He hadn’t actually tightened the hand around Andrew’s throat, but the other man was scrabbling at his hand with his fingers. “No! You d-don’t understand … I … I’m not—” “Don’t be ridiculous, Dyemore,” Royce drawled, still by the decanter and sounding bored. “My brother isn’t any more the Dionysus than Leland over there is. None of us are the Dionysus. We don’t bloody know who he is.”
“Don’t you?” Raphael said softly. He let go of Andrew, who scampered to Royce’s shadow. “How do you explain the attack on my men and me, then, at an inn on the road to London?”
“What attack?”
Raphael turned at Leland’s voice and saw that his brows were drawn together.
“Lawrence Dockery tried to stab me in the back at an inn on the road to London,” Raphael said. “I killed him.”
“Killed him?” Leland went white.
“Then you know who Dockery was,” Raphael said flatly. “I thought only the Dionysus knew all the members’ names.”
“I …” Leland blinked rapidly. “Well, but everyone knew Dockery was the Dionysus’s pet. He had no fear—he had even taken off his mask at the revels.” He shivered and looked down. “Really, it’s no wonder he’s dead.”
“You don’t sound regretful,” Raphael said softly.
Leland raised his chin. “Should I be?”
“For God’s sake!” Royce growled behind them. “What is the point of all these questions, Dyemore? By this time a month from now you’ll be dead and the Lords of Chaos will continue as they always have. Now. You’d better check that your wife is still where you left her, hmm?”
Raphael lifted his lip, but he couldn’t disregard the threat. In a crowded ballroom Iris could be taken and no one would be the wiser.
He strode to the door, brushing roughly past Leland on the way.
“Watch it!” the other man cried, catching hold of his arm. Leland whispered, “My house tomorrow.”
“Let go of me,” Raphael said loudly, without any indication that he’d heard.
He strode into the corridor, pushing past overdressed bodies.
What did Leland want with him? Was he ready to join with Raphael, perhaps help him gain leadership of the Lords of Chaos? Raphael had always thought that Leland was too much of a coward to move without the Grant brothers by his side, but perhaps he’d misjudged the man.
Or it was some sort of trap.
By now the mass of people and the thousands of candles burning in order to light all the rooms had heated the house so that it was as if they were all bubbling in a stew of smells: sweet perfume in overabundance, the stink of body odor, and the wax from dozens of wigs and thousands of candles.
Raphael gritted his teeth and, with the greatest of effort, refrained from simply shoving rudely through the throng. More than one person flinched at his face, but he ignored the stares and mutters.
That is, until he heard a whisper.
“Boy lover.”
Iris had been searching for Raphael for at least fifteen minutes, her hunt made harder by the press of bodies. Lady Barton would be thrilled; her ball was a crush—a sure sign of success. But Iris felt her chest tighten in a near panic. She needed to find Raphael and talk to him quietly alone. Inform him of the nasty gossip in private.
Before he heard it, if at all possible.
She was beginning to think she was on a hopeless errand. She heard snippets of the rumor everywhere she went. The gossip was spreading like wildfire throughout the ball.
And she still hadn’t seen Raphael.
Where was he? She’d been to the punch room and not found him. Could she have missed him on his way to her? Should she go back to the seat in the alcove—or perhaps return to the punch room?
She left the ballroom and went back out to the grand staircase instead, because it was the only place she hadn’t yet looked.
There was a crowd at the top of the steps, but the staircase itself held only a few people—none of them Raphael.
Iris turned in despair and bumped into a lady in an atrocious orange-and-green-striped dress that hurt her eyes. She felt herself stumble, and as she did so someone shoved her hard from behind.
Toward the stairs.
She felt herself teetering, her toes at the very edge of the top step.
Nothing to hold on to …
And then someone caught her, pulling her firmly back against a hard chest. “Iris.”
She gasped and looked up.
Raphael was staring at her with blank crystal eyes, his mouth set, his scar standing out on his face like a brand. “You nearly went down the stairs. You could’ve broken your neck.”
“Someone …” She gasped, beginning to tremble as she realized just how close to falling she had been. “Someone pushed me.”
His head instantly came up, and he searched the crowd. “Who?”
“I … I didn’t see.”
His attention snapped back to her. “We need to leave.”
She could only nod shakily. “Y-yes.”
He took her elbow and began ushering her down the stairs.
The murmured gossip behind them didn’t stop.
If anything, with Raphael right there, it became louder.
At the bottom of the steps ladies waiting for their wraps stared and whispered behind fans.
Gentlemen frowned and shook their heads or tutted.
Matrons hurriedly ushered their unmarried daughters away.
Raphael never changed his expression. He looked forward, cold and aloof, a slight sneer on his twisted lip.
If she’d not known him, not spent days talking with him and sharing her body with him, she might have believed the gossip.
Oh, but she didn’t.
Not even for a minute.
What was more, she knew now what these horrid rumors were doing to her husband. Beneath his frozen mask he must be aching inside.
They finally made the entryway, which wasn’t as crowded as it had been before. Raphael barked an order to one of the footmen waiting by the door and then helped Iris into her wrap as they waited for the carriage to be pulled around.
His hand was a vise on her upper arm and Iris knew she would have bruises later, but she didn’t want to say anything.
They waited in silence, Iris leaning against his comforting strength.
When the carriage finally arrived, after what seemed like hours, he marched her toward it.
She just had time to see Ubertino in the driver’s seat before Raphael bundled her inside.
Iris sat and watched her husband as the carriage lurched into motion. He sat so stiffly and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. He was withdrawing into himself, icing over, almost as if he thought she would believe that …
Something poked her in the hip.
She shifted absently and felt a sharp jab.
What …?
She put her hand down to feel her skirts. Perhaps a wire in her panniers had broken. Her hand touched something metal, and hot pain sliced across her last two fingers.
“Oh!”
Raphael looked up, his gray eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
“Something in my skirt cut me,” she said.
He moved swiftly across the carriage. “Let me see.”
She raised her hands.
Gingerly he sifted through her voluminous skirts and then paused. Iris felt a tug and then he was holding a long thin knife in his hand. The light from the carriage lantern glinted off the blade.
She tried to make sense of what she was seeing. “What …?”
He turned to her and the light shone off his eyes as sharply as it had the blade. “Someone tried to kill you in there. When you nearly fell down the stairs. That was an attack. Somehow they missed and the knife was caught in your panniers.” He shook his head. “But the fall most likely would’ve killed you in any case.”
“Except you were there.” She felt steadier now, even though the shove had obviously not been an accident. “You saved me, Raphael.”
&
nbsp; “I wasn’t there when whoever it was tried to stab you.” His eyes were frozen. “Had the knife gone through, you’d be dead. There would be nothing I could do about it.”
Iris opened her right hand. The last two fingers were daubed with what looked like black liquid in the lamplight.
It was one thing to be aware that an enemy wanted to kill you, but it was something entirely more visceral—more immediate—to see that death had nearly claimed you.
“What is that?” Raphael growled. He took her hand and pulled it closer to the light.
Now the blood was clearly red.
He stared at the blood on her fingers for a moment and then picked her up bodily to place her in his lap, his strong arms wrapped around her. He pulled off his neckcloth and wrapped it around her hand.
She didn’t even think to protest, simply laid her head against his chest. “I wasn’t stabbed. I didn’t fall down the stairs. I’m safe.” She could hear his heartbeat, slow and strong, beneath her cheek. “I’m safe with you.”
His arms tightened around her as if in answer.
That was how they rode the rest of the way back to Chartres House.
Even when the carriage stopped and the door was pulled open to show Ubertino’s face, Raphael didn’t let go.
He looked at the Corsican. “They’ve tried to kill my wife.”
The smile on Ubertino’s face was wiped away. His eyes narrowed, and suddenly Iris could see this man as a pirate on the Barbary Coast. “I will set guards. On my life, this will not happen again, Your Grace.”
Raphael nodded.
Then he gently set Iris down on the carriage seat, stepped from the carriage, waited for her to stand, and then swept her up in his arms again.
She might’ve given an unladylike squeak.
He mounted the front steps.
She cleared her throat. “I can walk.”
The door opened and Murdock’s eyes widened.
Raphael ignored the butler. “No, you can’t.”
He strode past two footmen, through the entry hall, and up the grand staircase, all without even breathing hard.
Iris clutched his waistcoat with her unbound hand, feeling the muscles bunch and relax under her fingers. His face was set.
They reached the ducal chamber finally, and Raphael shouldered open the door. He crossed the room and set her on the bed and then climbed in after her, shoes and all, and pulled her to his chest.
The room was dark, save for a banked fire.
She could hear his breaths in the silence, even and steady.
“I’m not,” he said, so suddenly she started.
She licked her lips. “Not what?”
“An abuser of little boys. Or little girls. I swear to you on my mother’s grave, on my soul, on everything I hold dear in this life or the next that I’ve never, never touched or looked at or thought about children in that way. I—”
“Raphael.” She struggled to face him, for he wouldn’t unlock his arms from around her. “Raphael, please listen.”
He stopped, his breathing uneven now.
She tested his hold and found she could sit up and turn around and look at him.
He lay staring at the canopy of the bed, his eyes iced over and blank.
She had to make that look stop.
“I know,” she said to him, and took his face between her palms. “I know you would never do the things they were whispering. I know they’re all lies. I believe you, my darling. I believe in you.”
He closed his eyes.
And when he opened them the ice had melted. He was looking at her with tears in his crystal eyes.
“Iris, my Iris,” he whispered, and drew her lips to his.
He kissed her like a man dying. Like a man taking his last breath.
As if he cherished her.
And something in Iris blossomed open and expanded in her chest and seemed so full it would make her burst. She wasn’t sure she could contain this feeling, this emotion, she had for him.
Her husband.
She cared for this man—rather a lot. Perhaps even more than cared for him.
The thought should frighten her, but all she felt was happiness.
Happiness.
“Iris.” He sounded desperate. Undone. And she realized his hands were shaking as he held her.
He rose up suddenly and turned her, so that she lay on the bed. He pushed up her skirts, found the ties to her panniers, and yanked them off and threw them to the floor.
Then he was on her again, trailing his mouth down her neck, biting at her collarbone.
She ran her fingers into the hair at the back of his head, grasping, trying to hold on as he moved on her so intently.
He’d always been in control when he’d made love to her. Now he seemed moved by a sort of compulsion.
An animal need.
The thought made her shudder with arousal. Made her clutch at his shoulders.
She felt his hand on her leg above her garter, on bare skin, urgent and hot. She was still fully dressed, as was he, but he didn’t seem to want to take the time to disrobe. His fingers covered the curls at the tops of her legs possessively, and he raised his head.
“Spread your legs for me,” he said, his eyes implacable.
She inhaled and felt liquid heat pool low in her belly even as she was already moving.
She felt enthralled by him, enthralled by her own sexuality. He bared something in her that she hadn’t even known was there before she married him.
Something base, primal. Had it always been there, this fierce drive to feel? Or was it something that had been engendered by his touching her?
Her touching him?
She knew that she should be wary of this part of herself. Ladies were often exhorted to ignore any animal urges. To be polite. Formal. Cold.
But the flames of her desire, meeting and burning higher with his compulsion, were intoxicating.
It felt wonderful.
Too good to ignore. Too good to give up.
And when his fingers traced into the wetness of her vulva, into the depths of her pleasure, she cried out, her eyes still caught with his.
He smiled, crooked and sinister because of his scar, but a smile nonetheless. A smile that wasn’t exactly nice or gentlemanly.
But a smile that was all for her.
Only her.
No man—no one—had ever looked at her so before.
She arched beneath him, her hips shoving up, trying to get more of that hand, more of that gaze. He lowered his head and covered her mouth, thrusting between her lips as he slid a finger into her softness.
She trembled beneath him, moaning as he kissed her so deeply she thought she might lose her senses.
He was rubbing his thumb over her clitoris now, fast and hard, and he broke the kiss to murmur in a voice dark as hellfire, “Wet my hand. Show me your desire. Show me all that you are. Let me look at your sweet cunt, swollen and rosy for me. I want to make you weep. I want all your pleasure, Iris, all your pain, everything you are. You are the light in my black night. Come for me.”
And she felt herself bow with the stark white bliss of her epiphany, the shattering realization of his words and his hands and his mouth. She was gasping for breath, shaking, lost, unseeing. The center of her being pulsing with pleasure.
She lay limp and heard him curse, sounding desperate, and then felt his weight on her.
She opened her eyes and saw that his face was hard and his gaze riveted on her.
“Raphael,” she moaned, begging. Wanting. “Please.”
“I can’t,” he said. “God, I can’t.”
She felt his hips meet hers and realized that the placket of his breeches was open. She felt his cock, hard and hot against her inner thigh, and her heart bounded.
Despite his denial, he was so close and she knew he wanted her. By the wild look in his no-longer-cold eyes. By the uncontrolled stuttering of his hips.
He wanted her.
“Please,” s
he whispered, tilting her hips up in invitation. So close. He was so close. “Please, my love.”
He closed his eyes as if he was pained. As if a great sword had been driven through his chest, impaling heart and lungs and liver. His hips settled more firmly on her, and she felt him against her folds.
Oh God, she wanted him to fill her.
She pressed her palm to the side of his face.
He turned his head and kissed her palm … and at the same time thrust inside her.
She gasped at the sudden invasion. At feeling his cock inside her at long last. At the stretch and the fullness and the glory.
He thrust again and was fully seated, as far inside her as it was possible to be. Her legs were stretched open to accommodate his hips, and he was pressed deeply, intimately into her.
He pushed up on his arms and held himself there as he pulled his cock nearly all the way from her body and then drove back in again.
She opened her mouth, panting, holding his crystal-gray gaze. His hips were working now, driving into her at a hard pace, filling her again and again.
She’d never …
It had never been like this before.
So intense. So intimate. So devastating.
His nostrils flared just a little bit, and the lines bracketing his mouth grew deeper. He snarled with his beautiful, twisted lips and she thought, half on the edge of falling again, she thought he looked like a demon making love to her. A demon fighting for life or light or possibly redemption.
But now his hips were pistoning in a nearly out-of-control movement, driving both him and her higher and higher. He lowered his head and glared at her from under his eyebrows, baring his teeth.
And suddenly she knew what she had to do.
“Come for me, my husband,” she said. “Give me all that you are. Give me the dark and the light. I accept them both. I want your cock in me. I want you.”
He shouted, flinging his head back, the tendons on his neck straining as he pumped his hips into her, convulsing.
The sight sent her into a glorious warm wave of pleasure. She gripped his buttocks—still clad in his breeches—and ground against him, seeing stars.
He gasped great breaths of air and let his head fall to her shoulder, his raven’s-wing hair hiding his face as he opened his mouth against her throat. She was still shuddering, small aftershocks of pleasure rippling through her.