The Passionate One (33 page)

“You mean that you
asked him to fight? You risked your own son’s life against that mountain of
flesh?”

“
Asked
?
I don’t
ask,
Miss Russell.” Carr said. He was not trying to
charm her today. In fact, it seemed as though he was deliberately provocative,
trying to alienate her. “I command. King George may rule in London, but I rule
here. I may be exiled, but I still have my court.” He made a sweeping gesture
around the crowd. “I don’t suppose I can let Merrick fight again tomorrow. Who
would bet on him?” He scowled, displeased, but then his expression cleared.
“But if he were by some miracle to win, think of the odds he’d have overcome!
At least twenty to one—”

“You’re hateful.”
As she spoke she saw Ash turn his head toward her and open his eyes. Something
so raw passed between them that she had to look away. When she looked back,
he’d lurched to his hands and knees, his head hanging low.

“Isn’t someone
going to go to him?” Rhiannon swung on Carr.

He met her gaze
disinterestedly. “Such concern. You have a soft heart, m’dear. But to answer
your question, no. There are very few rules in this sort of thing but one of
them does require the victor to leave the arena under his own power.”

“He needs attention,”
she insisted.

“Does he? Well, I
don’t know where he’ll find it. As far as I know there are no quacks in my
castle.”

Rhiannon looked at
her companions. Beside her Thomas Donne maintained his enigmatic composure. She
glanced at Fia, expecting nothing from that quarter, and was surprised to find
the girl looking greenish, her gaze flickering unwillingly toward the dirt in
which her brother lay.

“I’ll go to him,”
Fia murmured.

Carr’s head snapped
around. “What?”

“I can clean him
up. If you will just have some of the servants—”

“You will not!”
Carr hissed before recovering his poise. “Absolutely not. Don’t forget, you are
my hostess. Can’t have you coming to the table smelling of vomit and”—he
glanced once more at Ash—“whatever other excrement Merrick has rolled in.”

He was all the
monster Gunna had suggested and Fia had unintentionally substantiated. The
charm Carr had exercised on their first meeting hid a soulless fiend. Even Fia
looked startled by Carr’s venomous tone. And though Rhiannon was suspicious of
why he would suddenly reveal himself to her, she was too concerned about Ash to
pursue such thoughts.

A small cheer from
the crowd drew Rhiannon’s attention. Ash had made it upright. He lurched toward
the ring of spectators. They opened before him and swallowed his figure,
closing behind. Now that a victor had been established, voices rose as wagers
were claimed and satisfied.

“I’m going to him,”
Rhiannon said. “You can’t stop me. You may rule here, Lord Carr, but you do not
ride me.”

“Just as I feared.”
Carr sighed. “As you will, Miss Russell. Come along, Lord Donne.”

He secured Donne’s
arm and led him off through the crowd. “I believe you actually bet on my son?
How perceptive of you—”

Rhiannon looked
toward Fia. “Where can I find Gunna?” she asked.

“She’ll be in my
rooms,” the girl murmured distractedly. “How odd—”

But Rhiannon did
not stay to hear what Fia found odd.

Carr looked too
well satisfied. Few others besides Fia would have realized it. Rhiannon had
just challenged his edict. Her disobedience should have been like a spark to
tinder but Carr had left calmly, a buoyancy to his stride that bespoke
complacency.

It made no sense.
For days now Carr’s temper had been building. She’d heard him pacing in his
office several times. Once, when she’d cracked the door thinking to offer him
her company, she’d discovered him scribbling on a piece of paper, stabbing it
with his pen. He’d been so involved that he hadn’t even realized she’d
entered—in itself a telling sign. Carr noted everything.

Finally he’d thrown
the writing instrument down and balled the paper up in his hand, hurling it to
the floor. “How? Under what excuse? Simply have a change of heart and send her
back? No. Someone must take her back, or forward. Or any bloody where but
here.”

Fia had been too
long under Carr’s tutelage to ignore the import of such a rare outburst just as
she was too wise to let Carr know she’d heard it. She’d closed the door as
quietly as possible and run to her room.

Now, watching
Rhiannon stride off in the opposite direction from Carr, for the first time in
her life Fia felt the pull of divided loyalties.

The problem was Fia
liked Rhiannon. Of all her acquaintances the Scotswoman alone—with the
exception of Gunna—treated her in the manner Fia imagined other fifteen-year-old
girls were treated. At least, Fia amended, Rhiannon didn’t treat her like the
polished and precocious woman everyone else assumed Lord Carr’s daughter must
be.

Since her twelfth
year Fia had been presented not as a child but as an unnatural hybrid—part woman,
part doll. She’d been bribed with toys she was too old for and offered
experiences she was too young for.

Rhiannon Russell
did not flatter or patronize her. True, Rhiannon also neither trusted nor
particularly liked her, but even this Fia found refreshingly candid. She was as
close to a friend as Fia had ever known.

She didn’t want
Rhiannon hurt.

She was being silly
she supposed. She knew Carr had a reputation as a diabolical fiend. It had
always amused her. Carr was no monster. He was a genius who chose not to be
governed by the irrational emotions or the asinine laws made by lesser men for
lesser people. It made perfect sense.

Or, Fia thought,
her young face troubled, it always had before.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Ash couldn’t make
it up the servants’ stairs and he refused to ask the snickering footmen to
carry him. By gritting his teeth and concentrating very hard, he managed to
stumble into one of the small antechambers behind the great hall—a mean, dark
room, presently unused and therefore as devoid of furnishings as it was of
light.

Gratefully, Ash
sank to the floor, his back against the wall. His ribs throbbed dully. He
forced himself to twist and was pleased when it hurt no great deal worse than
before, indicating that just perhaps his ribs weren’t broken. Scant comfort but
all he was likely to get. His hand felt as though it were being crushed in a
vise. His skin stung where the sweat and grease ground into innumerable
abrasions.

He would have lain
on the floor and allowed sweet oblivion to overcome his senses but each time he
closed his eyes he saw her face and read again her horror. The pain in his body
faded, becoming faint compared to the pain of that recollection.

From his earliest
years he’d understood what he was. He’d never wasted a moment regretting it. A
wise father may well know his child, but it was more important that the child
recognize not only his sire but those parts of himself his sire had bequeathed.

Somehow he’d
forgotten that. Indeed, it seemed lately that he’d lost the part of himself he
knew best. Well, he’d bloody well remember, because this pain—this pain was
unendurable. It had to end. It
would
end.

He’d finally
accrued enough money to ransom Raine. He’d even written to the French demanding
particulars of how and where the trade would occur.

The door opened and
a bar of light fell across his injured eye. He winced, flinging up one hand
against the intrusion and placing the other palm flat against the floor. He
heaved himself to a crouching position, facing whoever entered.

He squinted against
the bright rectangle of the door frame. “Another challenger?” he asked with a
bitter laugh. “Why not? It might not be a very interesting confrontation but it
might prove satisfying—for you. Hell, for both of us. Though being a gentleman
I should ask you to take your place at the end of the queue.”

“Ash.”

It was
her
voice. Ragged and low and it nearly undid him.

He swallowed hard.
Had his father sent her as a special reminder of the many ways in which he
could bring his eldest son to heel or had she sought him for her own purposes?

“What, Rhiannon?” A
small pleasure to speak her Christian name, but one he wouldn’t cede. “Have you
come to condemn me for my chosen path, my ill-gotten gains, the depth to which
I have sunk? Don’t waste your breath or my time. I don’t give a damn what you
think.”

Liar.

“No.” She turned
and spoke to someone in the hall. He climbed to his feet, weaving slightly. His
little speech had cost him dearly.

“I’ll need more
water than this and hot,” she was saying to whomever waited without. “Very hot.
And bandages and he’ll need a shirt.”

“You’re not going
to clean me up,” he ground out, sickened by the thought of her hands sloughing
the filth from his limbs.

She ignored him,
hefting a pail from the floor outside and setting it inside the room. She
closed the door behind her, sinking the room into twilight.

“Where are you hurt
worst?”

“What the hell are
you doing here?”

“You already know
that. I’ve come to patch up your wounds.”

“The hell you say.”
He made himself stand away from the wall. Sweating with concentration, he moved
toward her. She did not back away and as he drew near and his eyes adjusted to
the murky lighting he saw that she wore one of those new gowns Carr had
insisted she don, a shimmering bronze striped through with rich green.

She looked elegant
and regal, no longer the modest little beauty. No, quite evolved now. Quite
different from that pretty wench.

This gown dipped
low, far lower than anything she’d ever worn in Fair Badden. Her bound breasts,
pushed up by the constricting bodice, trembled in an agitation delicious to
behold. He’d never had the time nor inclination to lechery, owning a full
complement of sins that already commanded his attention. But even battered and
broken, just the sight of Rhiannon made him grow hard.

Yet it was not
his
hand that reached out and hovered inches above naked flesh. It was hers.
Incredulously, Ash realized she meant to touch his naked chest. Like a wild
thing unused to human contact, his stared at her in startled wariness.

Rhiannon shivered
before the threat she read in his hot, smoke-dark eyes. He looked cornered,
dangerous, and unpredictable. If she had sense she would leave. Whatever he was
to his brother, he was her enemy, a scoundrel who’d used her, lied to her, and
stolen her from her home for money. She began to move back toward the door and
safety but her gaze, released from his, fell on the purpled skin sheathing his
ribs.

He hadn’t wanted to
fight the Scotsman. Carr had forced him to it.

Her hand rose,
closed the distance, and gently, carefully, traced a deep gash across his
breast. His eyelids fluttered shut. She sidled closer, her touch feather light,
warily watching his face for signs of—

He grabbed her
wrist, spinning her round and catching her by the throat with his free hand,
shoving her violently against the wall, hissing as his swollen hand, cushioning
her wrist, slammed into the wall. His eyes opened on a blaze.

“You’ve changed,
little Rhiannon,” he muttered thickly. He angled his head sideways. Around her
throat his fingers tightened. “You’ve grown bold and headstrong. What happened
to the sweet, obedient young woman I met? Don’t you remember, Rhiannon
alainn
?
Or is that it? You want a reminder of
her fate?”

There was nothing
of kindness in him. She’d been wrong. Wrong to stay. Wrong to be moved by his
pride and his plight—

“Remember now?” he
whispered, the soft rough music of his voice mocking his violent actions. He
pushed his body flat against hers, dominating her slighter frame. Even through
the layers of thin silk petticoats and draped satin skirts she could feel the
swollen part of him brand the outside of her thigh.

“Or now?” He thrust
his hips graphically against hers. Her courage wavered. Eyes wide with
stricken, mute appeal she stared at him. A muffled word—a curse? an
endearment?—escaped him and then his mouth closed on hers, punishing and
brutal.

His tongue dove
between her lips, thrust deeply within her mouth, and stroked her tongue,
seeking the warm sleek side of interior cheeks. Passion exploded within him.

Rhiannon.

He felt the weight
of her breasts flattened against his chest. Her throat was a silky column in
his palm. Her wrist was as delicate as a bird wing.

He could have her.
Here. Now. Pain speared his side and throbbed in his hand. Pain sat like a vise
in his chest and burned like acid in his thoughts. He knew only one way to make
it stop—

He fumbled low at
her knees, bunching the heavy satin up, savoring the long, smooth slide of his
knuckles up her thighs. He dragged the skirt higher, and cupped the softly
rounded swell of her buttocks, lifting her, pressing her even more tightly to
the wall, vaguely aware that she was clutching his shoulders.