His eyes were perfectly dry and his face was blank.
For some reason that made her sob anew. She knew now that the ice covered a wound so awful, so terrible that it would never completely heal.
He sat up and found a handkerchief on the table beside the bed.
“Hush,” he said, sounding weary, drying her cheeks. “It happened a long, long time ago.”
She closed her eyes. But it hadn’t, not really. This injury was always with him. He lived with it, aching, every day.
She shook her head, gently touching the corner of his mouth where the scar distorted the line of his lips. “I’m so sorry, Raphael. Oh, my darling, I’m so terribly sorry.”
He stroked her face with his thumbs. “You understand now why I cannot continue my line.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “What?”
“I carry his blood in my veins.” His nostrils flared as if he scented something rank. “Filthy, deviant, disgusting blood. Are you not repulsed by my story? Surely you can see why my line needs to be stopped with me?”
“I … I’m repulsed by what your father did to you,” she said slowly, carefully. She mustn’t say the wrong thing now. “And I’m repulsed by your father. But Raphael, you’re not your father.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head. “Better my family die with me than another monster be born. Another like my father.”
She looked into his eyes, still crystal gray, still icy with resolve, but all she could see now was the pain he hid so well. “Raphael …”
“No.” He placed his palm against her cheek. “My mind is made up. I have known my fate since I was twelve, and I will not be persuaded from my decision. Can you not leave your argument, just for tonight? Let us not be at odds tonight.”
She shouldn’t give in to him. Shouldn’t let his weary words win her over.
But he’d let her see the black ichor that lay at the heart of his past. He’d bared it for her, though she knew he was ashamed and hated it.
She nodded—what else could she do? He had confided in her, despite the pain it must have caused him. This was not the time to rail against him, to give him more pain by arguing.
This was a time to comfort.
“Very well,” she whispered. “I, too, have no wish to be at odds.”
She knelt up in the bed and leaned to look at him. His wide brow, his Roman nose, those too-cold eyes, and the lips that in another life—another, better world—would still have been beautiful.
This man was her husband. He was intense and intelligent, arrogant and vulnerable, dark and strange.
The more she found out about him, the more she thought that perhaps she might fall in love with him, Raphael de Chartres, the Duke of Dyemore.
What was more, he was hers.
Hers to take care of.
And in that she would not fail.
She bent and brushed her lips over the divot in his chin. Kissing again his scar, now that she knew how it had been made. The memory, the mental anguish it represented was terrible. But this scar? It was just skin. A bit more knotted than his other skin, true, but skin nonetheless.
She told him so with her lips, her tongue, her breath. Licking the permanent sneer of his upper lip, tracing the path of the knife up his cheek, pausing to kiss his closed eye and give thanks, and ending at his bisected eyebrow.
She cupped his dear, mysterious face and drew back to examine him.
And when he opened his frozen eyes and looked at her, she quirked a smile and kissed him. She closed her eyes and brushed her lips against his, feeling the silk of his mouth, the slight bump where the scar cut across the corner. She licked his bottom lip, teasing with her tongue, feeling as he tensed beneath her.
He hugged her and slowly rolled her over so that now she was below and he above as he took control of the kiss.
He caught her bottom lip between his teeth for a moment. Giving it a gentle tug before he pressed against her lips with his tongue.
And she yielded.
Maybe that was why she opened her mouth, because she’d asked and he’d answered. Because he’d suffered for her. For her curiosity. Such a small thing, and in the end, did it make any difference?
She couldn’t say.
Except she knew now. She knew. And even though the memory was horrific, she was glad she knew. She wanted to understand this man. All of him, both the good and the bad.
No matter how shattering.
So she opened her lips and let him in, and when he thrust his tongue into her mouth, she sucked on it softly.
Yielding to his desire.
Yielding to his wants.
Yielding to the heat rising between them.
Trying to tell him that she wanted to give him everything he needed.
He threw one leg over her hips, holding her trapped as if he never wanted to let her go.
She could feel the press of his penis through the thin layer of her chemise, pulsing as he came to erection. He caught her thighs between his legs, pressing them together, and he moved …
Oh. He was so close to where she wanted him to be! She could almost feel him. Feel his bare skin. Her chemise was becoming damp from the slick wetness growing at her core. She tried to arch up. To widen her legs. To get his cock where she needed him, but he was stronger than she.
He would not bend.
She whimpered in frustration and he twisted a hand between them and pulled the ribbon free from her chemise. The bodice was merely gathered at the neck and it fell open, giving him access to her breasts.
He lowered his head and sucked one nipple into his hot mouth.
She moaned, twisting under him, panting, wanting something he would not give.
And then he was moving to the other nipple, and he sucked it as well until she thought she would scream from the tension.
He licked, flicking her nipple with his tongue on one side and his fingers on the other, and at the same time he ground down on her, shoving her chemise into her pussy, rubbing against her clitoris, until the silk was sodden with her wetness. Until she could hear the soft, slick sounds he made, his body on hers, him pleasuring her, while he would not let her move.
He wasn’t gentle. But then perhaps he didn’t know how to be gentle, and the thought made something inside her weep, even as he drove her up that peak. Maybe this was all he knew: flesh and liquid heat.
Maybe that was all she would ever have from him.
She wasn’t certain it was enough.
But it didn’t matter now because she was at the cliff, racing straight over the edge. Falling into space.
It was almost painful, this physical jolt, this sudden heaving of her heart, and for a moment she hung frozen in space and time, unbreathing, unmoving. And then she came back to life, her limbs flooding with warmth and sweet lassitude, the backwash of that height of pleasure.
She opened her eyes and saw him rise over her spread body and thrust between her thighs, separated from her flesh by only the wet silk.
Once.
Twice.
Once more.
And still. His lips twisted, his eyes hollow and almost pained.
Staring at her as he came between her thighs.
Raphael walked into the breakfast room at the unfashionable hour of half past nine the next morning and kissed his aunt on her soft cheek. “Good morning, Zia.”
“Up at last,” was her tart reply as she peered at him over her gold spectacles.
The remains of Zia Lina’s breakfast was already on the table, and he knew well that she’d probably been awake for over an hour.
“Perhaps I’ve grown soft,” he said, sitting across from her.
Or perhaps he’d woken to silken limbs and a tangle of golden hair and simply wanted to linger for a while in that warm feminine embrace.
But then the memory of what he’d told her—the shame of what he was—had flooded him, and he’d fled the room.
He wasn’t yet ready to gaze into her blue-gray eyes and find out how she looked at h
im in the light of day now that she knew.
His aunt humphed to herself as she sorted through the morning mail. “You have many invitations for a recluse. I can’t think why.”
“Perhaps it’s the title,” he replied drily, pouring himself some coffee.
A footman entered, bringing plates of sliced meat and shirred eggs.
“It must be,” his aunt decided. “Because it’s certainly not your charming wit.”
He let his lips curl for a second before they fell again, then helped himself to eggs and several slices of gammon. “From whom are the invitations?”
His aunt looked up sharply. “There are only two in this batch, but I have a stack on my desk. Shall I send for them?”
“Please.”
She signaled a footman and made the request.
He felt her eyes on him as they waited for the footman to return with the invitations and he ate his breakfast.
“I never thought I’d see you married,” she said softly. “I am glad.”
He kept his gaze on his gammon. He wasn’t entirely certain Iris would wish to remain with him after she thought about what he’d told her. “Are you?”
“Yes. I think she will be good for you.”
He had a far-too-sarcastic rejoinder on his tongue—for he doubted he was good for Iris—but the footman arrived at that point.
“Ah,” Zia Lina said, gathering the stack of papers in front of her. “Let me see. Do you want to look through them yourself?”
He shook his head and then swallowed his bite of gammon. “Read them to me.”
“As you wish.” She held up the first invitation. “An afternoon musicale to—”
He held up his hand. “Pardon me, but I think only evening events.”
“That will eliminate several of these.” Zia Lina paged through the invitations, setting aside the invitations that didn’t meet the requirement. “Here is one—you are invited to a ball given by the Countess of Touleine in honor of her granddaughter’s introduction to society.”
“Not that.” He cut a piece of gammon.
“Hmm. An evening masquerade at the home of Lord Quincy?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Another ball—this one being given by Lord and Lady Barton.”
“That’s the one.”
She looked up, her eyebrows raised. “Indeed? It’s in only two days.”
“Nevertheless.” He took the invitation from her and read it. This would do. If he remembered correctly, Barton’s wife was a good friend of Viscount Royce’s wife. Royce was bound to be at the ball. Raphael could corner the man when he wasn’t expecting an assault and ask about Dockery and the Dionysus. It would be interesting to find out if Royce had a different story from his younger brother.
He looked up at his aunt, who was watching him with too-shrewd eyes. “Can you respond for me? I’ll be attending.”
“With Iris?”
“Naturally.” Assuming she didn’t change her mind about him when she awoke.
He rose from the table. He needed to see Ubertino and find out if his Corsicans were settled in their quarters.
“She’ll need a ball gown,” his aunt said with not a little asperity, “and something to wear to the dressmaker.”
He glanced at her, frowning. “Yes?”
His aunt raised her eyes to the ceiling as if asking for patience. “I will take her shopping and see if my lady’s maid has something she can wear.”
“Thank you.” He hesitated. “And when you return I’ll take her on a second errand.”
“Oh?”
“To see her brother—and announce our marriage to him.”
The Dionysus watched through guileless eyes as the Mole nattered on about horses over his coffee.
They sat at their leisure in a London coffeehouse, crowded with gentlemen of all walks of life: here the city banker, intent upon his secret moneymaking, there the member of Parliament arguing fiercely about the breeding of hounds with his opponent from across the aisle, and over there the country squire on his annual trip to the city, the clots of mud not yet shaken from his boots.
Gossip and news swirled here almost as fast as the youths who ran back and forth from the counter, delivering coffee to the customers. At the counter a large man in an apron stoically produced tankard after tankard of hot, black brew.
Though of course none of these fine fat pigeons knew anything about the real news in the world.
The Mole sent him an uncertain look, perhaps realizing his companion’s attention had wandered.
The Dionysus leaned forward and smiled.
The Mole smiled back, reassured.
The Fox was dead—he’d had the news yesterday. The Dionysus might mourn the man’s death were it not for the incompetence of his assassination attempt. Better on the whole that Dockery be killed than captured alive. Though really Dockery could not have told Dyemore anything about the Dionysus that he didn’t already know.
Still. It would have been easier had Dockery managed to succeed in killing Dyemore and his new duchess. Now Dyemore had followed him to London and was probably stalking him like a rabid wolf. Which meant the Dionysus would have to think of his next move. Something Dyemore wasn’t expecting. Something that would hit him in his soft underbelly.
It was a pity. In another life they might have been … Well, not friends, for the Dionysus didn’t have friends, but perhaps allies.
They did have so very much in common, after all.
Chapter Thirteen
The Rock King arrived at the stone tower, his brow bloodied, but his gaze steady. In one hand he held a strange little cage made from a round carved rock. Inside the hollowed core glowed a rainbow light.
“Here is your sister’s heart fire,” said the Rock King. “Take it to her and restore her health, but forget not your promise to me.”…
—From The Rock King
“We are very lucky,” Donna Pieri said that afternoon as she and Iris stepped from the most exclusive dressmaker on Bond Street, “that Madam Leblanc had several gowns partially made up and ready. I do hope that you felt you had an adequate selection to choose from?”
“Oh yes.” Iris sighed happily.
It was so nice to be able to afford a dressmaker of such skill. While Iris’s wardrobe was by no means inadequate, she’d always been quite frugal with her gowns, making sure she could wear them for several seasons and taking very good care of them. Today, with Donna Pieri by her side, she’d ordered a half-dozen new dresses besides the ball gown.
The peach gown she’d chosen was the color of the sunrise, the rippling watered silk seeming to subtly change from rose to pink to nearly orange in different lights. She’d fallen in love with it at once.
“Thank you for coming with me,” Iris said as they strolled along the busy street.
Behind them Valente and Ivo were constant, close shadows. Iris hadn’t thought she needed bodyguards on Bond Street of all places, but the Corsicans had been quite insistent that they must come along, apparently at Raphael’s orders. It had been easier in the end to accept their presence than argue further.
Nevertheless, the spring day was sunny, and all of London seemed to be out, promenading and examining the wares set out by shopkeepers. They’d had to leave the carriage around the corner in order to avoid causing a blockage in the road.
“I enjoyed the trip,” replied the older woman in her lovely accent. “I am fond of Raphael, though he makes it hard sometimes, I think. He does not suffer affection easily.”
“I’ve noticed that.” Iris glanced at the other woman meditatively.
Raphael had said that his aunt had spirited him away after his father had …
She mentally flinched from the thought.
After Raphael had cut himself. Was Donna Pieri aware of why he had done such a thing?
The older woman tucked her hand into Iris’s elbow. “He was always thus—a quiet child. A child who watched and made his own decisions. My sister used to write th
at he hoarded his smiles like a miser.”
Iris frowned at the thought that even as a child Raphael had rarely smiled. How strange. “You sound like you were very fond of your sister.”
“I was.” Donna Pieri turned and met her gaze, her brown eyes calm and a little sad. “My nephew is the closest relative I have left now.” She faced forward again as they moved around a pair of swaggering young bucks laughing raucously and taking up far too much of the walkway. “There was only my sister and I in my family. We had an infant brother, but he died of a fever before he was out of leading strings. We were close, Maria Anna and I. She was very pretty and had many suitors when we were young, while I—” She shrugged and motioned to her upper lip. “I had none.”
Iris was not entirely sure what to reply to that. She wanted to say she was sorry, but Donna Pieri’s demeanor didn’t call for apology. Indeed, the other woman was calm and proud.
Perhaps she had weathered so many negative comments upon her harelip throughout her life that she no longer wished for any comments, not even sympathetic ones.
They came to a cross street, where two ragged boys skipped up to them, spinning brooms and demanding coin to sweep the road for them.
Donna Pieri opened her purse and took out two pennies to give them—a prudent action, since the child street sweepers were known sometimes to deliberately flick muck onto the skirts of those who refused to pay them.
They crossed the street and Donna Pieri continued, “Raphael was the apple of Maria Anna’s eye. She would write me long letters about him, about how he was growing, what he ate, when he first walked, when he first rode a pony. She loved him dearly. I could read it in her letters.” She pursed her lips. “She never wrote me of her husband. I knew this was a bad sign, but I did not know how bad until I received the letter informing me that she had died.”
Iris knit her brow, sorting through the other woman’s careful words. “Your sister’s death was sudden?”
Donna Pieri’s mouth turned down, her eyes bright and angry with old sorrow. “Yes. I had no notice that she was ill beforehand. Naturally I immediately began my journey to England, but by the time I arrived, my sister had already been buried. Her husband told me that her health was not good. The English weather did not suit her. She had a fever of the lungs and failed very quickly.”