. Really looking at her. “Are you all right?”
She took a breath, and to her own astonishment, the truth escaped her lips. “No.”
He blinked, then raised his head to glance around the hallway. They were at the back of the house, but there were still people about, footmen and maids bringing in the luncheon, guests assembling in the next room. He took her hand and pulled her through a doorway into another passage. Several doors lined the hall here, and he seemed to pick one at random. He opened it and stuck his head in.
“This’ll do.” He pulled her inside and shut the door behind them. It was a small sitting room or office, evidently unused because the fireplace was empty and sheets covered most of the furniture. He folded his arms. “Tell me.”
Oh, how she wanted to! The urge to simply spill all her secrets was nearly overpowering. What a relief it would be if she could tell him everything and he would pat her shoulder and say, “There, there.”
Except he wouldn’t. Jasper might be the closest thing she had to a brother, he might be scandalously liberal about love affairs and matters of the flesh, but when you came right down to it, he was a viscount. He was expected to sire an heir to a very old and very respected family. The knowledge that his fiancée had been meeting secretly with another man would not bring him joy. He might hide it, but in the end, Emeline very much feared that he would care.
So she pasted on a smile and lied. “I can’t stand it here anymore. I really can’t. I know I should be more patient and bear with Lady Hasselthorpe and her awful conversation and this dreadful house party, but I can’t. Do you think you could take me back to London, Jasper? Please?”
His face as he watched her make this speech was disconcertingly blank. Odd that such a manic man, a man with many comical expressions should, when he chose, be utterly impossible to read. But when she came to the end and there was an awful dead silence, he suddenly sprang forward, his face animated once more as if a toymaker had turned the key on a very clever windup toy.
“Naturally, dear Emmie, naturally! I shall have my bag packed in a thrice. Can our flight wait for the morning, or...?”
“Today, if you don’t mind. Now, please.” Emeline nearly wept with relief when he simply nodded.
He leaned forward and bussed her cheek. “I’d best alert Pynch.” And he strode off.
Emeline paused a moment to gather her sensibilities. Horrible, this constant feeling of losing control over her emotions. She’d always thought of herself as a levelheaded woman. The unemotional one, the one who others leaned on. She’d hardly wept when Father had died; she’d been too busy packing up Tante Cristelle, overseeing the succession of the estate to the next earl, and settling their decimated family in London. Then people had been admiring, almost awed by her good sense and stoicism. Now she was like an infant—shook by whatever emotion stormed over her.
She made her way back to her room, always alert like some woodland animal afraid of the hunter. And that was quite apropos, wasn’t it? Samuel was a hunter—a good one, too. He’d hunted her down t
his morning, chased her into a corner, and had had his way with her. She grimaced. No, that wasn’t exactly right. Samuel might’ve chased her, but she’d been thrilled to be caught; and while he’d had his way with her, she’d been having her way with him. That was the real problem. She had no defenses against the man. She’d never thought of herself as being a slave to the flesh, but here she was fleeing a man because she could not withstand his advances. Evidently she’d been a wanton all these years and not even known it. Either that, or it was the man involved.
But she pushed that thought away as she entered her room. Harris was supervising the packing of all her things with the help of two maids from the house.
The lady’s maid looked up as Emeline entered. “We shall be ready in a half hour more, should it please your ladyship.”
“Thank you, Harris.”
Emeline peeked out the door, scanning the hallway before venturing forth again. She’d rather spend that half hour hiding in her room where it was relatively safe, but her presence would only impede Harris’s well-organized packing campaign. Besides, she couldn’t in all conscience leave so abruptly without talking to Melisande.
Her friend’s door was only a few down in the same hallway, and Emeline swiftly crept to it. Melisande should be downstairs already, waiting with the other guests, but she had a habit of arriving late to a gathering. Emeline had long suspected that her friend’s tardiness was a ruse to keep from having to engage in conversation. Melisande was rather shy, although she hid her affliction well beneath a carapace of aloofness and sarcasm.
Emeline scratched at the door. There was a rustle within, and then Melisande cracked the door. She cocked an eyebrow at the sight of her friend and held the door wide in silent invitation.
Emeline hurried inside. “Close the door.”
Her friend’s eyebrows winged higher. “Are we hiding?”
“Yes,” Emeline replied, and went to warm her hands by the fire.
She heard Melisande’s skirts rustling behind her. “I think it’s a Germanic dialect.”
“What?” Emeline turned to find Melisande seated in a wingback chair.
Her friend gestured to the book spread on her knees. “Your nurse’s book. I think it’s some type of Germanic dialect, probably spoken only in a small area, maybe only a village or two. I can try to translate it for you, if you like.”
Emeline stared at the book. Somehow it didn’t seem as important as it once had. “I don’t care.”
“Really?” Melisande fingered a page. “I’ve already figured out the title: Four Soldiers Returned from War and Their Adventures.”
Emeline was distracted. “But I thought it was a book of fairy tales?”
“It is, that’s the funny thing. These four soldiers all have the strangest names, like the one I told you about, Iron Heart, and—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Emeline said, and then felt awful when her friend’s face, unusually animated, shuddered. “I’m sorry, dear, I’m a beast. Do go on.”
“No. I think what you have to tell me is more important.” Melisande closed the old book and laid it aside. “What is it?”
“I’m leaving.” Emeline dropped into the chair opposite her friend. “Today.”
Melisande relaxed her rigid posture to lean back into her chair. Her eyes were hooded. “Has he hurt you?”
“Samuel? No!”
“Then why the haste?”
“I can’t...I can’t...” Emeline threw her hands up in frustration. “I can’t seem to resist him.”
“Not at all?”
“No!”
“That is interesting,” her friend murmured. “You’re usually so controlled. He must be a very—”
“Yes, well, he is,” Emeline said. “And what do you know of such matters? You’re supposed to be a maiden.”
“I know,” Melisande said. “But we’re discussing you. Have you thought what you’ll do if you’re increasing?”
Emeline’s heart seemed to stop dead at her fear spoken aloud. “I’m not.”
“Do you know that?”
“No.”
“So, if you are?”
“I shall have to marry him.” She said the words with dread, but inside her chest, something traitorous leapt with a forbidden joy. If she was pregnant, she’d have no choice, would she? Even with all her doubts and fears, she’d have to embrace the catamount.
“And if you’re not?”
Emeline thrust aside the traitorous emotions. She could not marry a colonial. “I’ll do what I’d always planned to do.”
Melisande sighed. “Will you tell Lord Vale about what happened during this house party?”
Emeline swallowed. “No.”
Melisande was looking down now, her face closed and impossible to read. “That is probably best if you want to make a life with him. A man often cannot take the truth.”
“Do you think me awful?”
“No. No, of course not, dear.” Melisande glanced up, a flicker of surprise crossing her face. “Why would you think that I’d judge you?”
Emeline closed her eyes. “So many would. I think I would, if I only heard the facts and not the people involved.”
“Well, I am not such a Puritan as you,” her friend said with pragmatic flatness. “But I do have one question. How will leaving here help your problem with Mr. Hartley?”
“The distance, don’t you see? If I’m not in the same house, or county, as he is, well, then I won’t be as susceptible to his...his...” Emeline waved her hands. “You know.”
Melisande looked thoughtful—and not altogether convinced. “And when he returns to London as well?”
“It’ll be all over. I’m sure time and distance will make a great difference.” Emeline said the words sturdily, as if she completely believed them, but inside she was not so certain.
And no matter her words, Melisande must’ve sensed the doubt. Her eyebrows were up almost to her hairline again. But her friend didn’t comment. She simply stood and gave one of her rare signs of affection.
Melisande drew Emeline into her thin chest and hugged her tightly. “Good luck, then, dear. I hope your plan works.”
And Emeline laid her head against her friend’s shoulder and prayed, eyes squeezed shut, that her plan would work. If it didn’t, she had nowhere else to run.
Chapter Fifteen
Murder! cried the guards. Murder! cried the lords and ladies of the court. Murder! cried the people of the Shining City. And all Iron Heart could do was clasp his head in his bloodied hands. The princess cried and begged, first to her mute husband that he might break his silence and explain what he had done, and then to her father for mercy, but in the end, it was no use. The king had no choice but to sentence Iron Heart to death by fire, the execution to be carried out before the next dawn....
—from Iron Heart
“It was a lovely party, wasn’t it?” Rebecca broke an hour’s silence with her tentative question.
Sam tore his gaze from the gloomy scenery rolling past and tried to focus on his younger sister. She was sitting across from him in their rented carriage, looking forlorn, which was his fault, he knew. It had been three days since Emeline had quit the house party so abruptly. He hadn’t even known she was gone until long after she hadn’t shown for luncheon on the day they’d made love in the corridor. By the time he discovered her flight, she’d had a two-hour start.
Still, he would’ve followed her if Rebecca hadn’t talked some sense into him. She’d begged him to stay, pointing out the scandal he’d create if he pursued Lady Emeline so soon after she’d left. Personally, he didn’t care two figs about possible wagging tongues. But Rebecca was a different matter entirely. She’d been spending quite a bit of time with several of the young ladies from good English families. Scandal would kill any budding friendships.
Sam had tamped down his raging need to hunt Emeline, catch her, and hold her until she came to her senses and stayed by him. He’d sat on his hands and made polite co
nversation with giggling girls and insipid matrons. He’d dressed in his best clothes, played idiot games, and ate overly rich foods. And at night he’d dreamed of her snapping tongue and her soft, warm breasts. For three days, he’d restrained himself, until finally members of the house party had begun to leave and Rebecca deemed it appropriate for them to depart Hasselthorpe House as well. It had been three days of hell, but that was hardly Rebecca’s fault, and he was a cad to be such a boring traveling partner.
He tried to make up for the hours of silence she’d endured. “Did you enjoy the party?”
“Yes.” She smiled at him in relief. “At the end, many of the other young ladies were talking to me and the Hopedale sisters have invited me to come have tea with them some afternoon in London.”
“They should’ve been talking to you at the beginning of the party.”
“They had to get to know me, didn’t they? It’s really not all that different from people at home.”
“Do you like it here in England?” he asked softly.
She hesitated, then shrugged. “I suppose so.” She looked down thoughtfully at her hands in her lap. “And what about you? Do you like England enough to stay here with Lady Emeline?”
He hadn’t expected such a blunt query, although he should have. Rebecca was a very perceptive girl. When they’d arrived in London, he’d planned on staying only long enough to do his business with Mr. Wedgwood and look into the Spinner’s Falls massacre. Now his business was finished, and soon he hoped to talk to Thornton and clear up Spinner’s Falls as well. What then? “I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
He glanced at Rebecca impatiently. “She hasn’t stood still long enough for me to talk to her, for one thing.”
Rebecca watched him for a moment, then asked hesitantly, “Do you love her?”
“Yes.” He answered without considering the matter, but he found that it was true. Somehow, without his even realizing it, he’d fallen in love with his prickly Emeline. The thought was strange and at the same time perfectly natural, as if he’d known all along that she was the woman he needed. It was a joyous feeling, as if he’d been waiting all his life for this missing piece.