Winter Blockbuster 2012 (62 page)

‘Ah, but in that kingdom you would have no such tasks. You would be queen of all you surveyed, seated on your golden throne as everyone hurried to serve your every whim.’

‘Gold and silver and pearls?’ she said, mesmerised by his touch, his words. ‘La, but I do like the sound of this kingdom of yours.’

He twisted his fingers into her hair and drew her close, so close she could feel his warm breath whisper over her skin. He cradled the back of her head on his palm, holding her to him.

‘You deserve all of that, Anna,’ he said. All hint of his
usual teasing manner was gone, and there was only dark seriousness in his words and in the way he watched her. ‘That should be your life, not—this. Not Southwark.’

Anna felt a sharp prickle behind her eyes and was afraid she would cry. She could
not
do that—not here, not with him! She already felt too open and vulnerable. She tried to turn away but he held on to her, his hand in her hair. His touch didn’t hurt, but he wouldn’t let her go.

‘You know naught of my life,’ she said.

‘I’m a poet, Anna,’ he answered. ‘It is my lot in life to see everything—even that which I would rather not. And I see your sadness.’

‘I am not sad!’ Not if she could help it. Emotions, like sadness and anger and love, only brought trouble. She preferred serenity now.

‘You are, fair Anna.’ He pulled her even closer, until his forehead rested lightly against hers. She closed her eyes, but he was still there—very close. ‘I see that because it calls out to the sadness in me. We both see too much, feel too much. We just don’t want to admit it.’

Nay, she did not! She didn’t want to hear this, know this. She tried to twist away, but Rob suddenly bent his head and kissed the soft, sensitive spot just below her ear. She felt him touch her there with the tip of his tongue.

She gasped at the rush of hot, sizzling sensation. Her hands clutched at the front of his doublet, crushing the fine velvet as she tried to hold on and keep from falling. Her eyes closed and her head fell back as she gave in to the whirling tidepool of her desire. His mouth, open and hot, slid slowly along her neck to bite lightly at the curve of her shoulder.

‘Robert!’ she cried, and his arms closed around her waist to lift her onto his lap as his lips met hers, rough and urgent.

Anna had never felt so weak and strange. Something deep
and instinctive, primal, rose up deep inside her, blotting out the world around her so that she knew only him and this moment with him. Only his kiss.

She felt the press of his tongue against her lips and she opened for him. He tasted of wine and mint, of something dark and deep that she craved far too much. She wrapped her hands around the back of his neck, as if she could hold him to her if he tried to leave, and felt the rough silk of his wavy dark hair on her skin.

She heard him moan deep inside his throat as her tongue met his, and the sound made her want him even more—madly so. He was so
alive
, the most wondrously alive person she had ever known, and she craved the heat and pulse of him. For that one instant he made her feel alive, too—free of her calm, cool, still existence.

He made her feel too much—he frightened her, her feelings frightened her. She was drowning in him.

She tensed, and Rob seemed to sense her sudden flash of fear. He tore his lips from hers, and the clouds suddenly skittered away from the moon. Its silvery light streamed down onto his face, casting it into angular shadows. For a second he was starkly exposed to her, and she saw the horror in his eyes, as if he realised just what he was doing. Whom he was kissing.

Anna felt as if a freezing winter wind washed over her, her passion turned to cold, bitter ashes around her. What was she doing? How could Rob say he saw her, knew her, when in that moment she didn’t even know herself?

She pushed him away, and as his arms slid from her body she forced herself up from his lap. Without him holding her she felt shaky and cold, but she knew she had to get away from him.

If only she could run away from herself, as well.

As she dashed towards the house she heard him call her name, yet she couldn’t stop. She just kept running—past the dining room where her father and his friends still roared with laughter, and up the narrow stairs to her bedchamber. She slammed and bolted the door behind her, as if that could keep out what had happened.

She stumbled past the curtained bed, already turned back for the night by their maid, and went to the window. It was open to let in the night’s breeze, and she could see that garden below, full of shadows and secrets.

Rob wasn’t there any longer. The stone bench was empty. Had he also fled from what had exploded between them?

Somehow she couldn’t imagine Rob Alden fleeing from anything. She didn’t know anyone who ran into danger as he did.

Anna shut the window and sank slowly to the floor, her skirts pooling around her. She pressed her hands to her eyes, blotting out the night. Soon it would be dawn, and a new day’s tasks would be before her. Soon she could lose herself in the busy noise of her life, and this would all be as a dream. A foolish dream.

It had to be.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘A
ND
this fair place, this Eden, is as nothing compared to your—your …’

Rob stared down at the words on the page, and an intense, fiery wave of anger washed over him. They weren’t right—the right words simply wouldn’t come that morning. They were imprisoned behind an impenetrable wall, locked away. There were no tender love words to be conjured that day. Not by him.

There was only that anger, burning away everything else. Anger and something he had never known before, something he despised—guilt. The conscience he’d thought he didn’t have, couldn’t afford, pricked at him like sharpened poniards.

‘Z’wounds,’ he cursed, and threw down his pen. Ink splashed over the papers scattered across his table, blotting out the words he had just written. Work was the last thing he could think of today.

Anna Barrett filled his thoughts—and created that anger.

Rob sat back in his chair and flexed his hand, the ink-stained fingers stiff from trying to write tenderness and love where there was none. He thought of how that hand had touched Anna last night, how he hadn’t been able to stop
himself from giving in to the luscious temptation of her rose-scented skin, the softness of her hair.

The way her mouth had tasted against his—like ripe, sweet summer fruit to a starving man. Everything else had vanished when they were alone like that, just the two of them in the night, and he had lost himself in her. The control that was so vital to his life had disappeared as if in a puff of mist, and he’d been desperate for her.

He’d wanted,
needed
, the softness of her, and if they had been in a private chamber with none passing by he would surely have lifted her skirts and taken her in that rush of sudden, desperate lust.

Thank the stars they had been outside, with a houseful of people mere feet away. That Anna had come to her senses when it had seemed he had none and pushed him away.

That look of blank surprise on her face as she’d run from him had awoken him from his sensual dream as nothing else could have. The memory of it now made him even angrier—though whether at Anna or himself, or at the whole world, he couldn’t say. If only there was a brawl to be had, here and now! A fight would erase all else, burn away the emotion that ran too fast, and he could forget. For a moment.

Rob pushed back from the table so swiftly his chair clattered to the rough wooden floor. He kicked it out of the way and went to thrust open the window and let in some of the early morning light.

His rented room at the top of the Three Bells tavern looked down on one of the back alleys of the Southwark neighbourhood, so high he was above the overhanging eaves of the buildings that nearly touched above the road. It meant he had more light and air than the dank lower chambers—better for his long hours of solitary writing. The fetid smells of the
dirt lane were more distant, as well, and he could think and work here. It was his sanctuary, rough and small as it was.

Today it didn’t feel like a sanctuary. It felt like a prison, binding him up alone with unwelcome feelings and desires.

Desires for Anna Barrett, of all women. Rob leaned his palms on the scarred wooden ledge and stared down at the alley below. He didn’t see the passing water-girls or the drunks straggling home from the night’s revels. He saw Anna, her full, soft lips pink and damp from his kisses, her bright green eyes wide and startled. Her body so soft and pliant against his.

Anna Barrett—the prickliest, most distant female he knew—
soft
in his embrace. Anna Barrett oversetting his emotions, which he had long thought mastered. Who could have thought it? Someone who shaped human ends had a sense of humour.

It was surprising, and he had thought he could never be surprised again. That alone was enticing.

But he could not afford to be
enticed
by Anna, or to have anything to do with her at all. If she knew the truth about him—about what he was doing at the White Heron—she would castrate him herself with a rusty stage rapier and toss his severed member into the Thames.

Rob turned away from the window and the piercing daylight that rose above the jagged rooftops, pulling his rumpled, ink-stained shirt over his head. The morning moved apace, and he had work to do.

If only today’s task was half as pleasant as being in the garden with Anna Barrett. He could easily face every danger if such a reward waited at the end.

But it was thinking like that—careless and impulsive, seeking pleasure at all costs—that had brought him to this place. It was the Alden family’s downfall, always.

As Rob splashed cold water from the basin over his face and bare chest, he thought of his family. He usually refused to think of them at all. Memories of his time before London, before Southwark, were futile and foolish. They were gone and he had made his choices. The past was no more. His parents would have disowned him for all he did now. His short stint in prison after a brawl had shown him what his life had become—how far he was from his old life. His parents would have been disappointed, indeed.

But his sister—pretty Mary, gone from him now for so long—she still lingered with him. Sometimes he seemed to sense her sad spirit at his shoulder, and it was that memory that drove him forward, that kept him alive amidst all the danger and his own careless ways. He had to do right by her, to fulfil his goal before he could let go and be at peace.

That had long been the implacable force driving him onward. He wouldn’t let Anna Barrett be an obstacle, no matter how well she kissed. No matter how much he wanted her.

Rob scrubbed hard at his face with a rough cloth, as if he could wash away last night and the emotions it had aroused in his long-cold heart. Wash away all the past. That was impossible, but he could at least make himself look a bit more respectable. Like a man with important business to conduct.

He pulled on a clean shirt and reached for his best doublet—the crimson velvet sewn with gold buttons he’d worn last night and which lay discarded on his rumpled bed. But it still smelled of roses and night air, of Anna and their closeness in the garden.

‘God’s teeth,’ he muttered, and tossed it aside. His next-best doublet, a dark purple velvet and black leather, would have to do, and was more sombre, anyway. Better for where he was going. He donned it quickly and smoothed the tangled
waves of his hair before he reached for his short black cloak—and the packet of papers.

He had to journey to Seething Lane before the day was too far gone.

‘Anna, dearest? Are you well this morning?’

‘Hmm? What did you say, Father?’ Anna asked as she stared out of the window of the dining room. The garden in the morning light, with the slow traffic of Southwark waking up just beyond, seemed so—ordinary. The same trees and overgrown shrubs she saw every day. How had she ever been so carried away by dreams and fantasies in such a place? Even under night’s cover?

It was a terrible, twisting puzzle that had kept her awake until dawn.

‘It’s just that you seem distracted, daughter,’ her father said. ‘You’re about to spill that beer.’

Anna looked down, startled, to see that the pitcher of small beer she was pouring into pottery goblets was indeed about to spill. She quickly put it down on the table, and reached for a cloth to wipe up the last drops.

‘Fie on it all,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sorry, Father. I suppose I’m just a bit tired today.’

‘Sit down and have some bread,’ Tom said, pushing a platter of bread and cheese across the table to her. ‘I shouldn’t have asked so many people to supper yesterday. We talked too late into the night.’

No, he shouldn’t have asked them, Anna thought as she listlessly poked at a piece of bread. Maybe then she would have spent the evening quietly with her book, not wandering off in dark gardens with Robert Alden, forgetting herself and acting like a fool.

She felt her cheeks turn hot at the memory of their kiss,
of the way she’d flung herself onto his lap and held him so tightly, as if she was drowning and only he could save her. But there had been such a feeling of inevitability about it all—like the fate that led characters in a play to their inescapable ends. Something dark and needful had been growing between them for a long time. Something she didn’t understand and didn’t want.

Anna took a long sip of the beer. Perhaps it was best something
had
happened. Now it was done and past, and they could forget it.

But what if it was not so past? What if it happened again and she found she truly was a strumpet with no control?

She almost laughed at the thought. Strumpet or not, she knew Rob was pursued by so many ladies—Winchester geese and fine Court women alike. She saw them all the time at the White Heron, his admirers clustered around the stage with shining eyes and low-cut bodices. He certainly didn’t need a grey-clad widow like her.

She just had to forget him—put last night’s folly down to a wild dream and move forward. It was as simple as that.