Devotion (37 page)

"Aye, but as I recall you were most adamant about not returning the compliment. Your one great love is God, John. Or has that changed?"

"You're well aware of my devotion—"

"To God.
Only to God."

"And to you."

The day was overcast and bitter. As Maria stepped from the house, she paused, catching her breath and blinking her eyes, focusing on the coach at the bottom of the stairs, and its only occupant.

John regarded her closely. "Are you afraid of him?" he asked.

"Do I appear to fear His Grace?"

"You appeared disturbed by him. A moment in his company and you became . . ."

"What?" She looked up at him.

"Tense."

"He hasn't the best of temperaments."

"'
Twasn't
that sort of tenseness, I'm afraid."

She looked around as Thaddeus joined them, a full-length sable cape tossed over his arm. He carried a sable muffler and a hat whose wide brim was sable as well. "Yer to wear these," he announced, and thrust them toward her, his gaze, sharp as a lance, flashing toward John.

Even in the dullness of the day the thick, rich fur shone like black fire. "I couldn't," she said. "Tell Her Grace—"

"Don't belong to Her Grace. They belong to him." Thaddeus nodded toward the carriage, his lips curling in something less than a smile.
"Or rather one of his last paramours.
His Grace felt these would keep you warmer than
that lot of rags,
as he called yer own."

"Did he?" she said, feeling her cheeks
grow
warm. "Well, you may tell His Grace . . . never mind, Thaddeus, I'll tell him myself." Snatching the heavy cloak, slipping on a thin coat of ice covering the steps, she marched the best she could to the coach and flung open the door. Sunk in his seat, the fur collar of his own coat pulled up around his ears and his hat brim shielding his dark eyes, Salterdon slowly turned his head and regarded her.

"I don't want your mistresses' furs, Your Grace. I would rather freeze—"

She let go a cry as he closed his gloved hand around her arm and dragged her into the coach, slamming the door as she dropped into the plush seat with a gasp of indignation; then he called out the window to John, who had started down the steps the instant Salterdon forced her into the conveyance, "I believe the duchess has taken ill, Mr. Rees. I'm certain your company and a prayer would benefit her more than your attempts of heroism toward Miss Ashton ever will."

Stopping at the top of the steps, his face bright red in the gloomy day and the wind whipping his cloak furiously around his legs, John said nothing as Thaddeus hurried to the coach and handed the hat and muffler through the window, then scrambled up to the driver's seat. With a last malicious smile, Salterdon snatched closed the shade and sank back in his seat, his gaze now locked on Maria where she shook irately across from him.

"You have no right, or reason, to treat me so despicably in front of my guest, Your Grace."

"I have the right to do anything I goddamn want, Miss Ashton. I could pitch your beloved vicar out on his ear, should I decide to do so." A smile curling one corner of his lips, he added. "One word from me and he could be excommunicated from the entire church."

"Why would you want to? He's done nothing to you—"

"Hasn't he?"

"Tell me what he's done."

"Trespassed."

"By coming to Thorn Rose?"

He sank in the seat. His features became closed. Spine conforming to the cushion, long legs slightly- splayed and swaying with each motion of the coach, he
continued to regard her with such intensity her entire body turned as rigid and cold as the icicles forming on the distant tree limbs.

Finally, he said, "
Do
you intend to leave with him?'"

"I've hardly had time to consider it."

"Do you love him?"

"That is none of your business."

"If it affects my future it is my business."

"Yes!" she cried furiously. "I did . . . I do . . . he's . . . he's been a loyal and trustworthy friend since I was a child. As I was growing up my greatest dream was to marry him."

"He would never make you happy."

"You don't know him."

"I know he loves God more than he loves you. If that weren't true, you wouldn't be at Thorn Rose now."

Huddled deep into the corner of the plush seats, she stared out the window, tried to focus on the scattering of crystallized trees and the drifts of ever-deepening snow.

"I don't for a minute think he could make you happy,"
Salterdon
said. "You're the type of woman who'll expect one hundred percent of her husband's attention. You'll demand it, of course, and if you don't get it you'll cheat."

She slapped his face.

He only laughed. "You'll destroy him, little by little. You'll shred his loyalties. He'll preach about adultery and sins of flagrant copulation to his mesmerized masses, then he'll return home to a wife who wraps her beautiful white thighs around him and demands more of his body and soul than he's capable of giving, because every time he buries his body in you, God is going to be there tapping him on the shoulder, reminding him of his priorities."

"You'll despise any man who can . . ." She bit her lip.

"Can what, Miss Ashton? Make love to a woman?" He laughed softly. "There can be a vast difference between fucking and making love. Take us, for instance . . . Were I capable, I could toss up your skirts, glide my body into yours and take my pleasure as quickly or slowly as
I
so desire. On the other hand, I could forget about my own enjoyment and focus totally on yours— never finding the need to bury myself between your beautiful legs at all."

"Stop it," she cried, and covered her ears with her hands.
"I
want to go back to Thorn Rose now. I demand it!"

He leaned forward, caught the heir, of her skirt with one finger, and eased it up.

His eyes seemed almost catlike in the cold gloaming— they held her transfixed and incapable of responding. Oh God, why could she not move? Why could she not claw his arrogant
face ?
Why could she not cry out for Thaddeus to save her?

His fingertips brushed her calf, and she gasped. They slid up, and up, to the bend of her knee, then to her thigh, and when she attempted to draw her legs together, he nudged them apart with a flick of his fingers.

"Come here, Miss Ashton," he said, and reached for her with his other hand, curling his arm around her shoulders as she leaned toward him like some helpless puppet. She might have whispered "No" "Don't" "Can't." But the words buzzed incoherently in her brain and defied what her body craved—had craved since the night before.

She slumped into the seat beside him, head fallen back, offering her throat to his open mouth that breathed wet, warm vapor on her flesh before he gently sank his teeth into her skin, touching her skin with his hot tongue and lips while his hand cupped the throbbing mound between her legs and stroked the aroused cleft as gently as he had his beloved piano keys.

It was not a conscious decision; her mind did not voluntarily capitulate; but her body had become an entity of its own. For hours—days—it had sought a kind of release, foreign as it was, that only he could give her—he—the duke—her master—with his burning, taunting eyes and surly lips and wolfish disposition. She had become like Molly, a prisoner of her own desires.

His mouth found hers and ravaged—teeth, lips, tongue—making low guttural sounds in his throat while he sank his fingers deep inside her, causing her arms and legs to thrash, her mouth to open further, her breasts to press against his hard body, her hips to writhe, her legs to quiver, to spread, to curl around his own while she ground her body against his hand and whimpered and strained, finally tearing her mouth from his and throwing back her head, losing herself completely to the magic his hands conjured inside her, around her, turning the frigid air into cauldron heat.

And then he stopped.

"Please, please," she heard herself plead, though she did not know exactly what she was pleading for, only an end to her misery, that glorious surcease she had seen on Molly's face—that heavenly ecstasy Paul had whispered about that came from joining with someone you—

"Hush," he said and slapped his hand across her mouth. His body rigid, he flung back the window drapery, allowing a rush of cold air to hit their faces.

The countryside flashed by as the conveyance swayed with each bounce of its wheels. Then the sound: a gunshot, voices shouting.

"Bastards," he said through his teeth, then, hefting himself partially out the window, shouted to Thaddeus, "Can we make it back to Thorn Rose? Damn you, man, answer
me!"

"We're no match for their horses!" Thaddeus shouted back.

"Do your best,
goddammit
!"

"Aye, Yer Grace."

Salterdon fell back into his seat, and when he turned to Maria again his face looked damp and frigid. Grabbing her skirt, he yanked it down over her knees. She could not move, could not think. Her entire body felt wound like a clock spring that would shatter at any moment.

With a growl of exasperation, Salterdon curled his fingers into her forearms and shook her. "Snap out of it, Maria.
Dammit
, listen to me." He shook her again, just as a cacophony of gunshots rang out. The coach shook, careened to one side, then the other, forcing Salterdon to grab hold of the squabs to steady
himself
.

Then the world appeared to blur, to turn topsy-turvy. Salterdon threw himself against her, wrapped his hard arms around her, and dragged her up against him as the conveyance seemed to float momentarily in the air, its windows and seats shifting in an odd arc around them before falling, slamming into the ground and rolling end over end, until reality became black as midnight.

Salterdon
awoke slowly, shaking with cold.

"Simpleminded bastard, wot the blazes were
ya
about?
Ye've
gone and killed '
em
, no doubt. Imagine the sort of trouble we'll be in for
murderin
' a bloody duke."

"We were only '
avin
' a bit o' sport.
Wot's
it to
ya
?
Ya
gone and sprung
scruples
on us or wot?"

The voices faded.

He drifted.

When he opened his eyes again it seemed the chill had bored into his bones. Raising his head, he took in the scene: the scarred and razed snow, the scattering of lines and harnesses (fast becoming covered by falling snow), the almost indecipherable form of a dead horse. And beyond that, at the bottom of the craggy hill, crushed and crumpled into a mess of splintered black wood and what was left of velvet casings, ripped and strewn over the white snow like streaks of crimson blood, was the coach.