Instead, Dredmore lifted me up in a curious position, my skirts bunched around my waist, my bare legs draped over his. He used his fist to bring my hands down between us, and then tore open his shirt before inserting them and pressing them flat against his chest.
I felt the incredible heat of his skin, the hammering of his heart, and the hard bulges of his muscles beneath my palms. Touching a man in such an intimate fashion was not within my scope of experience. This was the work of strumpets, mistresses, and wives. Unmarried females were supposed to keep their hands to themselves.
I glanced up, and in that moment Dredmore looked more remote and aloof than I’d ever seen him. “What do you want from me?”
“Everything,” he said.
But he wasn’t going to take it, I knew that now, and the realization smashed through me, harder than a fist, more painful than finding my way through ten thousand mazes of thorns. He was not the monster I’d always hoped he’d be. He was only a man, and in his arms, I could be simply a woman.
If I chose to be.
I could face his wrath without flinching. He could beat me black-and-blue and I’d still taunt him. But this, this tenderness, this self-denial on my behalf, it infuriated me. I could not fight an enemy who would not attack. I would not give myself to a man whose downfall I had dreamt of causing and whose ruination I had dearly anticipated celebrating. I might as well offer myself from a street corner to anyone with two coins to rub together.
“It will end here and now,” he murmured. “All you need say is no, and I will take you back to the house.”
He was ravishing me by not ravishing me, the evil bastard. In that moment I had never hated him more. “You think you know me, Dredmore?”
“Not at all,” he said politely. “But I can feel you, Charmian. Your loneliness. Your silent longing.”
As he gathered me close, I closed my eyes and made my choice. “Goddamn you, Lucien.”
“He already has,” he murmured against my hair.
I tucked my face against his throat, opening my lips and using the flat of my tongue against his skin. He tasted salty and smoky, and stiffened when I dragged the edge of my teeth up to his jaw. There I followed the strong bone with my open mouth, turning my face into the silken locks of his black hair, letting them soothe my hot face. He bore it a few more moments before he worked his fingers into my hair and turned my mouth to his.
His breath blended with mine, and then we kissed, not with unsure pecks or tentative brushes of lips, but mouth to open mouth, capturing each other for the thrust and glide of tongues, the gasps of pleasure, the explosion of tastes. The raw intimacy of it astounded me, as did the way it stole the air right out of my lungs. That two people could do such a thing to each other and not have their chests collapse or their hearts explode seemed impossible.
I heard myself making the oddest sound, and then I went deaf to myself and the rest of the world as he slanted his head and took me deeper.
Things became rather frantic after that. I tore at his shirt, and he ripped my chemise apart, thrusting my bare breasts against the bruising plane of his chest. I rubbed myself shamelessly against him, eager to relieve the heavy aches and sharp tightness all over plaguing me. Like water on a lamp fire, I only caused it to spread.
His hands kept moving and adjusting me, a supreme annoyance until I felt more cloth tearing and the night air on my bare thighs. The shock and delight of it sent me up on my knees, my spine arching as his mouth attacked my breasts and he shoved his hands between my legs.
I felt the smooth bulb protruding from his fist the moment it touched the astonished, slick folds of my body; after a moment I understood he was positioning himself, and gazed down at him as I curled an arm around his neck.
“Lucien.” I took in a quick breath as he pressed up, seating that heavy, full plum of flesh against me. “A certain confession is perhaps in order.”
“So I feel.” He already knew, but he didn’t cast me away or shove through the thin membrane that kept him at bay. He held me suspended, watching my face. “I want it, Charmian.”
Rina had educated me about the gift I was only supposed to give a husband. Among other things, the giving often caused discomfort and sometimes bleeding. She firmly believed a woman should see to it herself before taking her first lover and had often scolded me to do the same.
I hadn’t, and now—perversely—I was glad. “Then have it.”
Dredmore’s entire body tightened as he laid me down in the grass and came up over me. At the same time, his body pressed into mine, and I felt a burning, tearing sensation.
Prepared as Rina had made me, I still bit into my lip to keep from yelping as he worked himself deeply inside a place Rina swore was made for just such a reason. I was beginning to have serious doubts. “Tell me this is the worst of it.”
“Aye.” He seemed to be in as much pain as I was.
“Just . . . be . . . still.”
Skewered as I was, I couldn’t seem to do that. My insides clenched around him, and there was some quivering involved. My body wanted up and I wanted him out, and my hips rose under his.
He withdrew, leaving behind a hot, wet emptiness, but that was no good, either. I clutched at his waist, not knowing how to make it right, and then he filled me again with a force that was only slightly less painful than his initial foray.
“I don’t think we’re suited,” I told him once I felt the full length of him throbbing within me. “But I did like the touching, very much. Could we do that—”
He cut me off with another of his open-mouthed, completely indecent kisses, which distracted me from the other things he did for a time. Only gradually did I become aware of his hands on my breasts and his shaft in my body, and how he was using them with steady, deliberate intent.
I wanted it to stop. The way he worked inside my body, dragging the heaviness of himself out before driving it back in again, created a new degree of discomfort, not as injurious but just as unbearable.
He kissed my eyelids. “Look at me, Charmian.” When I did he moved faster, driving deeper. “You can feel it now.”
I shook my head, pushing at him. “Leave off. I gave you what you wanted.”
“So you did. Now this is what you will have in return.” He propped himself up higher, spreading my legs wider so that the top of my sex lay open and exposed to the thrust of his. The knot of nerves there seemed to swell, and my body went liquid as the intolerable ache grew to a silent, wrenching agony.
He wouldn’t stop, he was never going to stop, and then something caught me, a dark and furious engine of pleasure and pain. I couldn’t fight or think or free myself, and suddenly I didn’t want to. Some terrible, glorious beast came to life inside me, one that roared in my ears and laved my skin, and wrapped around me, a demon from hell torching me alive; an angel enfolding me with the softest, silkiest of wings.
Dredmore held me as I convulsed and murmured to me, words I didn’t understand. His body became a merciless mech, hammering at me without stopping. Only when he went very still and said my name did I understand that his own beast was having at him.
I was convinced I couldn’t move after that and felt grateful that he could as he turned on his side, his hand latched against my body to keep our parts meshed.
When he kissed my brow I actually stiffened, thinking there might be more and convinced it would be the end of me. But he only held me and stroked my hair back from my face.
He looked all over my face before he smiled. “Thank you, Charmian.”
“My pleasure, Lucien.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Is it always like that?” I asked him a little later as I let some strands of his hair sift through my fingers. “Or are you insanely talented in this area?”
His chest rumbled with a chuckle. “No, not insanely, and it is never like that.”
“I beg to disagree.” I snuggled closer to him. “If you’d done this the first time we’d met, I’d have liked you much more.
”
He thought about it for a minute. “There wasn’t enough room in the coach.”
“Lust at first sight?” I lifted my head. “On the Hill? For shame, Lucien.”
“You weren’t on the Hill. You were standing in the fruit market. It was a Tuesday morning.” His expression grew as distant and detached as his tone. “Connell stopped to allow some goatherd to cross the street, I looked out, and there you were, haggling with an old woman over the price of peaches.”
I didn’t recall the day, but it sounded like me. “I haggle with everyone.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “The sun was very bright that morning, so much so that I could see the motes of dust in the air, and the blemishes on every face. Except yours. Your hair seemed to soak up its radiance and pour it back out through your eyes and skin.”
“You noticed me because I was glowing?” I didn’t know how to feel about that. “Maybe you mistook me for a lamppost.”
“I am a man of this world, Charmian. I know how relentless its indifference is. I solved all the mysteries of navigating through it long ago.” He looked at me. “Or I thought I had, until that moment I first saw you.”
“So you were after my peaches,” I tried to joke.
“I wondered if you’d smell of them, or sunshine.” He put his face in my hair and breathed in. “Tonight you’re all over moonlight and roses.”
“We’re in a rose hedge maze,” I reminded him, “under a full moon. What were you thinking anyway, spying on me like that? Surely you had better things to do.”
He shook his head. “That day I thought of very little, except the manner with which I could persuade you to get into my coach so that I might take you away with me.”
“You could have had Connell snatch me off the street.” Then I remembered the time he had sent his driver after me, and reared up. “That’s why you had him chase me down and gag me that day? So you could make off with me? You bastard.”
“On that day I had every expectation of success,” he said, “until Connell informed me that the rear wheel rim that he’d repaired with a mending spell that morning had for no apparent reason split in two.”
A dim memory of hearing a sharp crack came back to me. “That’s why you let me go.”
“That was when I realized what you might be. What I discovered you are.” He ran his hand along my arm from shoulder to elbow and back again in a smooth, soothing caress. “It was maddening to watch you and know I could do nothing. A hundred years ago I could have claimed you that day in the market.”
He referred to the old practice of freeclaiming, something caused by the shortage of women among the original colonies. In those days, any man could take an unprotected or abandoned woman from wherever he found her and with or without her permission put her into his household, where she would be subject to his will until such time as she married. No decent man wanted to take a freeclaimed woman to wife, however, so the abducted women were helpless to escape their captors. Fortunately, after the Uprising the Crown had discovered men keeping as many as two dozen freeclaimed women in their households. After hurriedly getting them married off, the authorities had promptly outlawed the polygamous practice.
“How romantic.” That killed my mood as effectively as an ice bath, and I pushed his hand away.
He caught my arm again as I tried to rise, his touch less gentle. “You are not leaving.”
“As you know, keeping women against their will is now illegal, Dredmore. So is slavery.” I reached for the remains of my chemise, examined it, and then tossed it aside. “Where the devil is my bodice?”
“It’s no longer safe for you in Rumsen.” He fastened his trousers and stood, scanning the ground around us. “I can only protect you from Walsh here at Morehaven.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong. Well, aside from the obvious.” I shook down my skirts, straightened my waister, and spotted my bodice hanging from a lilac bush. “Walsh can’t have me arrested for being criminally cheeky.”
“He won’t.” Dredmore retrieved my bodice and held it out of reach. “He’ll shut down your business, seize your property, and leave you penniless.”
“You forgot ruining my name,” I said as I grabbed at my bodice. “Come on, now, that’s not fair. You’re at least a foot taller than me.”
“Everything Walsh said and did tonight was only for show. There is something seriously wrong with the man.” Dredmore held out the bodice like a nurse dressing a child, and I let him help me into it. “He knows exactly why his wife is being assaulted, but he hasn’t put a stop to it for reasons I can’t fathom. But if you’re liable to stumble onto the truth, that makes you a liability he cannot afford.”
“I never stumble.” I turned my back on him so I could fasten my own buttons. “I investigate. The lady deserves to know why she’s being tormented like this, especially with Walsh threatening to divorce her.”
“Men in Walsh’s position do not take their wives to court.” He picked up his cloak and wrapped it around me. “They arrange an unfortunate accident and, after an appropriate period of mourning, they remarry.”
“She didn’t choose to marry him.” I saw his expression and lost my temper. “For God’s sake, Lucien. Diana Walsh is barely out of the schoolroom. She’s shallow and brainless, but she’s still an innocent person. Her people are all up near Settle. There’s no one else to look after her.”
He started walking me toward the gap in the stone wall. “You can’t help her, Charmian. She was doomed from the moment she knocked on your door.”
“Why don’t you kidnap her and bring her up here, then?” I strode ahead of him. “Walsh has her well trained. She’s lovely. Maybe you could teach her to enjoy it.”
“You’re going in the wrong direction,” he said, and waited until I came back to him. “Stay here with me, Charmian. It’s the only way I can keep you alive.”
Dredmore could be a deceptive, theatrical jackass, but he didn’t fear anything. Now he looked afraid . . . for me.
I considered what I could do to protect myself. “We’ll go to the police. The chief inspector is the grandson of an old friend of my family’s.”
“You no longer have family.”
“I did once, but . . .” I peered at him. “Why, you nosy sod. You had me investigated.”
“Several times,” he said without a shred of remorse. “All my men discovered was that you are an orphan without money, people, or connections.” His tone changed. “I assumed that it would make things simpler.”
“You mean, you thought you could carry me off and no one would give a bloody damn.” I was starting to hate him again, and as soon as we emerged from the maze, I turned on him. “All this talk of freeclaiming and kidnapping, as if I’m some prized cow instead of a person. How do you sleep at night?”
“I don’t.” He hauled me into his arms. “You’re going to change that.”
The kiss he gave me caused me to temporarily forget the various aches and pains afflicting me, and for a moment I allowed myself the luxury of imagining a life where I could have such kisses whenever I wanted them. Slipping into Dredmore’s arms every night, spending long hours rousing each other’s beasts and then falling asleep, boneless with exhaustion and saturated with contentment . . .
It would only cost me my independence, my heart, and every ounce of my self-respect.
“I did mention that I was leaving,” I said as soon as I was permitted to breathe again.
“Someday we’ll go to Paris, and I’ll introduce you to more Raphaels,” he told me. “But for now, you will remain here.” He looked past me and nodded.
I glanced back and saw Connell and another brute coming down from the pavilion, both focused on me. Which meant— “You can’t be serious. Not after what just happened between us. Lucien.”
“It’s for your own good, my sweet.” He handed me off to the men. To them, he said, “Lock her up.”
PART 2
HIS LORDSHIP POSSESSED
CHAPTER F
OURTEEN
Half an hour after giving myself to my worst enemy, and daftly imagining myself to be falling in love with him, I paced round the confines of the bedchamber in which he had imprisoned me. I knew for my foolishness I deserved nothing more than to spend my remaining days there, a wretched captive, an illegally freeclaimed woman, alternately forced to attend to satiating Lucien Dredmore’s lusts and left to pine in solitude for the life I had so thoughtlessly thrown away. This was what women like Lady Walsh endured.
But I was not Diana Walsh, and I’d cut out my own heart before I allowed Lucien Dredmore to ever touch me again.
A thorough search of the chamber—which despite its sumptuous trappings was little more than a prison cell—turned up no exit or the means by which I might create one. The only entry had been locked in three places from the outside by his minion, Connell. Masonry had replaced the glass panes in the single window frame on the opposite wall, too. As I poked at the brick, I wondered how many other women had suffered this fate, and what had happened to them once Dredmore had tired of them.
“He probably buries them under the rose hedges,” I muttered, absently clutching at my pendant for comfort. “Please God, if you’ll get me out of this I’ll never glance at another man again. I swear it.” I looked down at the dark stone and realized otherworldly intervention was right in my hand. “Bloody hell. Harry.”
My eager fingers fumbled a bit with the clasp, but at last I released it and dropped the pendant on the floor, backing away from it quickly.
My grandfather’s specter materialized instantly, and as soon as he looked round he shouted at me. “Do you know where you are? Do you know who he is? Have you lost your tiny mind?”
“I’m happy to see you, too,” I said. “We’ll catch up once I get out of here.” When he didn’t reply, I added, “You keep saying you’re Harry Houdini, the world’s greatest escape artist. Well, then here’s your chance to prove it.”