by Anne Stuart
But she was beyond forcing. She sat in the one chair the room boasted, her back to the moonlight, to the bed, and stared into the fire. She was shaking, yet she knew it wasn’t from cold.
Killoran had a terrifying charm of that there was little doubt. But it was the memory of Cousin Miriam that had sent Emma into a panic. Why would Killoran even know of her existence? Had he been lying to her all this time? Was he not her rescuer at all?
Had he brought her there to die? It was always possible, and she found she no longer cared. She’d trusted him, in an odd sort of way. Knowing that he was a villain, a user, a self-confessed rake and debaucher, she’d still felt an irrational sense of safety with him. Perhaps it was simply because he’d rescued her so many times.
But the time was coming when he wouldn’t rescue her. When he’d throw her to the wolves and watch. She could count on no one but herself, and if she had any sense of self-preservation, she would get away, from this place and most particularly from him.
The more she thought about it, the more determined she was. She’d been mesmerized by Killoran, by his dark green eyes and elegant hands, by his low, seductive voice and wounded heart. But he was doubtless right in saying he had no heart. And the sooner she was away from him, the sooner she could reclaim her own.
The night grew quiet and still around her. The crackle of the fire, mixed with the sound of her even breathing, her determined heartbeat, lulled her into a shallow, fitful sleep.
She dreamed of Killoran. And his deft, elegant hands.
He watched her as she slept. She looked oddly fragile for such a robust creature. Her skin was pale beneath the flame-colored hair, and the clinging black clothes only heightened the stark contrast. She looked almost ethereal, sitting there asleep in the chair.
The room was hot, the dry wood sending out waves of blessed heat. Killoran stripped off his jacket and waistcoat and tossed them across the dusty table, then turned back to her.
There were no other chairs in the room. It didn’t matter. He sank down on his haunches, leaning against the wall, staring at her.
It was a bad sign, his need to get back to her. Almost as bad as his sudden decision to keep her from the debauches of Sanderson’s house party. He didn’t remember feeling particularly protective before in his life. It was a bad sign indeed.
A few hours, or days, on her own at that licentious party would have given her a most enlightening education. She would have learned more about men and their needs, their frailties, than most women learned in a lifetime. The knowledge would have served her well if she’d decided to be a wife or a whore, the two options open to most women.
He’d told himself he was saving her to torment Darnley, but he’d lied. He’d been saving her for his own torment.
Sanderson had brought his remarkable kitchen staff with him, but Killoran had soon discovered he wasn’t interested in food. The claret and brandy had been smuggled from France, and he’d drunk too much, but even that had failed to still the nagging, unsettling feeling that had settled somewhere in the black hole where most people had a heart.
He could have found any number of games with all levels of play, from the green ‘uns ready and willing to be fleeced, to the more expert players who offered him a real challenge. He’d realized he didn’t care.
Even the ripest, most talented of female flesh had failed to entice him. For this particular gathering, Sanderson had imported only the highest level of tarts. Actresses; the demimonde; the occasional masked, bored, aristocratic slut seeking diversion. None of them had moved him.
“What’s wrong with you, man?” Sanderson had demanded, one hand occupied with a glass of champagne, the other tucked down the front of a spectacularly well-endowed, masked female who Killoran suspected was Countess Olivier. The same woman who’d refused to dance a country dance with a lowly Irish peer, freshly arrived in London so long ago. Killoran’s mouth curled in a cynical smile.
“And don’t look like that!” Sanderson added, slopping champagne over the countess’s creamy bosom. “You know I hate it when you smile. It’s enough to give a corpse the shivers.”
The countess shrieked. Killoran ignored her, glancing around the crowded, noisy room. “Is Lady Barbara Fitzhugh here tonight?” he asked, casually interested.
“Babs? No. I couldn’t prevail upon her to join us. Just as well, I think. In the past few weeks she’s proved tiresome. Never up for a bit of sport.” Belatedly Sanderson caught himself. “Beg pardon, old man. I was forgetting that you... that she...”
He floundered, and Killoran let him. So Barbara has passed up the sort of thing she usually pretended to revel in. Interesting. And he could just imagine whose company she was preferring.
“But what about the gel?” Sanderson was unwise enough to continue. “When I got word that you had decided to join us, you said you were bringing a young woman. Not that most people bring their half sister to this kind of thing, but then, I suspect you’re not like most brothers. A little overfond, don’t you know?” he added with a drunken leer. “Wouldn’t have minded a taste of her myself. Always was partial to tits.”
“Darling!” the countess protested.
“I adore you, my sweet,” Sanderson assured her. “I just want to fuck Killoran’s sister as well.”
“Indeed,” Killoran murmured coolly, wondering why he suddenly wanted to kill a drunken fool like Sanderson. It was a great shame that one of the few rules of society decreed that you couldn’t kill a man who was the worse for drink. He stared at his host. “I’m afraid my sister isn’t available. I’m saving her.”
“For Darnley or yourself?” Sanderson asked, showing he wasn’t quite as drunk as he’d first appeared. Perhaps he was sober enough to meet him after all, Killoran thought wistfully.
“Why should you say that?” he inquired. But his host failed to recognize the imminent danger.
“Everyone knows there’s bad blood between you and Darnley. Has been from time immemorial. Word has it that you despoiled his sister and she took her own life. ‘Course, that doesn’t sound much like the Maude Darnley I remember,” Sanderson added fairly. “She wasn’t the type to throw herself away on... well, you know what I mean, old man. She had a high opinion of herself and her value on the marriage mart. No offense, Killoran,” he said uneasily.
“None taken,” Killoran returned smoothly, dreaming of pistols. “And if it were true, it doesn’t make Darnley much of a brother, does it? To let me go unpunished.”
“Darnley’s not much of a human being, if you ask me,” Sanderson said with devastating frankness. “But then, you’re a hard man to kill. No one even dares try anymore.”
“Oh, they try,” Killoran said in a deceptively tranquil voice. “They just don’t get very far.” Out of the comer of his eye he could see a plump, red-haired woman near the stairs, and he felt a faint flickering of interest that surprised him. He was seldom drawn to whores.
“Well, find your own pleasure,” Sanderson said grandly. “There’s plenty to be had. At least we won’t be having the pleasure of seeing Jasper Darnley for the next few days. Apparently his stomach ailment has taken a turn for the worse once more.”
“How sad,” Killoran murmured in dulcet tones. “I believe I heard a rumor to that effect.”
“I don’t suppose you had anything to do with it?”
And that was why he put up with Sanderson, Killoran reminded himself. Because the man had just a trace more of a brain than most of his ilk.
“No more than I had to do with his recent absence from society,” he answered truthfully.
Sanderson shivered with melodramatic exaggeration. “Remind me never to offend you, Killoran.”
“A bit too late for that.”
Sanderson seemed singularly unmoved by the notion. “Go and make yourself pleasant to Harper’s latest trull. The titian-haired beauty you’ve been eyeing so covertly. I gather she’s particularly gifted with the French talent. And you spent a great deal of time in France, did you
not?”
He glanced over at the striking creature. She knew perfectly well she was being watched—it was worth her livelihood to notice such things. “I think I will,” Killoran murmured. “Innocence gets to be very boring.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Sanderson replied with a wicked leer, pouring his champagne over the countess’s lush breast and proceeding to lap it up.
Killoran had no need to approach the woman. She came to him, her lush body swaying with just the right amount of seductiveness. His eyes narrowed as she glided up to him. She was beautiful. Stunningly, spectacularly beautiful, so much so that she even put Emma in the shade. But something wasn’t right.
The hair, for one thing. The color was too even, too brassy, clearly not her natural shade at all. Her eyes were blue, and faintly stupid, as she looked at him assessingly. Her mouth was a rouged Cupid’s bow, not Emma’s generous smile, and she smelled of musk, not of lavender and roses.
And she was too damned short.
In fact, she wasn’t Emma. And he looked down at her, at this luscious offering on the Altar of Venus, and felt nothing but anger and regret.
He hadn’t any more time to waste on what was clearly a lost cause. Emma had bewitched him—how, he wasn’t quite certain. No other woman had managed to disrupt his life, his plans, so completely. She’d sunk into his brain like a hot knife into wax, and he could think of no way of dislodging her short of burning down the night.
He had found Willie sound asleep, snoring loudly on his pallet in the stables. For some reason, Killoran hadn’t wakened him, unsaddling his horse himself and brushing him down. There was something soothing about the feel of horseflesh beneath one’s hands, something calming in the steady strokes of the curry brush. He’d forgotten that simple pleasure.
Once again the memory of home, lost so long ago, came crashing back over him. His love for horses, shared with his father, the long hours spent training the swift, beautiful Connemara ponies. Life had once been so very simple, so very right.
But not anymore. And not ever again.
He slapped Satanas’s rump and moved away from him. Killoran could imagine Sanderson’s reaction if he knew his friend had left the pleasures of a debauched party for the joy of grooming a horse. He’d think him mad. Maybe he was.
The moon had set when he went in search of Emma. He hadn’t stopped to think why—he’d simply gone, with unerring instinct. The brandy still thrummed in his veins; the whore still teased at his memory. He needed to look at Emma, to find out why he’d left a talented courtesan for her. But when he’d finally come across her, sound asleep in that uncomfortable-looking chair, he’d known the answer.
Her scent filled the room—lavender and roses. He leaned against the wall, watching her, and then he knew. Whether he liked it or not, he wasn’t going to let Darnley put his hands on her again. She wasn’t going to be despoiled by a sick brute like Jasper Darnley, and she certainly wasn’t going to have that harridan who claimed to be her cousin get near her again.
He needed to marry her off, to someone strong and decent and kind. Someone without the imagination to wound her and hurt her, someone who’d protect her and take her far away from London and the Jasper Darnleys of this world. And the Killorans of this world as well.
Nathaniel immediately sprang to mind. He was young, strong, stupidly idealistic. In fact, a noble hero, bent upon rescuing a damsel in distress. Lady Barbara was his chosen damsel, but she was already a lost cause, unwilling to be saved. She was better suited for people like Killoran, another lost soul.
Besides, Nathaniel seemed very fond of Emma. He was always warning Killoran, looking at him suspiciously, as if he suspected him of the foulest possible designs. Of course, he’d been right.
Emma would be happy in Northumberland. She’d give Nathaniel babies, and it would be a simple matter for the two of them to imagine themselves in love. If they proved recalcitrant, he could always arrange for Nathaniel to ruin her. Such things were child’s play when you had a mind like his. Once Nathaniel took her maidenhead, he’d have no choice but to marry her.
It all made perfect, logical sense. Killoran would get rid of the two of them, so damnably distracting. He’d take Barbara into his bed, and perhaps even teach her to like the sport, though he doubted he’d want to exert himself that much. And then he’d find Sanderson’s whore and use her as bait with Jasper.
All very sensible. Unfortunately, the plot hinged on one minor contingency. That he’d be willing to let another man take Emma.
He lifted his head to stare at her, running his hands through his thick hair. What was it about her that caught at his soul, when he no longer had one? What was it that fascinated him, weakened him, made him start believing in things that didn’t exist? She was just a girl. A young woman, who’d lived a sheltered life with a religious fanatic and a lecher. A woman of courage, determination, and astonishing sangfroid, who could skewer a man without fainting, who could stand up to Killoran himself—who had terrified far braver creatures. She was just a girl. And he wanted her.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Was it the brandy that was sapping the last of his vaunted self-control? Or merely the amount of time he’d been around her? This moment had been there, just out of reach, since he’d walked into that room at the inn and found her standing, bloodstained, over the fresh corpse of her uncle. He’d fought it for as long as he could. He wasn’t going to fight it any longer.
He must have intruded on her very dreams. Though he made no sound at all, eventually her eyes opened, myopic, sleepy. She didn’t see him at first, crouched against the wall, and he allowed himself the furtive pleasure of watching her slow, delicious stretch.
And then she knew she wasn’t alone. Her eyes flew to his, wary, squinting in the darkness.
“You’re back,” she said, her low voice faintly breathless with surprise. “But why? Was the orgy too tame for you?”
He rose slowly, lazily, watching the wariness in her eyes increase. “Now what, pray tell, do you know of orgies?”
“I read a lot.”
“Books about orgies? You surprise me. You don’t strike me as a female full of prurient interests. In fact, there was no orgy at Sanderson’s. Merely a group of underdressed whores of all stations of life, some indifferent games of cards, and a fully adequate meal. Are you hungry?” His question was almost an afterthought.
“No,” she said. “But I am curious about something.”
He glanced over at the bed. It was a large one, and someone, presumably Emma, had brought in the fur throw from the carriage. He wondered how she would look, lying naked against it, her flaming hair spread out around her. Around him.
“Ask me anything,” he murmured.
“Are you going to take me back to my cousin Miriam?”
He hesitated for only a moment. He heard the well-disguised panic in her voice, the first real fear he’d ever noticed in his otherwise stalwart companion. Remembering the formidable Miss DeWinter, he wasn’t sure he blamed her.
“Willie has been indiscreet,” he said in the casual voice that was his most dangerous.
“You didn’t warn him not to say anything,” she protested.
“Servants in my employ shouldn’t have to be warned to keep their mouths shut. What did he tell you? That Miss Skin-and-Bones and I were as thick as thieves? That I tumbled her in her front hallway?”
“Don’t,” she said faintly.
“As a matter of fact, I learned of Miriam DeWinter from your admirer. Lord Darnley. Apparently he and Miss DeWinter have some sort of scheme in mind. I wondered why Jasper seemed willing to let his henchmen murder you before he had a chance to take you. Obviously it was your cousin who possessed the murderous tendencies. They must run in the family.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“My dear one, I’m not,” he protested lazily. “Merely pointing out a fact.”
“Did you tell her where I was?”
“I didn’t need to. She was already fully appris
ed of your whereabouts. Or was, up until this morning, when I decided it might be politic for us to absent ourselves from London for a while.”
She looked at him in disbelief, clearly doubting any noble motive on his part. She was wise to do so. “Are you going to give me back to her?”
“I hadn’t realized you were mine to give.”
A faint flush mantled her pale cheeks. “You’ve told me as much on any number of occasions.”
“I’ve yet to act on it.” The silence in the room was a palpable thing. She stared up at him, and he could read her soul in her honey-brown eyes. The fear, the wariness, the bravery. And the shy, irrational longing as well.
She longed for him. He knew it, much as it astounded him. Not that he was unused to being sought after by women. He’d been blessed with a certain combination of form and face which seemed to draw both women and men to him, even as they fought against the pull.
But Emma wasn’t like other women. She was too determined, too sensible to fall for his clever ploys. But she looked at him with her heart in her eyes, and he knew that he’d found the one thing he couldn’t resist. A taste of innocence, after a lifetime of jaded pleasures.
He would take her. He knew it—the time had passed for him to resist. He would debauch her. Strip off her clothes, lay her on the bed, and bring her down to his level. Make her pant and quiver and shatter in his arms. Take her, and debase her. And then let her go.
And in doing so, he’d free himself from the insidious effect she had on him. By bringing her down to his level, he’d be released from his unwelcome bondage. And there’d be no more nagging weakness, or foolish sentiment, or absurd desires.
“Do you need some help with your clothes, Emma?” he asked in a deceptively cool voice.
Her flush darkened. “No, thank you. I intend to sleep in them.”
“No,” he said, very gently. “You will not.”