Clandestine (28 page)

The lion threw back its shaggy head and roared its imperious power.

Stunned by his desire, Guy stood pinned on the spot. For the first time in his adult life he felt lost, as if he were flung blinded into an unknown forest.

Sarah sat down. Her freckles flung scattered constellations across her nose and cheeks, dark stars on skin white as ivory. Her bare feet were encased in white leather slippers, soft beneath the shadows of her robe.

“Lady Jonathan is safely delivered of a baby girl?” she asked. “I'm so glad. Of course, you'll wish to go straight back to Withycombe—”

“No! Ryder and Jack need this time together without me. Jack and I have already talked.”

“You went there directly from Buckleigh?”

“Yes, but Anne began her labor not long after I arrived, and then they wouldn't let me leave. As soon as she was safely delivered, I came here with the news.”

Sarah looked up and his heart turned over. Her tawny tiger's eyes seemed to be searching the depths of his soul.

“I'm not sure what else to say,” he said. “You're angry?”

New color washed into her face. “Why would I be angry?”

“Because I sent you from Buckleigh in disgrace.”

She said nothing, only sat beneath her magnificent hair and stared at her hands.

“Nothing more could be done in Devon,” he said. “It was obvious that Whiddon would send word ahead to Buckleigh about our abrupt departure, and equally obvious that they'd be hunting for us. Surely you realized that?”

“So you took me to the front door and threw me to the wolves?”

He felt astonished. “I thought you'd understand why that was necessary.”

“To insult me?”

“What the devil would they have thought if I'd announced that we were going to leave together? Be reasonable, Sarah!”

She leaped up and paced to the empty fireplace. “Yes, I understood! But that doesn't mean that it didn't hurt.”

In two strides he towered over her to seize her by both arms. “Our investigation there had already reached a dead end. After I'd confirmed my suspicions about the smuggling, I needed to be free to follow other leads—”

“Did you really think I would go quietly to Bath?” She flung back her head and glared up at him. “Did you really—”

“I sent an explanation to Miss Farcey's school,” he interrupted. “Since you didn't go back to Bath, you've not read it. But you know that I can pursue the rest of our quest far better alone.”

“Oh, I'm sure that you can,” she said bitterly. “But it's
my
quest! How
dare
you dismiss me as if I were a child?”

His blood blazed, in anger and resentment and confusion. “I don't dismiss you—and I certainly don't think you're a child! On the contrary, I'm only too aware—For God's sake! Don't you understand yet why we can't continue this together?”

The flush mounted in her cheeks until her face reflected his fire. Her eyes dilated into black pits. The scent of apples and spice and woman assailed his nostrils.

“No! Why?”

“This!” He groaned as he said it.
“This!”

The pink tide flooded down over her neck to stain the sweet swell of her breasts. Her nipples rose beneath the fabric as if they'd been touched.

His fingers tightened on her arms. “I'm possessed, Sarah. I can't forget you. I can't have you. I try to leave you behind, but you only haunt my dreams and disrupt my days. I can't breathe without wanting you. You drag me to the brink of dishonor. You threaten me as clearly as if you held a sword to my heart. I didn't send you away from Buckleigh for your sake, but for mine!” With the last shreds of his willpower he opened his hands and released her. “Devil take it! Why won't you go away?”

“Because I love you,” she said.

She reached up to cup his jaw in both hands, pulled his lips down to hers, and opened her mouth.

Nothing mattered then but the taste and feel of her, almost naked in his arms. He pulled her close against his body. His palms followed the curve of her waist and back, then roamed down over her buttocks, warm and soft, filling his palms. He found handfuls of negligee and bunched them, working ferociously to get the fabric out of the way. His fingertips roamed to find more curves: the arch of her ribs, the softness of her round belly. Her breasts fit perfectly in his hands, the nipples hard beneath the silk.

And she kissed him, groaning into his mouth, her lips a hot welcome, her tongue a ravishment, until in the end he ripped fabric and found naked flesh.

Still kissing, they fell backward onto the chaise longue. She tugged at the knots in his cravat and untied it, then pulled the linen from his neck. She snapped open buttons, pushing his waistcoat and braces from his shoulders. For a moment he was forced to surrender each hand, as she tugged the garments from his arms and threw his waistcoat aside, but he still kissed her.

She wrenched his shirt from his waistband and tugged it up. Her palms feasted on his bare flesh: his chest and waist and shoulders—even his nipples and the sensitive hollow at the base of his throat.

Hot sensation shot straight to his groin, engorging him further. Lust throbbed in his blood like a madness.

Guy broke the kiss, one bent knee balanced on the chaise, one booted foot braced on the floor, and tore his shirt off over his head. She wriggled back on the couch, her breasts round and full, her lips swollen. Her eyes shone fiercely, like a cat's in the night.

His gaze locked on hers, he plunged both hands into her hair to cup her head and lift her, so their open mouths met again. Torn silk slipped away. Her nipples puckered against his bare chest. Her fingers spread on his shoulders, the nails scoring a faint track down his spine, until she cupped his buttocks and pulled his pelvis against hers.

Desire beat about his head, the frantic batting of wings, showers of feathers.

The insanity of leather breeches and braces! The madness of riding boots and spurs! He reached down with one hand, desperate to free himself. Something ripped: his rowels catching in long trails of torn negligee. He struggled with his buttons. A length of lace almost tripped him as he tried to change position.

He pulled back to tear open his clothes, and a swallow flashed past his head: a real bird, beating and fluttering. Black-eyed panic thumped against the ceiling, then the windows, then swept back across the room.

Guy laughed. A mad, male triumph soared in his soul. He glanced down at Sarah to share the wonder of this wild bird of desire, and his heart stopped in his chest.

She was as lovely as the dawn, her face brilliant with hilarity and the siren song of recklessness, giggling as she dodged a shower of feathers. Freckles ran in mad abandon across her cheeks, but her breasts were smooth and white, like unblemished cream.

She ducked and laughed again as the bird swooped past. Her legs sprawled in the ruin of her nightgown. Red curls spiraled like coils of copper wire where her lovely woman's belly met the flesh of her thighs.

She was willing and open and ready for him.

She claimed that she loved him.

And he was about to ravish her in an orgy of lust in Miracle's breakfast room—though their bond was based on a lie.

“No!” he said, though the word was an agony. “No, Sarah! Not like this!”

Ignoring the lure of the moving bird, she glanced back up at his face. Her laughter died as if he had strangled it, though she still looked at him as if she would forgive even that.

He gathered folds of torn fabric to cover her breasts, though he could have wept with frustration and rage at his own contradictions.

The swallow stopped to perch on the chandelier, its long pointed tail an arrow directed at his heart.

“It's all right,” Sarah said softly. “I want you. I want this. I don't care about anything else.”

Yet he dragged himself away and picked up his discarded clothes. He draped his shirt about her shoulders and folded his waistcoat as a cushion for her bare feet. Her slippers had fallen crushed to the floor.

“You don't know,” he said. “You don't understand.”

The swallow launched back into flight. Shreds of down spiraled from the ceiling.

Guy waved his arms, driving the bird to its freedom. Iridescence flashed, blue-black, as the swallow fled the half-naked man, found a clerestory window, and escaped into the open skies.

Sarah pulled his shirt over her head to cover her nakedness and hugged her knees up to her chin. Her eyes held devastation, yet she glanced up with a wry, drawn smile, as if she would never give way to cowardice.

“My virtue saved by a bird,” she said dryly. “Should I be sorry or glad?”

H
ER HEART POUNDED
. H
ER BODY FLAMED AND ACHED.
Rage and sorrow and hurt all fought for attention.

Guy strode away to the doorway, the loveliest man she had ever seen: lean and hard and fit, his arms and shoulders powerful, his spine beautiful.

His dark hair tossed as he bent to tear away a scrap of lace caught on his spur. The muscles of his naked back leaped beneath skin smooth as bronze.

Moisture rushed, deep in her core, as she were filled with liquid gold.

If she had ever questioned the true meaning of desire, she had her answer now.

She would have given anything—anything at all—for the thrill of his penetration. Traded her soul to have known him buried to the hilt in her body. Begged in the streets for the rest of her days to understand with every pore the climax of that heady contact, skin to skin, where she might seal her breasts and arms and belly against his bare body, while her legs wrapped over his rough thighs.

He turned to face her. Sunlight fired gilt on taut muscles and glistened in the line of dark hair trailing down his belly.

“I love you.” His eyes offered to swallow midnight. “But this is wrong.”

“Because you're already in love with someone else?”

“No. God! There's no one else.”

“But Lady Ryderbourne thought—”

He strode back into the room. “Miracle? What the devil did she tell you?”

“Among other things, that she was your first lover. Is that true?”

“Yes. Though we've been no more than friends for many years now.”

“Yet you've known other women,” she said bravely. “Miracle thought that perhaps you truly loved the lady you lived with last spring, and still grieved the loss.”

A terrible irony gleamed in his eyes. It reminded her of the expression she had once seen on the painted face of St. Sebastian tied to a tree, his flesh pierced over and over with arrows: the martyr who laughed at death, as if so much pain were ridiculous.

“No! Perhaps I once thought that I loved her. I don't think so now. She certainly never returned it.”

“Yet you still feel bound to this lady?”

“Not in the way that you think!” He paced to the opposite window, then gazed out as if seared.

The mystery of his world, his being, seemed to congeal around her, as if secrets were water and Guy offered her only a winter of ice.

“But you and I had never met before that day in the bookstore. So if your secret involves this mistress from last spring, how can I be hurt by it?”

“Because love cannot be based on a lie.”

“I don't understand,” she said. “I love you. I don't care about any hurt to me.”

“But I do.” He began to pace, shadows and sunlight glancing off his bare shoulders. “Though it's painfully obvious that it's already too late. You'll be injured either way.”

He stopped beside a niche to stare up at the statue of Aphrodite. The goddess's blind stone eyes gazed out toward the far-distant sea.

“Yet after everything that we've shared,” she said, “every moment of hesitation only drives a dagger deeper into my heart. So, whatever you judge now about how you may wound me, you must tell me everything, Guy.”

“Then first you must know this: If I'm nursing a broken heart, it's only over you.” He spun about to press his shoulders against the wall and stare at the ceiling, as if he couldn't bear to look at her. “But there's no future for us, either way. I cannot bear it that I've already wounded you. Yet if I tell you the truth now, you will discover a far deeper pain. It's the devil's bargain, Sarah.”

Desperate to release him, she stood up and walked to the French doors. His linen shirt covered her almost to the knees, though long shreds of torn silk trailed beneath it. The summer day boomed and laughed outside, as if it would mock her.

“Yes, because if I were to leave here now without knowing this secret,” she said, “I'd only be cast into a maze of doubt and self-recrimination.”

“I do realize that,” he said. Once again a vicious irony overlaid his pain.

Sarah sank down until she sat on the cool tiles in the doorway, where she could look up past the roses at the summer sky.

If any other man spoke to her like this, she'd assume it was just an excess of sensibility, an exaggerated idea of the fragility of women. But this was Guy Devoran: brilliant, subtle, generous. He was trying to prepare her to hear something terrible. Though she couldn't fathom why any secret of his could be devastating to her, she dared not doubt his judgment.

In the room behind her, he dropped onto a chair and buried his head in both hands. She sat in silence, waiting in a kind of numb haze. Swallows darted, tearing their trails across a blue heaven.

At last Guy stood up. His boots thudded as he paced.

“At first I simply wanted to protect you,” he began, “however foolish that may seem now. Then I was caught in a trap of my own making. While I was careful always to tell you the exact, literal truth, I only wove an impenetrable web of lies, instead. I'd have been better to have divulged everything right away, of course, then none of this”—he waved one hand to indicate the sofa, the scraps of torn lace, her abandoned slippers—“would ever have happened, but then neither would you and I—” He broke off and slammed his fist against the wall. “Ryder knows most of it, of course, and Jack.”

“Then this is something you think only a gentleman can understand?”

He stopped to look at her, his gaze stark. Bitter lines of something that was not humor marked the corners of his mouth. “We'll find out.”

Sarah stared back up at the sky. She was very afraid now, but if he was about to offer her the truth, then she must return that courtesy as exactly as she could.

“How did your affair with this lady first begin?” she asked.

His boots rang hollow, spurs clanking, as he skirted the edge of the room, pacing like a caged lion.

“A cold January rain was threatening to turn into sleet. It was long after dark. She turned up on my doorstep like a drowned angel, claiming destitution. I took her in to offer shelter and aid, but within a day she'd become my lover, instead. Was that my fault or hers? It hardly matters now, does it? She'd thrown herself on my mercy and that was the result.”

“I don't blame her,” Sarah said, simply because that was, indeed, the whole truth.

He stopped as if dazed. “You may not say the same by the time I've finished.”

“Have you no idea what the very sight of you promises women?” she asked. “Go on!”

“We agreed the next morning that I would keep her as my mistress. She asked me to find her a place of her own, but it had to be in Hampstead—”

Sarah jerked as if struck. “Hampstead?”

“Yes, Hampstead. I doubt if you noticed it, but you and I drove past a vacant house crowned with chimneys like top hats, half-hidden in the trees. I leased it the next day. Her insistence on secrecy meant that we arrived there on another pitch-dark night in the pouring rain. Nobody knew about us. She never went out, and I barely left the house except for essential business. During the next couple of weeks, I slid inexorably into what I thought was love.”

He had offered her an open flame and warned her of its devastating power. Sarah had insisted on thrusting her arm into it anyway, up to the shoulder, as if she had been unable to imagine how deeply it could sear her flesh.

“You don't think so now?” Her voice sounded faint in her own ears.

“No. I cannot soften this, Sarah. If it would prevent the inevitable, I would cut off my right hand rather than tell this to you. But when you suggested that you and I shared only an infatuation, I knew you were wrong. Infatuation was exactly what I felt then.”

“But how can any of this affect us?”

“Haven't you guessed?” The flame blackened to ash in his eyes. “The lady's name was Rachel.”

The sky turned dark, the swallows stark as white ghosts against an infinity of black space. Their twittering, only faint before, suddenly boomed in her ears as if she were being mobbed by demons.

“
Rachel?
My cousin Rachel was your mistress?”

Guy was there on one knee beside her. He held her firmly by both shoulders, or she might have keeled to the floor.

“For all of last spring,” he said quickly, “from that night in January until she abandoned me without a word just before Easter. She'd been living in Knight's Cottage just as you and I discovered, but when she began to run out of funds, she came to me in London—”

“And you
ravished
her?”

“Rachel wasn't a virgin, Sarah. I wasn't the first. I'm sorry.”

She stared at him with both horror and incomprehension, and pushed his hands away.

Guy flinched and leaped up to stride outside. He paced to the Eleanor Gate.

“I cannot undo or change what happened. Within a few days Rachel and I had moved into that house with the chimneys. Though I knew nothing of it at the time, Harvey Penland continued to intercept her letters, which is undoubtedly why she insisted on Hampstead. She lied to you, just as she lied to me. I didn't want you to know. I wanted to send you away, but you wouldn't go—”

The roses sprang back into focus, hundreds of white petals, each cut like a shard of glass. Sarah scrambled to her feet and collapsed onto the chaise longue, her entire body shaking.

“You blame
me
?” she said. “You blame
me
for all of this?”

Guy strode back to the doorway. “For God's sake, no! The devil took his due the minute I hesitated in the bookstore. But should I have blurted all of this to a stranger? How the hell could I have known then that I'd fall in love with you? And once I had, what choices did I have? When you told me that you loved me, too, should I have pretended indifference or dislike, and broken your heart in another way? Perhaps I'm not that good an actor.”

The air in the room swallowed her in crystal clear liquid, as the rose had been swallowed, drowning as it slipped into the water jug. No, flowers didn't have feelings, did they? Flowers were numb, just like this.

Guy was trying to justify all of his falsehoods. He thought she would fall for his explanations and apologies.

He insisted that I marry him and he wouldn't take no for an answer…he intends to persecute me…I dare not imagine what he might do if he found me here alone….

Rachel had written all of that about the man she had met in January, then fled in terror just before Easter.

As if it were the contaminated gift of Deianira to Hercules, Sarah tugged off Guy's shirt and dropped it to the floor, then gathered the shreds of her silk robe about her naked body.

“No,” she said. “Far better at deception than any actor, Mr. Devoran, because you were Daedalus all along and you never hesitated to lead me straight into your maze.”

He was still standing in the doorway, beautiful, damned, when she stumbled from the room.

T
HE
door closed behind her. Rage and despair darkened his vision for a moment, as if thunderheads blackened the day.

Guy thrust himself to his feet, gathered his discarded clothes—even his jacket from the garden bench where he'd tossed it—and carefully dressed himself. He tied his cravat using the mirror over the fireplace. A hollow-eyed demon stared back at him, dark hair tossed about his head as if by a gale.

He smoothed it with his fingers, then unbuckled his spurs and set them on the mantel.

Once again in the guise of a gentleman, he stalked up to the chaise and flung himself back on the ivory cushions to stare up at the ceiling.

He could not have planned it better had he wanted to inflict on Sarah the worst wounds possible. He should have told her everything at the beginning. She'd have been upset to know about Rachel's dishonor, but she'd have been immediately inoculated against any feelings for him.

Now he had broken her heart and left his own shattered into fragments.

He should have known that Sarah would not be able to let him hunt for Rachel alone. In her place, he'd have done exactly the same. Her courage and determination were part of what he loved about her, further confirmation of his certainty that this love was absolutely real.

So he was facing the most bitter irony of his life. He had finally found the one woman—
the one!
—only to destroy any hope of winning her.

There was no other solution left except to go forward, of course. Alone now, if need be.

Guy sprang to his feet, but his eye was caught by something in the pitcher on the table. He scooped out a white rose and shook the moisture off the petals.