Devotion (46 page)

Upon returning to the house she had fled to her room and locked the door. Several times her master had tried the door only to find it locked against him.

"Open the door, Maria.
Dammit
, open the door."

She hadn't, of course. How could she face him again?

How could she look into those gray eyes that had once so frightened her and know that she had given herself to him so wantonly, so unabashedly, all in the name of love?

How did she admit that she had come to love him so devotedly? Yet, what other excuse for her irrational behavior could she offer him—and herself? That she had only wanted to prove to him that he was yet a virile and desirable man? That there was no cause to fear marriage to Laura—no reason to believe he could not live up to the requirements of a husband? One could carry duty and obligation only so far. Besides, that was one lie she was certain she would never be able to pull off believably.

Wearily, she walked to the door, listened hard for any sound.

Wretched fool!
Already she ached to see him again, to hold him, to make abandoned love to him before she was forced to face his
fiancée
and
pretend
to be nothing more than some devoted, compliant servant.

With a will of its own, her hand went to the key, turned it, waited for the subtle shift of the lock, then, with her heart pounding in her throat, she pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway.

His hands moved up and down the keys, stroking lightly, filling the predawn hour with a crescendo of harmonic sounds that reverberated from the walls and caused the crystal prisms of the chandeliers to shimmer like raindrops. His upper body bent slightly over the keys, his jaw clamped and his dark hair spilling wildly over his brow and eyes, Salterdon manipulated the instrument as he had Maria's body hours before. He breathed raggedly. The magic of the sound was as seductive as her breath had been in his ear.

Christ, he hurt: his legs, his back. Yet the pain ran deeper, the frustration burned. Did she realize what she had done?
Maria.
That alluring voice had seduced him from his safe, comfortable sleep.
Maria.
Those eyes had taunted his resistance.
Maria.
Her naïveté and innocence had roused the passion he had thought gone from him forever.

A movement.
He looked around.

She stood in the doorway wrapped in his cloak, her hair a pale spray around her dirt-smudged face. His hands fell still, and the room echoed with silence.

On bare feet, Maria crossed the floor, her steps slow, hesitant, her blue eyes huge and her moist red lips slightly parted. The cloak fell open, slid from her white shoulders and pooled around her ankles.

As her lithe, warm body swayed slightly toward him, he reached for her, took her fiercely into his arms,
crushed
her against his straining body. He could feel her trembling. Her naked back and buttocks were still sprinkled with bits of brown grass and leaves from the glade in which he had made love to her earlier.

In one swift, smooth effort, he swept her up and around, sliding her onto the piano with a discordant clash of sounds. He took her breasts in his hands and lifted them, kneading them almost roughly, then gently, before suckling each one as though sipping little drinks from them. Maria gave a desperate whimper; her body quivered. She arched her back, struggling momentarily as her nipples grew hard between his lips and teeth. Then he touched her
there
, within the soft pelt between her legs. Her hips writhed, lifted; she made a soft guttural sound in her throat that was as helpless as it was desirous.

"My breeches," he told her softly. "Open them."

She complied—eagerly, releasing each hook until his sex was free: a hard, throbbing arc that was almost too painful to endure, made all the more aching by the memory of his taking her before; the feel of his body between her white legs, filling her, stretching her virginal opening and awakening that pleasure which had caused her to claw his back and scream aloud in the rain-drenched night.

Eagerly, he drove his body into hers. She cried out,
then
wrapped her legs around his hips. With arms thrown wide, she fell back on the piano like some sacrifice on an altar, scattering papers of music onto the floor, her hair a glistening silver web strewn over the ebony wood.

"My God, my God," he moaned, his voice a ragged tear of sound. "For weeks I made love to you through this instrument. I've wooed you, seduced you, kissed you,
raped you, thinking I would never know you like this—believing
I couldn't. Then, the music was enough—not now. The music in my head that's driven me mad has been replaced by you.
You and your angel hair and succubus eyes.
Damn you, damn you—forcing me out, thrusting me back into this abhorrent responsibility I never wanted. I could have hidden there forever, denying my identity, my worth, even my manhood. Thanks to you, I'm healed. Thanks to you, I'm doomed. Thanks to you, I now know how deeply I can feel for a woman—and I cannot have you."

He drove into her again and again. When he came at last, he did so with a curse, a shiver, a collapsing of his body against hers as they sank onto the piano, sweating, struggling for a breath.

At last, he took his body out of hers, kissed her mouth and hooked his breeches. Retrieving his cloak from the floor, he wrapped it around her, drew her close,
held
her tight, feeling her heart race against his chest as her small hands twisted in his shirt and gripped him fiercely. Finally, she whispered: "I love you."

He closed his eyes and held her tighter.

"Well, well," came a sudden voice from the door. Trey looked around, directly at his brother. "My sense of intuition must be slipping, Your Grace. I had no idea you were capable of
walking . . .
or seducing innocent young women on pianos. Really, Trey . . . you never had a great deal of self-control, but this is beyond even your low moral standards."

"That coming from a man who intentionally seduced the woman I was to marry."

"Jackass.
We both know you had no intention of marrying Miracle. You have every intention of marrying Laura
Dunsworthy
,
however, so tell me what the hell you're doing taking advantage of Miss Ashton while your affianced is residing down this very corridor. Quickly, Trey, and while you're at it explain to me why I've been forced to play out this pitiful scam these last days, believing your resistance to meet with Laura was strictly because of your inability to . . . walk."

"I don't love her."

Basingstoke laughed dryly. "What's that got to do with anything? You've never loved a solitary soul your entire life, Trey. You've loved the power and prestige your position in life afforded you. You found a means to an end in Laura
Dunsworthy
and suddenly you talk about not loving her?"

"Yes," he replied softly, almost wearily. "I don't love her, Clay."

Basingstoke said nothing for a long moment, his gaze shifting from Trey to Maria, who huddled behind Trey, her face averted, her cheeks white with discomfiture. Salterdon did his best to protectively block his brother's view of her; she trembled against his back.

Briefly, Basingstoke closed his eyes, ran one hand through his dark hair. "Christ," he muttered. "What a bloody mess."

Laura Dunsworthy looked particularly frail, her cheeks washed of color, her thin fingers repeatedly twisting her hankie and occasionally dabbing it to her tiny, slightly upturned nose as if she were sniffing vinaigrette to rouse her energy and courage. Every few minutes she flashed a look toward the man she thought to be her
fiancé
—Basingstoke stared right through her, his jaw set, his smoldering eyes reminiscent of his brother's. He didn't want to be there any more than Maria did. But she had a responsibility to fulfill. She had been employed to nurse and companion the Duke of Salterdon, and for all intents and purposes, the man brooding in his brother's wheeled chair
was
the Duke of Salterdon . . . for now. Maria wondered just how long he would tolerate this apparent fraudulent and deceptive act of chicanery before blowing up in anger.

She wondered how long she could tolerate it before she screamed in frustration.

Maria watched the meeting between Lord Dunsworthy, his daughter, and the duchess all from a distance, her chair situated well away from the goings-on. She felt numb—a witness to a despicable crime. She wanted to leap from her chair and announce to Lady Laura and her father that the Duchess of Salterdon was a liar. That she was only buying time. That she was controlling and manipulating
eveiyone's
lives in a manner that could, would, destroy them all—all for the sake of securing her own damnable blue-blooded heritage.

"Certainly we desire the union between our children to take place as soon as possible," Lord Dunsworthy said to the duchess. "I trust Your Grace won't mind that I drop an invitation or two to a few of our mutual acquaintances—invite them to Thorn Rose just so they can assure themselves and others that all is . . . shall I say, right—and well—with His Grace."

One eyebrow lifting, Dunsworthy studied the man he believed to be his daughter's future husband, an appearance of worry and frustration working across his features. "You must understand . . . considering His Grace's history . . . and the, ah, disappointment and,
er
, discomfiture my darling Laura experienced due to His Grace's unstable state of mind, I would not wish for her to endure any further humiliation brought on by the outrageous conjecture concerning His Grace's stability and his relationship with Laura which flies about so rampantly among our peers."

His Grace
allowed His Lordship a thin smile, and said in so caustic a voice that the duchess sank a little in her chair, "No one is exactly holding a gun to your daughter's head and forcing her to marry the duke, are they, Dunsworthy?"

"Indeed," Dunsworthy replied smoothly, his own smile just as acerbic. "But considering His Grace's circumstances—-" His gaze swept Basingstoke's legs, and the chair in which he sat. "I would think that he would consider himself fortunate that a woman of my daughter's breeding and beauty would care to go through with the marriage at all."

"The fact that the alliance will eventually make her one of the wealthiest and influential women in England hasn't a thing to do with it either, I'm sure."

"Any more than your marrying my daughter will assure you of inheriting your grandmother's influence and assets . . . Your Grace.
Besides . . .
as you can readily see, my daughter is desperately in love with His Grace. Her greatest wish is to spend the remainder of her life complying
to
His Grace's every
wish . . . as
any devoted wife should."

For a moment, all eyes turned on Laura—her wan cheeks, her slightly trembling lower lip. She returned their study from behind her hankie and did her best to hide her immense discomfort by righting her shoulders and lifting her chin. Then her wide green eyes shifted, not to her own companion, but toward Maria, as if looking for some emotional rope on which to grasp.

To her own surprise, Maria smiled.

The air around her seemed to buzz. Her body became warm; her heart squeezed. The breath caught in her chest and a lump formed in her throat that she
couidn't
swallow. She was giving encouragement to the woman who would marry the man Maria so desperately loved. She had spent the previous night wrapped up in Salterdon's embrace . . . and she was giving encouragement to the woman with whom he would spend the remainder of his life.

Hypocrite.

Dunsworthy continued. "By the time we've prepared for the wedding there won't be a family of our peers who won't be sniping to attend the ceremony. By gosh, but it will be a wedding England shan't forget for centuries!"