Bride (39 page)
“It isn't seemly for you to be naked before me.”
“It was seemly enough when you took me in that cell. If you hadn't done that, Mr. Smith wouldn't have used me so.”
Struan turned away and fought for control. He must not forget the falsehood that had probably been invented to involve him with this female in the first place. “How did your husband learn of what had happened to you … earlier?”
“With you, you mean? When we rutted?”
He bit back a curse. “Yes.”
“Told him, didn't I. Had to when the money stopped coming. He thought it was by way of being some settlement from an old aunt of mine. When the money stopped, he was angry. Then he found out there'd never been an aunt and he beat me till I told about you. No man's pride will take that. He said you should have to pay for the rest of your life for picking what he should have picked.”
“Odd he didn't notice the bare tree earlier,” Struan said wryly.
“That's as may be—or not. It doesn't matter now, does it? He's decided to make you pay anyhow.”
“And you are here to help him, of course?”
She stood up and flew at him, both fists raised. “How could you! You don't know what I've suffered.”
He caught her wrists and held on while she wriggled and fought, her fine breasts swinging where he could not fail to watch them with fascination.
Panting, she grew still. “He's going to make you pay more than you've ever paid. I didn't have to tell you that, but I wanted to.”
“To tell me what I already know from the letters? Thank you.”
“Let me stay!” She struggled afresh. “Please let me stay. He'll kill me if I go back, I know he will.”
“You cannot remain here.”
“But I can be useful to you.” She became limp, and Struan released her wrists. Promptly, she threw her arms about his neck and layered her body to his. Her heat struck through his clothes. “Use me, my lord. Use me in any way that brings you pleasure or usefulness—”
“Stop.”
“No. I won't stop. I can't. I'll warm your bed when you can't abide the cold one anymore. I'll—”
“You'll get away from here.” He managed to drag her hands from his neck, only to all but buckle when she thrust inside his breeches to squeeze his shaft.
“Damn you, woman!”
He leaned over her back and surrounded her waist. The instant her feet left the floor she kicked him—kicked him and sank her teeth into the flesh at his side.
Struan gasped and staggered, crashing into a writing table. They fell together, smashing the delicate piece to splinters that gouged wherever they found skin. Struan grabbed for the woman, but she squirmed away. He would not hit her, he would not. The welts and bruises on her back and buttocks sickened him. No man would take pleasure in wounding a creature so much weaker.
“Glory! Be still.”
Her response was to surge over him, rending his shirt as she went, flattening her breasts to his naked chest. Her teeth were bared. “I can't go. I can't and I won't. I'll be good. I'll be so good. And I can help you, I tell you, if you'll only listen.”
She'd succeeded in tearing open his breeches and sitting astride his hips. “I'll tell Mr. Smith I'm here to help him. I swear to God I will. I'll write and say I'll be his eyes inside your home. Don't you see what he'll think about that?”
“He'll think you've made an excellent job of what he sent you to do.”
“No!” she screamed. “No. My life depends on this, my lord. Send me away and he'll find me and kill me. He intends to get everything that's yours, I tell you. And he'll kill anyone you care about to make you do what he wants. You won't believe that, but it's true.”
Struan grew still. “I'm listening.”
“I'll not tell you everything, because then you'll have no reason to let me stay.” She began to cry, great heaving sobs that displayed her flesh to advantage. “What I've said is the right of it. If I say I decided to come here and help him, he'll have to hope I've not given him away. I'll tell him I'm doing it to make sure he shares everything with me. He'll believe me, I know he will. And I'll tell you everything he intends to do before it happens. That way you'll be prepared.”
What choice did he have? If he sent her away, he might never know if he'd missed the best chance he had to get the better of her husband. “You'll write to him?”
She wiped away tears and pushed back the riot of black hair that had fallen loose. “I know he intended to come this way shortly. I know a way of getting a message to him.”
“How?”
“I won't say another word until I'm sure you'll keep your end of the bargain.”
“Get up,” he ordered her. “I am a man who keeps his word. I do not like the set of this, but I'll test you, Glory. One false step and you'll be glad to return to your monster husband.”
Grasping her shoulders proved a mistaken strategy. Crooning, she fastened her clever fingers on his rod and all but managed to push him inside her.
With a violent shove, he tossed her to the floor beside him and stood, pulling his breeches to rights.
“You want me,” she whined.
“There are some things over which a man's mind has little control. A bodily reaction is all you accomplished, my dear— all you could ever accomplish again.”
“Is that why you sleep so far from your beloved wife? Because it's only your mind that needs anything from her?”
“Push me, madam, and I shall have to rethink our bargain. How are your husband's letters delivered? Who brings them?”
She scrambled to her feet and said, “I don't know.”
“Come now, you must know.”
“I'd tell you if I did.”
Struan did not believe her. He longed to look upon Justine again, to behold her gentle, intelligent face and feel her tenderly sensual touch. “I'll leave you now,” he told Glory. “I suggest you find your way to the room you were given and stay there until morning. After that we shall decide how best to proceed.”
He took a fresh shirt and set his clothes to rights. While he did so, Glory made a haphazard job of putting her own garments together. At least she covered her nakedness, more or less.
Struan didn't wait to usher her from his rooms. Rather, he strode through the anteroom and crossed the bridge, desperate to return to his wife. From now on they would share the same rooms. The difficulties to be overcome there could be discussed. He would explain them to Justine and she would help him make appropriate decisions. A woman with such a fine mind should be included in decisions about how her life might be lived. She had told him as much and she was right.
And the next step would be to tell her about the children— and even, perhaps, about his early conviction that he should embrace the priesthood and swear his oath to celibate abstinence.
He hit the steps at a run, his boots clattering downward on stone.
“Struan!” Justine met him in the vestibule. “Oh, Struan, I saw someone. I was too afraid to come, so I waited. Then I was too afraid not to come in case—”
“Hush,” he said, framing her face. “Slowly, my love. Tell me slowly—once we have returned to your chamber.”
Her tension flowed away before his eyes. “Yes. Yes, of course you are right. I am overset. You will think me foolish, but I thought I saw someone looking into my room after you left. Then, while I waited there, I decided whoever it was might have been looking for you and might then have gone to do you harm.”
“You feared for no reason,” he told her.
Justine's smile faded. She looked past him and all color ebbed from her cheeks.
Struan turned to see Glory, her dress undone and sagging, the tatters of her chemise trailing from her bodice, slowly descending the steps from the Pavilion.
Justine covered her mouth.
“I'll go to my room now, then, my lord,” Glory said. “Just like you told me to.” Her hair still flowed about her shoulders and she dragged her cloak behind her. The bonnet hung from her fingers by a single ribbon. She accomplished a demeanor of complete confusion. A dazed, foully used woman …
“Justine, this is not as it appears.”
Tears filled her eys, and she drew away from Struan as if he were a fiend.
“Thank you, then, my lord,” Glory said vaguely, walking between her host and hostess as if in her sleep. “I'm glad I can do your bidding. I'll be in my room when you need me.”
E
lla rode north and prayed her excellent sense of direction wouldn't fail her tonight.
What she intended could end in disaster—or it could help Papa and take away the ache that hadn't left her throat since Devlin North's first visit to Kirkcaldy.
Saber wouldn't refuse her request—not the Saber who had become her friend in Cornwall. She remembered the evening when he'd searched her out because he'd failed to see her at the Franchot Fair. She blinked back tears. Even now she knew the scent of him, clean, masculine—and the feel of him, strong yet gentle and so very protective.
From the first moment they met, she'd felt the drawing together of their two spirits. Saber had been a little drunk! The memory warmed her and she grinned. He flirted openly with her—something he would never do sober—and Papa and Justine had been indulgently amused. They had encouraged Saber to court her. Papa knew she was not Saber's social equal, but he considered her worthy of him and thought Saber would be good for her. Justine, who had said Ella brought out the best in Saber, had clearly hoped they would eventually become more than friends.
But Saber had left. With polite but distant farewells, he'd simply said he must leave and had evaded her questions about any future meetings.
Ella pressed her lips together and raised her face to the night sky. Saber would not turn her away now. He would help her.
Hoping its absence wouldn't be quickly noted, she had taken a piebald filly intended for the marquess's daughter, Elizabeth, when she was old enough to ride. The horse was small but game, and Ella was certain they were making good time. She had nothing to guide her but the few comments she'd heard about the location of Devlin's home. The Kirkcaldy estates had a common boundary with acreage surrounding Northcliff Hall.
Unfortunately, Ella had only the vaguest notion of the distance to the farthest northerly reaches of Kirkcaldy, and she knew nothing of the actual placement of Northcliff Hall on its grounds.
The moon, high and white, aided her on her way. The night was warm and still. With fear as her greatest enemy, she followed a well-beaten track used by tenants from far-flung reaches to bring produce to market in Kirkcaldy Village.
She had no idea how long she'd been riding when she heard the “hoo—hoo—hoo—hooo,” of a Tawny owl. The filly broke stride and skittered sideways. Ella quieted her, and worked to calm her own beating heart. She looked up. The owl's graceful shape flew silently across the moon's glow and abruptly swooped.
Ella listened to the hum and snip of insects and the faint rustle of larger creatures going on their way.
A whinny … She clutched the reins. For a second she thought she heard a horse nicker and a muffled sound of hoofs.
Her stomach seemed to echo the beat of her heart.
Alone.
She looked behind her and then along the trail again. No horse and rider traveled her way this night—except in her fear-filled imagination.
To go back might take as long—or longer—than to go on. And if she went back she would have given up on her only hope for help … and peace.
At a fork in the track, she chose the left way and prayed she'd chosen well. Breaking from a copse, she arrived at the top of a knoll. She looked down upon a wall that showed pale in the moonlight and stretched as far as she could see in either direction. The bulk of an impressive house stood only a short distance inside the nearest stretch of the wall.
The little filly had tired. Ella rested her awhile and ordered her own thoughts. Devlin North had made his interest in her quite plain, and even though she had given him no encouragement, he could doubtless complicate what she had come here to do.
She would plead a private family matter involving Saber and hope Devlin would not press her further.
The approach was to the back of the house; nevertheless, a handsome stone stag topped an archway over the entrance to a well-kept drive. Ella chose to take her horse onto the smooth grassland where the sound of hooves would be dulled. The less attention she excited, the better.
Northcliff Hall lay where sloping, tree-dotted parkland swept down on all sides. Devlin had spoken of the place with barely concealed pride, and Ella understood why. Devlin had also hinted—while gazing at her—that the place needed a mistress. Ella sighed in the gloom. Poor man. He was charming, handsome, and very kind, but probably wanted a connection to a titled family. He would not gain such a connection through the likes of one who did not even know her family name.
She discarded the notion that she might seek entrance through the rear of the house and rode around to the main doors. Light showed in a number of windows, but an air of slumber hung over the grand building.
Ella dismounted, tethered the filly to a stone bench, and climbed the fan of semicircular steps to the door. Taking a giant breath, she pulled the bell and stepped back, wincing at the echoing ring that gradually faded.
Seconds passed before the door opened the merest crack and not one, but three faces—one above the other—peered out at her. The crack became a few inches wider.
“A gir-rel,” the middle, round-faced man said. His red hair stood on end.
“Lost,” the uppermost, bald man announced.
Beneath these two hunched an ancient with creased white skin almost as pale as his hair. “Ye barley-brains!” Spittle flew with each word. “What would a girl the likes o’ her be doin’ lost at this time o’ night?”
“Good evening,” Ella said with extreme politeness. “I am—I am Ella. I live at Kirkcaldy and I am acquainted with both Mr. Devlin North and with Saber, Earl of Avenall.”
“She's acquainted with the master,” the bald man said.
The red-haired servant announced, “Called away on business,” with evident relish. “Left suddenly. For foreign parts.”
Ella was afraid they would slam the door. “Mr. North isn't here?”