by Anne Stuart
He moved closer, only to realize with a start that the windows on the upper floors were open to the cool spring breeze. The heavy front door was ajar as well, and the place, for all its overgrowth, seemed oddly welcoming.
He fought it. Fought the pull. He wouldn’t let it wrap around his heart again. He was growing damnably weak, to fall in love with a fierce-hearted young amazon, to start feeling sentimental about an old house. He’d dismissed Emma from his life. He could dismiss this house as well.
Someone had been there, he knew it the moment he stepped inside. He could smell soap and water, a recent fire in the grate. He could smell life in the house, and it hurt.
He moved through the place silently, half in a trance, not knowing what he expected. Whether it was the little people of his childhood fairy tales or something more dangerous, he neither knew nor cared.
He went up the broad oak staircase, listening to the familiar creak of the fifth step. There was silence all around, but he wasn’t alone. He didn’t know if they were ghosts or memories or travelers. He only knew where they lay.
The bedroom at the top of the stairs had once been his parents, before his father had inherited the title and the grand, cold house and the life that Killoran had hated. Here they’d been happy.
He walked into the room, moving straight toward the casement windows and pulling them closed against the cool evening air before he turned and saw her.
He’d known she would be there, irrational as the notion seemed. He felt no shock, no surprise at seeing Emma sleeping peacefully on the huge old bed in which he’d most likely been conceived. She was wearing colors, something light and green, and her hair was loose and untidy around her dirt-streaked face. And he knew immediately who had cleaned his house.
Her feet were bare. Long, narrow feet, for a large woman. Her hand was tucked under her chin, her eyes were closed, and she looked weary and immeasurably sad.
Perhaps she heard the latch of the windows, the imperceptible sound of his tread on the freshly scrubbed floorboards. Perhaps it was just that sixth sense that comes into play when one knows one is being watched. Her eyes opened, blinking, and she peered through the gathering dusk, straight at him.
“This is my house,” he said slowly, so as not to frighten her.
She sat up, edging back against the carved headboard. “I didn’t know,” she said, breathless. “No one told me. It was abandoned, and so sad, and I...” Words failed her, and she just stared at him, with such pain and longing that something cracked inside him.
He moved to the bed. “How can a house be sad?” he asked her.
“Perhaps it missed you. Perhaps it needed you desperately, even though you’d left it, turned your back on it.”
“It’s better off without me,” he whispered.
“It’s lost without you,” she said, her honey-brown eyes full of grief. “Why have you come here? You didn’t know I was here, I’m certain of that.”
The strands were weaving around him, gossamer-fine Irish silk. He made one last attempt to fight his way free. “It was all I have left.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “You have me.”
He didn’t say a word. Darkness was descending around them, filling the room, and it seemed a dream. One could do what one liked in dreams, couldn’t one? There was no danger in dreams.
“I have you, have I?” he murmured. “Is that a blessing or a curse?”
She didn’t flinch. “It depends on how you look at it,” she said. “On whether you want me or not.”
“What do you think?”
“I’ve never been sure.”
And he realized with shock that she spoke the truth. She truly didn’t know how much he wanted her, needed her, longed for her.
It could be his freedom. He could turn his back on her, on the house where he’d known his happiest years, turn his back on Ireland. And she’d find a new life. She was young enough, resilient enough.
It would be his first decent act in more than a decade. An act of such nobility and selflessness that no one would even suspect he was capable of it. He could do it, and he could do it for her.
“You’re mine, are you?” His voice was harsh. “Much as I appreciate the offer, I rather think I should decline.”
“I’m rich, you know” she told him, nervous. “My inheritance from my father’s munitions factories is quite vast...”
“I don’t want your money.”
“I know you don’t need it, but—”
“Actually, I’m penniless,” he said. “The devil’s luck finally abandoned me. Too many nights of deep play, a horse race I was fated to lose. This house and some land near Wicklow are all that I have left.”
She stared at him, and the faint light of hope vanished from her eyes. Perhaps for good. “Why did you leave me at Cousin Miriam’s?” she asked suddenly. “Why did you just walk away once Darnley was dead?”
He managed a shrug. “I’d finished what I had to do.” He picked up a lock of her long red hair and ran it through his fingers. “Lovely as you are, dear Emma, you no longer held any use for me.”
“I see,” she said in a muffled voice. “I should leave your property.” She tried to move, but he forestalled her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She felt thinner, more fragile beneath the thin green material, and there were shadows under her eyes.
“I thought you were my property as well.”
“You don’t want me.”
“I may be cruel, heartless, and penniless, dear Emma,” he said lightly. “I never said I was a fool.”
He should walk away. Now. And he knew he couldn’t. One last taste. Surely he was already doomed to hell—this could give him something to think of during an eternity of damnation.
He leaned forward brushing his mouth against hers, a mere temptation. It proved his undoing.
Her breath was warm and sweet against his mouth. And hardly realizing what he did, he threaded his hands through her tangled hair, cupping her face as he deepened the kiss.
She said not a word of protest, of longing, as he stripped her clothes from her body. She lay back on the mattress, watching him as he knelt over her, and when his mouth touched her breast she arched her back. He tasted her skin, her belly, between her legs, using his tongue, and it took him only moments to shatter her deliberate control, so that she cried out in the gathering darkness.
One last time, he told himself, rising over her, unfastening his breeches. But her hands were reaching up, pulling at his clothes, and he barely noticed the pain in his shoulder as she stripped the coat off, pushed the white linen shirt away from him; didn’t realize what she was doing until he felt her grow stiff beneath his hands, and heard her sharp intake of breath.
He knew what the bullet wound looked like. It was an ugly thing, red, raw, barely healing. And he didn’t for a moment think he might convince her it was anything other than what it was.
“He shot you,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“It was merely a scratch,” he lied, but she wasn’t listening.
She rose up onto her knees, and she was magnificent in the shadows, her long mane of fiery hair tumbled around her lush white body. “You didn’t tell me,” she accused him. “That’s why you left. You’d been hurt, and you didn’t want me to know. That’s why you didn’t come to see me, why you disappeared.”
“Stop thinking I have any decency!” he snapped, half mad with fighting his better instincts. “Who’s to say I would have done any differently? If you had any sense at all, you would leave me. I dislike people hovering over me, I don’t care about you or anyone, I don’t—”
She stopped him. She kissed him. Her mouth was open and full beneath his, and he was powerless to resist, to push her away, with his hands, with his words. She kissed his mouth, his nose, his eyelids. She put her mouth tenderly beside the bullet wound, then let it trail down his chest. Her hands shoved his breeches down his hips, and her mouth followed.
She was clumsy, she was awkwa
rd, she bestowed the most erotic torture he’d ever endured. There was no way he could pretend to be unmoved by her, not when his body betrayed him. Not when his actions betrayed him, and he pulled her up, against him, and kissed her mouth.
He prided himself on being a clever lover, always in control. He had no control now, no cleverness. He pushed her back on the bed, looming over her in the darkness, kneeling between her legs. She reached for him, and he came to her, pushing in deep, trapped by her body, her arms, her love.
He thought he could prolong it, but he was helpless against the tide of need that swept over him. He needed her, needed to take her in this bed, this house, this land. He needed to thrust deep and fill her with his seed. He needed to claim her, and claim his heritage. He’d fought it for too long.
He lifted himself above her, staring down at her as the bed rocked beneath his powerful, rhythmic thrusts. Her eyes were open as well, looking up at him, and then her eyes fluttered closed as her body convulsed around him, and he came as well, rigid in her arms, no longer fighting it, and her, and his own lonely heart.
It seemed to take forever for his breathing to slow. She was curled up against him, her face wet with tears, her body warm and pliant, the smell of sex and desire mixing with the heady scent of lavender and roses, soap and water, and the fresh spring air of Ireland.
He brushed the tears from her face, gently, and she turned, a smudge of dust on one pale cheek, her hair a tangle behind her. “Do you really want me to leave you?” she asked.
For a moment he didn’t move, but his hand didn’t leave her face. “It would be best,” he said in a measured voice.
“That’s no answer. Do you want me to leave you?”
“I have no money, no house but this one. I’m a cruel, heartless bastard who cares for nothing and no one.”
“Do you want me to leave you?”
“I’d make the devil’s own husband. I’d never want to leave here, you’d go mad with the isolation, I’d have to spend most of my time with the horses, you’d grow weary of bearing children…”
“Do you want me to leave you?”
He stared down at her. “Never,” he said. And he pulled her back into his arms.
Epilogue
“Da!” The demanding little voice echoed through the spotless old house. Killoran stood inside the front hallway of the farmhouse, stripping off his rough leather gloves. He was pleasantly exhausted, he smelled of horses and sweat, but he doubted his demanding eldest daughter, Letitia, would notice.
“What is it, my pet?” he replied as she flung herself at him, her flame-red hair hanging in its usual tangle down her back, her nine-year-old frame already tall and strong.
She looked like her mother. She had her father’s imperious temperament. God help them all.
“Mother said to tell you she’s going mad. The twins have been fighting all day, the baby’s teething, and that wretched brat Colleen was playing with my very best doll. The one Lady Seldane sent me from London.” Letitia’s lilting voice was strong with indignation. “Why did you have to burden me with so many brothers and sisters?” she said accusingly.
“To keep life from getting boring,” he said lightly, starting up the broad stairs. He could hear Emma’s voice, raised above the childish squabbles in fierce exasperation, and he found himself smiling. “We’ve a new colt.”
All Letitia’s pettish bad temper vanished. “Daylily had her foal? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did, love.”
Emma appeared at the top of the stairs, her hands on her ample hips, her hair coming out of its haphazard attempt at restraint. The apron that covered her pregnancy-filled belly was wet with soapy water; the baby on her hip was damp from his bath and screaming in a rage.
“Why,” she said in a very dangerous voice, “did I ever marry you?”
“Because you couldn’t resist my charm?” he suggested gravely.
“Don’t smile at me,” she snapped back, shoving the wet, naked baby into his arms. “I should have married Nathaniel. In the past ten years Lady Barbara has had two quiet, perfectly behaved children and a life of order and calm. And what do I have?”
“Utter madness,” Killoran said. “Where are the servants?”
“Nanny’s got a toothache, Siobhan and Bridget have gone to mass, and Cook is in the kitchen where she belongs,” Emma said.
“Well, my love, if there are too many children, whom do you suggest we dispense with?”
By that time baby Thomas, held in his father’s strong arms, had ceased his furious howling.
Colleen stood in the doorway to the room she shared with her older sister, her elfin face doubtful, and the twins, Mary and Ronan, appeared equally wary.
Emma glanced at them all, humor slowly filling her honey-brown eyes. “Well, therein lies the problem. I love the little beasts, even if they’re driving me mad. Shall we give them another chance?”
“Perhaps that might be wise,” he agreed. “Unless you’d rather send them to the workhouse.”
“Sluff,” Ronan said boldly with all the wisdom of his eight years. “The workhouse wouldn’t take us.”
“Doubtless you’re right. We could sell you to the tinkers.”
“You’d have to pay them,” Mary piped up.
“Drown them?” Killoran suggested lazily.
“You won’t even drown unwanted kittens,” Letitia scoffed. “You can’t fool me. Accept the fact. Da, that you’ve got the softest heart in all of Ireland.”
Killoran grinned. “There’s many who’d never believe it. If I can’t put the fear of God into you, then we’ll have to see if your mother can.”
“It’s hopeless,” Emma said, tugging the twins close. “Your father’s too tenderhearted for the likes of you. Let me warn you, children, that there’s nothing more dangerous than a reformed blackguard. I imagine it’ll be a life of disaster for all of us.”
“Is that what Da is? A reformed blackguard?” Ronan asked, clearly planning on becoming a blackguard himself.
Killoran smiled at her over the children’s heads, a sweet, private smile. His eyes dropped to the burgeoning proof of her latest pregnancy, and Emma’s response was a helpless laugh. “Not completely reformed,” he murmured.
“They’re the worst kind,” Emma said.
“Go on out to the barn, children, and ask Willie to show you the new foal while your mother has five minutes’ peace.” He placed the damp but now cheerful Thomas in Letitia’s capable hands.
“Five minutes’ peace? Unheard of,” Emma said, but her frustration had already left her as the children clattered noisily down the stairs.
He looked at her in the sudden stillness of the upstairs hall. “Too many babies, my love?” he whispered.
She shook her head fiercely. “Not quite yet,” she said.
“Too much Ireland? We haven’t left in ten years.”
“No.”
“Too much of your dark and dangerous husband?”
Her mouth curved in a wide, delectable grin. “Never,” she said.
“Then let’s hope Willie manages to keep them busy for a good long time,” he said, pulling her toward the bedroom.
And her only answer was a shy, seductive smile.
The End