Lily Lang (10 page)

“Miranda,” he said. “You have asked me to help you. I have agreed to do so. But in order to help you, I have to know what happened. I have to have the facts. What happened the night William struck your uncle?”

She hesitated a moment longer. Then she set her mouth into a firm line.

“Very well,” she said. “You want to know what happened. I will tell you. The night William hit my uncle with that poker, the odious man tried to ravish me.”

Rage, sudden, hot and blinding, swept through him. A red haze obscured his vision. He wanted to kill the man who had hurt her; if Clarence Thornwood was still alive, he would find the man and break his neck.

He beat back the sudden savage emotion.

Somewhere across the table from him, Miranda still spoke, evidently unaware of his fury.

“William walked in and saw him. Uncle Clarence was very inebriated and not very steady on his feet. I would have been able to get away even if William hadn’t intervened. I certainly wish he had
not
intervened. It is true Uncle Clarence would still be alive, but then my brother would not be a murderer, and I would not have needed to come here and bother you with our troubles.”

Jason, who had himself under control again, nodded.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “If William had not struck your uncle, you would never have come here.”

“It cannot be convenient for you to have a lady on the premises of Blakewell’s,” said Miranda, once again studying her hands with great absorption. “Did your men discover anything else?”

“As a matter of fact, they did,” said Jason, and leaned back in his chair to tell her what Martin had told him.

As he spoke, he watched with interest as a red flush spread from her throat to her face, a sure sign of temper.

“Why, that old
sow
,” she breathed, when he had told her what Martin had found in one of the old cottages in the carriage block. She looked up at him. “What do you intend to do next?”

“One of your cousin’s friends, a Mr. Murray, owes me a rather large sum. I have promised to waive the debt if he will bring Laurence here to Blakewell’s tonight. I shall speak to him.”

“I should like to speak to him too,” said Miranda immediately. “In fact, I should rather like to claw his eyes out, if the chance should present itself.”

Jason shook his head. “No. He must not know of the connection between us yet. I have questions for him, and if he knows what I am about, he might prove reluctant to answer them.”

“I see,” said Miranda. “Very well. Is that all?”

Jason drew a breath, watching the pale sunlight stream across the curve of her throat. No reason to delay the inevitable, he thought, and wished he could keep her at Blakewell’s forever.

“Not quite,” he said. “Tomorrow, we go to Thornwood.”

The clock had long since struck two. Miranda sat by the bedroom window, waiting for the suite’s outer door to open. Jason had promised to come to her as soon as he concluded his meeting with Laurence.

All night, as she helped Monsieur Leblanc and the other kitchen staff prepare supper, she had been deciding what she would do next. Tomorrow, Jason would bring her back to Thornwood, and she had very little doubt what the outcome of the visit would be: her aunt ousted, the charges against her brother dropped, Thornwood restored to them. In the three days she had been at Blakewell’s, it had become abundantly clear to her that Jason was the kind of man who could accomplish anything he set his mind to, and having promised to help her, Jason would deliver on his promise.

But then what? He would return here to London, to Blakewell’s and the life he had built here, a life that did not include her. As for her, she should remain in Hertfordshire, mistress once again of her own home. But the thought did not fill her with as much pleasure as it ought to, and she feared she knew why.

She had loved Jason all her life, and she had never stopped loving him. But all her old love seemed to pale before the ardor of the emotion burning within her heart for the man he had become. To see the willpower and ambition that had elevated him from the hulks and the docks to this palace on St. James, the unassuming kindness to his staff, all of whom evidently adored him… To feel the press of his mouth on hers, the feel of his hands on her body.

How could she endure it again, to let him go? She knew it would happen; after Jason restored Thornwood to her and left, he would not come back. But how would she go on living? She must go on living, of course. Girls in books and operas could go about killing themselves for love, but she was a Thornwood, and for a Thornwood to succumb to such a bourgeois condition was unthinkable.

Jason would not come to her. But should she go to him? The answer rose in her mind immediately.
Yes
. She had been given this last chance—this only chance—to know what it was like to be his. She must not let it pass her by. She had already wasted enough of the time that had miraculously been given to her in her hour of greatest need; she would not waste another second.

Acting quickly, she stripped off the gown she wore and exchanged it for the negligee and wrapper. Because the fire had died and it was cold, she huddled beneath the covers to wait.

When the latch of the outer door finally opened quietly, she sat up in the bed, her heart beating very fast. She slid out of the bed, crossed the room and pushed the door slowly ajar—and then came to a halt.

In the flickering light of the dying flames, she could see Jason sprawled in a massive armchair, tilting a glass of something golden in one hand as he gazed broodingly into the fire. He had loosened his cravat and his shirt hung open; she could see the dusting of dark hair across his chest.

A strange, distant sense of recklessness overcame her. Without stopping to think, she pushed the door entirely open and stepped inside.

“Your cousin doesn’t hold his drink very well,” he said, without looking up. “He proved to be a veritable gold mine of information tonight.”

“What did he say?” she asked, not really caring. Whatever it was, Jason would take care of it.

“Apparently, there was some harebrained—”

He finally raised his head as she crossed the length of the room, then broke off when he saw she was dressed for bed. “Miranda?”

Taking a deep breath, she allowed the robe to fall in a silky heap on the floor. Beneath the weight of his gaze, she was no longer cold.
 

“You said you wanted me,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. “I am here.”

“Ah yes,” he said. “Our bargain.” He set his glass aside. “You agreed to give yourself to me. I agreed to save your brother.” He rose to his feet as she drew closer, and when she stood before him, he took her face between his hands and gazed down at her for a long time. Then he lowered his head and kissed her, slowly and leisurely, his tongue flicking at the corner of her mouth.

When he drew back again, she made an unwilling sound of protest.

“You are not here because of the bargain, are you, Miranda?” he asked. A faint note of wonder made his voice soft.

“No,” she said.

“Then why are you here?”

She closed her eyes. “Because I want you too,” she said.

He made a sound and reached for her like a drowning man for a lifeboat. Once he had pushed the thin straps from her shoulders, the entire gown came loose, sliding down her shoulders and hips to pool at her feet, and she stood before him mantled only by the long dark fall of her hair. But this time, beneath his hot gaze, she felt no shame, only a powerful sense of inevitability.

“It does not seem quite fair,” she whispered, “that you should be wearing so many clothes when I am not wearing any at all.”

He choked back a ragged laugh. “How do you propose to rectify the situation?”

“I do believe I ought to remove your clothes too, sir,” she said primly.

He looked gravely down at her.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. It would only be fair.”

He reached for the loosened cravat around his neck, but she caught his hand in her own.

“Allow me,” she said softly.

He dropped his arms to his side. She reached up for his cravat, carefully unknotting the thickly starched white material and pulling it free from around his throat. Dropping it to the floor, she stood on her toes and carefully traced her lips along the strong line of his throat.

“Miranda…”

His hands closed almost reflexively around her hips, stroking the skin there, igniting sensation all along her nerve endings.

She shivered then frowned at him. “You’re distracting me.”

His eyes gleamed. “I beg your pardon,” he said, and with a visible effort allowed his hands to fall to his side again, where his hands furled and unfurled into fists.

Her fingers were still trembling as she unfastened his waistcoat. The cloth was warm from his flesh. She pushed it free of his shoulders and down his arms until it fell to the floor to join the cravat.

The front of his shirt now gaped open. She rested her hand lightly on the hard planes of his chest, relearning the contours that had once been so familiar to her. The feel of his hot skin on hers made her shut her eyes against the feel of completeness, of rightness.

After a moment, she pulled the material of his shirt free from his breeches. He obediently lifted his arms, allowing her to remove it entirely. Then she stepped back for a moment to admire her work.

She had seen his naked chest before. As children they had often stripped down to their undergarments to swim in the lake at Thornwood. But he had certainly not looked like this—all smooth muscles and golden skin dusted with dark hair. His shoulders were broad and powerful, his stomach flat and ridged.

As her fascinated gaze moved over him, she felt herself flushing. Refusing to succumb to the sudden attack of nerves, she pressed her hands against his chest and pushed him backwards through the doorway until they stood at the edge of the bed. One light shove and he was sitting. Then she slid onto the floor and removed first his boots, then his stockings.

Then she took a deep breath and, gathering her courage, reached for the fastenings of his breeches.

As she peeled away the buckskin from his body, his breath came in more and more uneven intervals. Where her fingers brushed against his flesh, he twitched. Once or twice, he made a soft sound in his throat.

When she had freed him of his breeches at last, he reached for her, pulling her onto the high bed beside him. She gave him a light shove so that he fell back against the pillows.

She had never seen a fully grown man’s naked body before. In the firelight he was all smooth, warm muscles limned in gold, and she stroked him gently with the tips of her fingers, starting with the warm, smooth flesh of his shoulders, pausing to tangle in the dark hair of his chest, then lower to the hard planes of his belly.

There she faltered. She was, she told herself firmly, far too old to be such a ninny. She was not some sheltered schoolgirl; she had been born and raised in the country, and had lived too long with birds and beasts to not know what came next.

Nevertheless, she hesitated, too shy to move any lower.

He seemed to understand her trepidation. Catching her hand in his own, he pressed his lips to her palm.

“Don’t stop touching me,” he said. “Please.”

She could not refuse him.

“Show me,” she whispered. “Show me how you wish me to touch you.”

He showed her, his hand gentle on her wrist. Her touch was hesitant at first, but he said, “Harder,” and she increased the pressure of her fingertips, enjoying the way her touch seemed to make him helpless and gasping.

Though they had often kissed and caressed each other that final, golden summer, she had never touched him thus before. The way his hips jerked and the hard length of flesh in her hands pulsed fascinated her, and she caressed him gently between her fingertips, learning the texture of him, the heat.

She explored him further, moving to his upper thighs, stroking gently along the space where his legs joined his body, brushing against the lower part of his belly. But the hoarse sounds of pleasure he made encouraged her, and when her hand finally closed again around his arousal, he drew a ragged breath and flushed darkly.

Then he settled over her, and the weight of him on top of her felt like a homecoming. He trailed kisses down her throat, to the sensitive peaks of her breasts, to her belly which made her smile because it tickled a little, and then lower still, gentle kisses and strokes and licks, and she said his name in a voice that was not her own.

His slipped between her legs, resting on his elbows. She made a sound; he murmured something against her stomach, gentling her, and then his dark head moved lower, and he pressed his lips to the skin of her inner thighs. Her limbs quivered, and her head moved on the pillow. Then he kissed the soft opening of her body.

The intense pleasure ripping through her made her arch her back and cry out. He continued to lick at the folds of her flesh until she went limp, and then he kissed his way back up her body.

She reached for him, wanting to hold him close, wanting the scrape of his rougher skin against her own. He breathed heavily as he pressed his face against her shoulder.