Raul’s people were turning their heads away, looking toward the entrance, squirming in their seats as if wanting to get away. From Prospero’s recitation. From the pain and the memories.
Hada stopped behind her husband, put her hands on his shoulders, and observed Victoria with dark, expressionless eyes.
“From the day we were born, we were dragged into Tonagra to see the prisoners before the de Guignards hanged them. I saw my own father …” Prospero stopped projecting his voice. He bent his head, closed his eyes, reached up, and gripped Hada’s hands.
For the first time, Victoria saw him not as an obnoxious nuisance, but as a man racked with recollections too agonizing to bear. “I am sorry, Prospero.”
His eyes sprang open. He glowered, rejecting her sympathy. His voice rose again. “You natter on about manners while we’re facing death. So no, I don’t want to join your modern world. Not until I’ve finished the job I have to do here first.”
Hada lifted her hand off his shoulder. She slapped him on the back of the head. Once. Hard. “Shut up.”
He turned on her. “What did you do that for?”
“She’s right,” Hada said. “You know she’s right.”
“You think this woman is right?” He rubbed his head and grudgingly admitted, “Maybe she is. But I don’t want to learn from a snooty— ”
Hada boxed his ears. “She might be snooty, but she’s teaching your son his numbers.” She turned to face the other women. “I know there are many things about Miss Cardiff that make us doubt her usefulness to us and to our king. But she’s teaching our children— all our children— to read. We didn’t ask her. She hasn’t asked for praise or for money, just took on the task, and you all know the children love her.”
One by one, the women started nodding.
Victoria stood quietly, recognizing this breakthrough for what it was— a change in policy led by the mothers of the children she tutored.
Of course. Who else but the mothers would give a good education the value it deserved?
Hada turned back to Prospero. “You might not want to join the modern world, but this is what I’ve been fighting for— a chance for our babes to learn. So you respect Miss Cardiff and be trained in what she can teach us.”
“Stupid idea to learn manners,” Prospero muttered.
Hada pressed her fingers into his shoulders until he turned to face her. “Maybe so, but the king has decreed it, and, Prospero— he has seen the childish way you’ve been acting.”
Prospero stared at his wife in shock.
“He sees more than you think.” She turned to face Victoria. “Go ahead. We’ll listen. We’ll learn. Teach us to eat with forks.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Amya finished pinning Victoria’s hair up, then accepted the last bucket of warm water from the scullery maid and poured it into the tub. “Is the water temperature comfortable, Miss Cardiff?”
“It’s good, thank you,Amya. ”Victoria relaxed against the tall back of the round wooden tub and let the heat work its way into her bones.
Eyes closed, she listened as Amya made the sofa into a bed and laid out her nightgown, stoked the fire, and set the screen.
Victoria was weary. Tired of fighting the adults in her etiquette class. Tired of lying awake at night, struggling against the clawing need Raul created in her. And now … wishing she could ignore those fatal words Prospero had thrown at her, and what they ultimately meant.
You have no stake in our struggle. We all could die.
Our king could die.
She hadn’t thought … Yes, she had known Raul would go off and fight. But he was so alive, so vital, she had assumed he would win, be triumphant, lead the victory parade, be crowned king, and when all that had happened … she would be free. It had been her goal— to stand strong against his seduction for another day, another week, another month, and then she would be free, body untouched, heart intact.
Please, God, heart intact.
“I’ll return with your rinse water,” Amya said softly, and left, shutting the door quietly behind her.
“Thank you,” Victoria said to the empty room.
Prospero had cruelly torn the veil from her eyes.
Yes, victory was possible. She even believed Raul’s plan would succeed— should succeed— but Raul could be hurt. Tortured. Killed.
Success or failure, life or death, when the revolution was over, she would be free. Body intact. Heart intact.
To grow old by herself …
Today Raul had once again gone into the city to pester the de Guignards , so she had spent the whole afternoon with Raul’s people, teaching them how to greet dignitaries and noblemen, to muffle their bodily functions, and yes, to use their forks. Once they set their minds to learning, they seemed determined to make up for lost time.
So, thanks to Hada, Victoria would succeed in her goal. She had started Raul’s people on their road to respectability … while her own respectability clung precariously to life.
For so many nights, she had had to fight both Raul’s seduction and her own weakness. She fought because Miss Victoria Cardiff always knew the right thing to do, and preserving her virginity until marriage was the right thing to do— and since Victoria Cardiff had no desire to wed, the maintenance of her purity had previously been automatic, like brushing her hair a hundred strokes each night.
It spoke volumes for her current conundrum when she considered she hadn’t performed that nightly ritual since she’d arrived at Raul’s castle.
The latch on the door clicked.
She thought it was Amya.
Then … then when no one spoke, she knew.
Goose bumps rose on her skin. Slowly she turned her head toward the entrance.
Her instinct had not steered her wrong.
Raul stood there, steaming bucket of water in hand.
He looked as if he’d been to the opera, wearing black and white in a suit cut to display his body like a frame.
He should have appeared as if he were the epitome of civilization; instead, his eyes glowed dark green and primitive, like the tangled forest outside their window …
or like a dragon’s on the prowl.
He shut the door behind him and leaned against it. Reaching behind him, he turned the key.
“No,” she said.
“I’ll listen when you say yes.” He stalked toward her, one slow step at a time, and her world trembled as if thunder shook the ground.
She couldn’t tear her gaze from his, couldn’t look away from the fall of black hair that framed his face, the way the flames bathed his features with rosy light and dark shadow.
She pulled the small square of wash linen over her chest— it was barely the size of a handkerchief, and almost useless. She sank deeper into the water.
He put the bucket down. Knelt by the fire and stoked it higher.
She realized she’d been holding her breath and inhaled, tried to be Victoria Cardiff and not a creature who thought of nothing but passion, longed for nothing but passion. But when he turned back to her, prudence fled, leaving only fear and … passion.
He stripped off his cravat, his collar, his cuffs. He pulled off his shirt and his undershirt. He was graceful, his muscles sharply defined. He teased her with the sight of his bare chest and broad, bare shoulders, and she waited for him to remove his trousers.
But disappointment seared her, for he acted as if the thought had never crossed his mind, as if he didn’t know that like a withered old maid, she wanted to see him, his body— and the source of his drive to possess her.
Yet the way he watched her made her feel anything but withered, and when he picked up the bar of lavender soap Amya had placed beside the tub, Victoria caught her breath.
She knew what he intended now, and every respectable impulse in her rose in protest … and faded as anticipation took command.
He plunged his hands into the water, worked up a rich lather, then paced around her, his gaze fixed on her body hal
f-revealed in the shimmering water. Finally he stood behind her; she waited, not knowing what to expect … until he placed his soapy fingers on her neck and moved them in slow, firm circles.
The silence in the room was thick, rich, warm with promise. Each breath she took heated her from the inside out.
He moved around to the front, kneeling before her as if in worship of her beauty.
And the way he leaned forward, looked deep into her eyes … he did make her feel beautiful.
Not that he wasn’t interested in her naked body beneath the lapping water. But he was making it clear, very clear, that it was she, Victoria, who held him enraptured.
His soapy hands slid down her arms. His fingers entwined with hers; he pushed his calloused palm to hers, a firm pressure that felt somehow incendiary, as if he were rubbing her intimately.
He dipped their joined hands into the water, released her, again reached for the soap and lathered his hands. Again he moved behind her. With his arms under her arms, he lifted her out of the water and pulled her against him.
Never had she known the shock of bare skin against bare skin.
Water and bubbles sluiced down her body as he rubbed her, first on her chest, then her belly, then her breasts… . Oh, God. Her breasts, her nipples, every sensitive inch of skin … She trembled, caught between the heat of him against her back and the pleasure of his hands on her body— the unique sensations he created made her jittery, jumpy, torn between the need to run from this cataclysmic event … and the need to embrace it. Embrace him.
His hands rubbed her belly again, her thighs, between them… .
She couldn’t explain why she allowed this. Perhaps it was the nights of silent seduction. Perhaps it was the perfume of the pine-scented smoke that gave a tang to the air and clouded her vision. Perhaps it was too many years of loneliness … but she wasn’t so much lonely as alone. In truth, she had always liked being alone, being the only person responsible for herself.
With Raul, it wasn’t necessary.
With Raul, she could relax the stiff spine that had carried her through years of living with her stepfather, years of school, years of supporting herself, making sure everyone knew she was proper, so proper.
With Raul, she knew he would climb the castle tower to have her. If only that weren’t true, she would have the strength to hold him off.
But with Raul, she felt like a fairy princess and an earth goddess, all at the same time.
No one knew what was happening in this room. No one knew she wanted Raul: wanted to lie in his bed with him, taste him, let him taste her, let him teach her the meaning of pleasure.
As his hands slid between her legs and opened her to temptation, she moaned, a long, slow, languid sound, as if together they were making music.
The sound gave him pause, made him lean his face into her hair, inhale as if she were an intoxicating perfume. His lips grazed her cheek, and the knowledge of his longing washed over her.
She turned her head, caught his mouth with hers, then kissed him as his hands moved on her, touching places no man had ever touched, setting off thrills… .
She could kiss him forever. He kissed like a man who needed kissing. He kissed, and in his kiss she tasted long years of facing a world that cared not at all about his loneliness. His kiss was like hers, a mere half kiss until the two of them were together. Then they were whole.
They were one.
When he released her, her knees gave way and she slid back into the tub.
He picked up the bucket of warm water and poured it over her, rinsing the soap away.
She could scarcely breathe for the desire that sped like a drug through her veins. When he picked up the towel and offered his hand, anticipation made her bite her lip.
She should be afraid that tonight was the night his control would shatter.
No, that wasn’t true.
She should be afraid that tonight was the night her own control would shatter. For his sinful lips silently promised bliss; his green eyes burned with experience and knowledge; his broad hands had already proved their mastery of her body.
She placed her palm in his.
He pulled her from the tub and dried her: her shoulders, her breasts, her back… . The long, slow strokes of the rough linen set her nerves on edge, and when he knelt before her to dry her thighs, her calves, her feet, she blushed. Or maybe the heat she experienced was lust, for to see this powerful man on his knees before her naked body was an aphrodisiac so strong she extended trembling fingers to stroke the beautiful shining black of his hair.
He looked up then, his expression wild and fierce. He flung the towel away. Moving quickly, he wrapped one arm around her thighs. Pulled her close, while his other hand urged her to part her legs, then slid into the blond hair over her slit.
She closed her eyes, ready for his touch.
But no— not his touch, his breath.
Horror made her gasp and try to spring back.
His arm was an iron bar holding her in place, holding her upright. His dark head leaned into her, a contrast to her pale skin. His tongue licked at her, explored her, tasted her with every evidence of enjoyment.
He was a god. He was Poseidon; pleasure broke over her like a wave, drowning her in passion. He drove her from peak to peak, taking her higher and higher. She writhed, trying to fight the relentless rhythm.
But he knew exactly what he was doing.
Her eyes were wide, her senses filled with the sight of the leaping flames, the scent of the lavender soap, the sound of her own desperate panting, the slick, warm feel of his tongue that thrust and thrust, outside, inside… .
Climax seized her, swirled her in ever-decreasing circles until she was dizzy and blind with rapture.
When she came back to the room, she realized her fingers clutched the silky strands of his hair. His cheek rested against her belly; his eyes were closed; a half smile lifted his lips.
He looked like a satisfied man.
He was not, of course, except … every day took him closer to his goal of seduction.
He was, in the end, a hunter who had spotted his mate, tracked her, trapped her, and knew that soon she would consent to be his in every way. Because she couldn’t resist this. Resist him.
Her fingers fell away.
He lifted his head, saw the satiation, the wonder, the amazement. Still in silence, he stood, took her hand, and walked her to the sofa. Lifting the nightgown, he put it over her head, helped her slide her trembling arms into the sleeves, buttoned her up to the base of her throat.
Lifting the covers, he watched as she sank down. He tucked her in, moved beside her, put his head onto her pillow. With memories and blankets between them, he looked into her eyes and whispered the first words he had spoken tonight: “Imagine how good you’ll feel when I’m deep inside you.”
Chapter Thirty
Raul rose from beside the sofa. Walking to the tub, he removed his boots and stripped off his trousers.
Taking a black tie off his end table, he lifted his arms and bound his hair at the base of his neck— and at the sight of his silhouette against the fire, Victoria forgot how to breathe, how to move, forgot she should shut her eyes in virginal embarrassment.
He was glorious, a man at the peak of his health and strength, and even if she hadn’t known he was of royal blood, she would have recognized him by the power he exuded. His rugged face looked as if it had been sculpted of stone. His taut chest and belly were lightly dusted with dark hair and rippled with muscle. His bottom was high and tight, and his powerful legs could control a horse with ease. She saw the whole man— but she focused on the single element that could make them one.
His erection jutted up, strong and glorious, declaring all too clearly his desire for her.
Stepping into her bath, he sank into the water, and only then did she remember to shut her eyes. She listened to the splashing as he used her lavender-scented water. She tried to mock the thought of Raul, so brawny and masculine, smell
ing like swaths of purple fields in Provence.
But nothing could erase the vision of Raul’s silhouette burned into her brain, or ease his words from her mind…Imagine how good you’ll feel when I’m deep inside you.
Now she lay beneath the Raul-scented blankets, smelling the essence of him where his head had rested on her pillow, feeling the memory of him against her lips, tasting him in her mouth, longing for him in the moist recesses of her body… . Everything sexual in her ached, swollen with need, damp and willing, and only a small piece of her mind argued against surrender.
Because it would be surrender. She knew that. He intended to imprint himself on her, possess and keep her as long as it pleased him, and when she gave in … no, if she gave in, she would be his plaything, his mistress, with no rights and no future.
The splashing stopped. She listened to the whisper of the towel as he dried himself. Listened as he strolled barefoot across the room. Listened to the rustle of the feathers in the mattress when he climbed into bed.
She wanted to open her eyes, to go to him, because …
Oh, God. When he kissed her, she could think of nothing but the pleasure he could give her. Would give her.
He walked like a man who knew women in every intimate way. He smiled like a man who loved to seek out a woman’s secrets. When he gazed at her, those green eyes smoldered with promise, and her dream of a small house in the country where she could live alone and unencumbered by relationships faded to nothingness…
If only she could escape him.
But she was stuck here, spending every day in his castle working for his cause, every night in his bedroom trapped in a bubble of heated sensuality.
He was right.
She was going to give in. Why not here? Why not now? Because now … might be the only time they had.
Today Prospero had made her look at the truth she so desperately did not want to see.
Raul was leading a rebellion.
Even if the rebellion succeeded, he could be killed. If the rebellion failed, he would be killed, and in the horrible method befitting a heinous criminal.
At the thought, her eyes opened, and she stared into a darkness lit by fire and the single small flame of the night candle.