“The same way I been managin’ ’em for the last fifty years, girl. By puttin’ one foot in front o’ the other.”
Nana shuffled over to the bed, shaking her head as she gazed down at Lord Dravenwood’s prostate form. “There’s nothin’ worse for a woman than to see such a powerful man laid so low.”
“I despise feeling so helpless,” Anne confessed, swallowing around the tightness in her throat.
Nana slanted her a chiding look. “Don’t give up on him yet, girl. And don’t give up on yourself. If there’s anythin’ you’ve always excelled at, it’s gettin’ your own way. I’m guessin’ you could still wrap fate ’round your little finger if you set your mind to it.”
“At the moment it feels more like fate has its fingers wrapped around my throat.” Anne noticed the colorful garment draped over the old woman’s arm. “Why, Nana, did you finally finish your . . .” Anne hesitated, at a loss as to what to call the voluminous creation.
“These old knuckles of mine are gettin’ too stiff to work the needles, and half the time I can’t see what color I’ve picked out. Someone might as well get some use out of it while I’m still here to see it.” The old woman carefully unfolded her gift and draped it across Lord Dravenwood’s chest.
“Oh, Nana, it’s beautiful!” Anne breathed. The garment’s rainbow of hues did brighten the room considerably, even giving the illusion of color to Dravenwood’s pallid cheeks.
“There’s a bit o’ love woven into every strand.” Offering Anne a toothless smile, Nana tenderly stroked the knotted yarn with her gnarled fingers. “Never forget, girl. Love is still the most powerful medicine of all.”
“IF HE DIES, THE constable will swear we murdered him,” Pippa said glumly from her rocking chair on the other side of the bed, peering over the top of her much-read copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho at Anne.
Anne leaned forward in her chair to smooth the earl’s sweat-dampened hair away from his brow. He had been drifting in and out of delirium for most of the day. “Perhaps we did.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself. It was his choice to go after Hodges. We didn’t force him to play knight in shining armor.”
Anne remembered how Dravenwood had told her about saving his brother from a firing squad, how he had looked after Clarinda when she had fallen ill, his determination to prove Angelica had no part in her own downfall, how he’d charged up the attic stairs to rescue Anne from the fire without giving a thought to his own welfare. “I don’t think he had any other choice. He may be loathe to admit it, but I suspect it’s the role he was born to play.” A rueful laugh escaped her. “He even rescued Dickon from that ridiculous wig.” Anne’s smile faded, her fingers lingering against the hot, dry skin of his cheek. “He just hasn’t figured out yet that he can’t save everyone. Perhaps not even himself.”
LATE THAT NIGHT ANNE found herself alone with Dravenwood at last. After watching Pippa nod off into her book not once, but three times, Anne had finally coaxed the girl into going to bed by promising to don a nightdress and curl up on the divan for a nap once she was gone.
Anne had slipped into Dravenwood’s dressing room to change into the nightdress and tug the pins from her hair, but instead of curling up on the divan, she had claimed the rocking chair Pippa had vacated and drawn it even closer to the bed.
At some point in the past few days, she had stopped worrying about the impropriety of spending the night in a gentleman’s bedchamber, much less spending the night in a gentleman’s bedchamber in her nightdress.
She glanced at the French lyre clock on the mantel. It was just after midnight. Even though she knew its voice had been silenced forever, sometimes she still caught herself listening for the hollow bong of the longcase clock in the entrance hall.
Sleep held little attraction for her. Every time she drifted off, she would feel herself slipping beneath the surface of the waves, feel the strangling cords of silk tightening around her ankles, making it impossible for her to kick her way toward freedom. Then she would begin to sink . . . down . . . down . . . down into the darkness of utter oblivion before yanking herself awake with a start.
She couldn’t sleep and Dravenwood couldn’t seem to wake up. His fever had finally broken, but except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, he was as still and pale as a carved marble effigy on a tomb. Anne would almost have preferred delirium to this. At least when he was raving and thrashing, she didn’t have to touch her ear to his lips just to hear the whisper of his breathing.
If he didn’t survive, she would have to gather pen and paper and write to inform his parents of his death.
Would they mourn the man he had been or would his father grieve because he’d lost his precious heir? How long would it take for word to travel across the distant seas to reach his brother? Would Ashton Burke remember the difficult man Dravenwood had become or would he fondly recall the boys they had once been together—the boys who had played at toy soldiers and fought mock naval battles in the bath? Would Clarinda shed a tear for the man who had loved her so long and so faithfully? Would she regret scorning a loyal heart another woman might have cherished? Would little Charlotte even remember her “Unca Max,” the man who had scooped her up in his big, strong arms and held her so tenderly, no doubt thinking that she might have been his if circumstances had been different?
Anne hugged her woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. None of Nana’s medicinal teas or poultices seemed to be working. They hadn’t been able to get so much as a drop of broth down his throat since dawn. All she could do was bathe him, shave his jaw, keep his sheets fresh, gently polish his teeth with her own tooth powder, and accept that he was probably never going to wake up. She would never again see his brow furrow in one of his infuriating scowls or hear him snap out some order she had no intention of obeying.
His face blurred before her eyes as she caught his hand in a fierce grip. “Damn you, Dravenwood! You survived cholera in Burma, a sandstorm in the Tunisian desert, and a broken heart! How dare you let a little rain finish you off? If you’re planning on dying just so you can spend eternity flitting hand in hand around the manor with your precious Angelica, then you’re wasting your last breath. She won’t have you! I’ll see to it!”
The irony wasn’t wasted on Anne. If he died, she would be the one haunted until her dying day. She would be the one who would awaken in the middle of the night, aching for a touch she would never know, craving a kiss she would never taste again.
Still clutching his hand in both of hers, she glared at him through her tears. “Pippa was right, you know. You’re probably just doing this out of spite. If you die, they’ll swear I murdered you. Is that what you want, you stubborn, arrogant fool? Do you want me to hang because you were so foolhardy as to rush out in the storm after I tried to warn you it could kill you?” Her voice broke on a raw sob. She doubled over and buried her brow against their entwined hands, watering his flesh with her tears.
She was so distraught it took her several seconds to feel the hand gently skimming over her unbound hair. Trembling with disbelief, she slowly lifted her head.
Dravenwood was looking right at her, his eyes alight with a tender regard that stole the breath right out of her throat. “There you are, angel,” he said, disuse deepening the husky note in his voice. A half smile curved one corner of his mouth. “I always knew you’d come back to me.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
ANNE GAZED INTO DRAVENWOOD’S eyes, mesmerized by their crystalline clarity. It was as if he was seeing her—truly seeing her—for the first time. His regard was like the most rare and costly of gifts, giving her back something she had believed to be forever lost.
Herself.
He slid his hand through her hair, his fingers toying with the velvety locks, then curled his palm around her nape and gently drew her mouth down to his. His fever might have faded, but he was probably still under the sway of his illness. He couldn’t possibly be thinking clearly, if at all. Anne knew she should pull away, s
hould ease him back to the bed and urge him to rest, but she had neither the will nor the desire to resist him. As he tenderly molded her lips to his, she breathed in his breath as if it held her only chance of survival after being submerged beneath the water for a lifetime. His breath was no longer scented of sickness, but of peppermint and hope.
She felt her shawl skitter from her shoulders to the floor, but didn’t care. She was too lost in the tantalizing flick of his tongue against hers as he breached the seam of her lips and tenderly ravished her mouth.
When her tongue responded with a bold foray of its own, he wrapped both of his arms around her, groaning deep in his throat. This was no groan of pain but of a pleasure sharper and more dangerous than pain.
The two of them might never meet on a ballroom floor to share a waltz, but he swept her into his bed in a dizzying turn until she was lying beneath him. Even as his mouth continued to work its dark and delicious wonders, one of his hands slid down her side, lingering ever so briefly against the fullness of her breast before tracing the graceful dip of her waist, the flare of her hip, then slipping beneath her thigh to lift one leg so he could wedge himself in the cradle of her hips.
Anne gasped, her hips arching off the bed of their own accord to embrace the evidence of his desire. There was no cure for this delirium. The fever was contagious and had infected them both. She could feel its flames licking higher as his hand slid around and up the silken skin of her thigh, easing her nightdress up with it.
The cold, distant man she had once believed him to be had vanished, leaving a hot-blooded stranger in his place. There was no time for thought. No time for caution. No time for regrets. There was only the warmth of his tongue stroking the velvety recesses of her mouth in a rhythm that was unmistakably and irresistibly carnal. The heat of his hand as he slid it to the side and pressed its heel against the tender mound between her thighs, urging her to ride him to some extraordinary place where pleasure was not only possible but inevitable.
A shuddering sigh trembled on her lips as his fingers followed the path his palm had forged. She buried her face against his shoulder to hide her burning cheeks as his long, elegantly tapered fingers slid through the softness of her nether curls and began to have their way with the silky flesh they found beneath—stroking, gliding, caressing until her sighs turned into breathless, little gasps. When the callused pad of his thumb brushed the throbbing little bud at the crux of those curls, her womb responded with a shiver of delight and a pulse of pure liquid pleasure that made her ache to clench her thighs together.
But his hand was still there, urging them apart, urging her to cede dominion of all that she was—all that she would ever be—to his desperate hunger. Even then, he was not content to simply seize the prize he had won. He continued to toy with her, each deft flick of his nimble fingertips threatening to incinerate her in a consuming fire.
“You came to me, angel,” he whispered hoarsely, the scorching heat of his lips tracing the column of her throat until they settled against the pulse beating wildly beneath her skin. “Now come for me.”
He was her master. She had no choice but to obey his command.
The waves of pleasure broke over her in a blinding torrent. But instead of dragging her down as she had feared, they sent her shooting up out of the darkness and into the light.
Anne was still quaking with delectable little aftershocks when he covered her again. She clung to his shoulders, torn between drawing him closer and pushing him away. He suddenly seemed very large, very overpowering, very . . . male.
His mouth closed over hers once more, sampling the honeyed sweetness of her lips with a tender ferocity that soothed her panic, gave her the courage to open her thighs for him when he sought to nudge them apart with his knee. She felt the heavy weight of his arousal settle against the part of her still throbbing from his touch. He rubbed himself in the creamy pearls of nectar he’d coaxed from her melting core, then entered her with one long, smooth stroke, sheathing his rigid length deep within her.
Rent asunder by both the agony and the wonder of it all, Anne dug her fingernails into his back and sank her teeth into his shoulder to muffle a helpless wail. She had been foolish enough to believe she had known passion before, but that had been only a pale shadow compared to this, a frivolous little ghost of pleasures to come. A guttural groan tore from Dravenwood’s throat as he rocked hard against her, deepening both the pace and the intensity of his thrusts until her wordless pleas swelled into shuddering moans she could no longer contain.
Still he did not relent, making it clear he wouldn’t be satisfied until those delicious shivers of ecstasy began to wrack her womb once again. The second they did, he stiffened and surged within her, an even deeper groan tearing from his throat as he was swept away by the same relentless tide of rapture he had sent spilling through her.
ANNE’S EYES FLUTTERED OPEN to find the misty light of dawn breaking through the French windows of Dravenwood’s bedchamber. She sighed, her limbs weighted with a delicious languor that made her feel as if she had somehow melted during the night, then been reformed into something finer. Unlike Pippa, who whined and groaned and buried her head beneath the pillow when required to rise before ten o’clock, Anne had always been a cheerful riser. She would bound out of bed and dress quickly, eager to face the challenges of the day. But on this day, she would have been perfectly content to lie abed until noon, her every muscle a little sore, but still tingling with satisfaction.
She stretched with all of the languid grace of Sir Fluffytoes as she rolled over to seek the source of that satisfaction.
Dravenwood was lying on his back, one muscular forearm flung over his head. She sat up on one elbow to study his rugged chest and beautifully sculpted profile at her leisure. He looked so incredibly peaceful.
Her eyes widened in alarm. Dear Lord, what if his heart had been too weak to withstand their exertions? What if she had inadvertently finished him off?
She touched a hand to his chest. She could feel it rise and fall with each even breath, could count each steady beat of his heart beneath her palm.
She collapsed back on the pillow, grateful tears springing to her eyes.
Love is still the most powerful medicine of all.
As Nana’s voice echoed through Anne’s mind, a smile touched her lips. She had somehow accomplished what all of the poultices and medicinal teas had failed to do—she had saved him.
She was still feeling rather pleased with herself when he reached over without opening his eyes and drew her into his arms. She settled against him, her back pressed to his broad chest. When she felt his arousal nudging the softness of her rump, she couldn’t resist giving her hips a taunting little wiggle. His immediate response made her grin. Yes, he was most definitely showing signs of life.
He tugged her even closer, his possessive embrace making her feel warm and safe and cherished for the first time in a very long while.
“Maximillian,” she murmured, savoring the taste of his name on her lips.
A husky groan escaped him. “Hmmm . . . my angel . . . my sweet . . . my Angelica . . .”
Chapter Thirty
ANNE FROZE, GLARING BLINDLY at the French windows. One of Dravenwood’s hands closed around the softness of her breast, gently squeezing. Anne hesitated a moment, then reached down and flung his hand off her. As she struggled out of his embrace, he grunted in protest, then rolled to his opposite side and began gently snoring.
Anne slid out of the bed and snatched her discarded nightdress from the floor, determined to make her escape before he could discover he had taken the wrong woman to bed.
WHEN ANNE CAME MARCHING across the gallery a short while later, bathed, dressed, and starched to within an inch of her life, Angelica was lying in wait for her on the landing. Anne was determined to ignore her, but as she started down the stairs to the entrance hall, she could feel the legendary beauty’s taunting gaze boring into her back.
She swung around, pointing an accusing fi
nger at the portrait. “If you don’t stop smirking at me like that, you conceited cow, I’m going to draw a pair of mustaches, some bushy eyebrows, and a wart or two on your disgustingly perfect nose. And then we’ll see just how fetching your precious Lord Dravenwood finds you!”
Angelica continued to gaze down her disgustingly perfect nose at Anne, her amusement at Anne’s expense undaunted by the threat.
From the entrance hall below came the sound of someone clearing his or her throat. Anne jerked around to find Pippa standing at the bottom of the stairs.
The girl was eyeing Anne cautiously, the same way they all tended to eye Hodges whenever they caught him jousting with the chickens or scampering through the gardens at twilight trying to catch a gnome. “Just who were you talking to?”
“No one,” Anne snapped, casting Angelica one last baleful look before descending the rest of the stairs at a brisk clip. “No one at all.”
MAX AWOKE TO FIND himself alone for the first time in days. He struggled to sit up. His head spun and his stiff muscles throbbed in protest, forcing him to flop back to the pillows with a groan. He lay gazing up at the canopy, waiting for his muzzy head to clear.
Despite his lingering weakness, he was flooded with an undeniable sense of well-being. For as long as he could remember, he had felt as if he were suffering from some ravening hunger that made him snarl and snap at everyone around him. But now he felt deliciously sated, like a giant jungle cat that had just devoured a nice juicy gazelle.
Closing his eyes, he lifted his balled fists above his head and stretched, his rusty muscles rippling with exhilaration. He’d never felt quite so happy just to be alive. Ironic considering his last visitor had been a ghost. His eyes flew open, his memory honing in on the source of his satisfaction.
Angelica.
She had come to him in a dream, just as she had before. Only this time when he had reached for her, she had melted into his arms instead of back into the night.