After the Kiss (25 page)

He had taken the precaution of destroying all his cipher worksheets, especially those relating to the most recent codes he’d solved. His memory would furnish the details he needed.

He had limited his activities, preferring instead to stay at Margaret’s side. Guarding her had become of paramount importance.

But there was nothing about Margaret’s life that could not be closely examined. She had lived circum
spectly, an almost cloistered existence. Until, of course, she’d stood upon a darkened terrace one night months ago.

Her only secret had been a curiosity easily confessed.
It felt exceedingly daring to read Augustin’s words at the time
.

He opened the drawer where he’d left the notes he’d transcribed upon reading one of the books. He began to read the
Journals
again. Without being drawn into Augustine X’s words, he completed his annotations, flipping from the beginning of the book to its end until he’d written down all the margin notes.

His eyes scanned the column of numbers and letters, noticing a pattern. A code? It may be nothing. The volumes could simply be used as printer’s proofs; the marks meant for the binder.

Then again, books were often used to transmit coded messages. Normally the method utilized was to underline selected words in a passage. Placed together they formed sentences. Not altogether a secure system of encipherment.

But perhaps he had been too hasty after all. He began to work, finding himself immersed in the possibilities before him.

B
ecause of her bandage and the soreness of her arm, Margaret required help in dressing and undressing. Michael had served as her maid, doing so with a rather forbidding scowl, and then absenting himself from the room until she was asleep.

Tonight he was evidently intent upon doing the same. She sat on the side of the bed and studied him.

She was filled with a particularly languorous feeling, one that had the oddest effect of making her fingertips tingle. All because of him, of course. His frowns amused her, while his smiles had the ability to alter even her heart, seeming to stop it for a beat or two before it raced to catch up.

He was a man of intelligence and logic and tumultuous emotion, for all that he tamped it down. A being capable of great tenderness, protectiveness, and
the granting of exquisite physical pleasure. Now he stood looking at her with solemn blue eyes that measured the silent moments between them.

Hers. Once before she’d had the thought. But then she’d only borrowed him. Now he was hers for a lifetime.

“Is it true that they call you the Code Master?”

“Where did you hear that?” he asked sardonically.

“Elizabeth, I believe. Or perhaps Smytheton. Both are very impressed by your consequence,” she teased. “They tiptoe past your library door in case they disturb you, and talk about you in a hushed voice.”

“Everyone does,” he said amicably. “I’m quite an ogre.” He walked slowly toward her. “Everyone but you, of course.

“Did you know there was a code in the
Journals
?” he asked, threading his fingers through her recently brushed hair.

“No,” she said, turning. “Is there really? What does it say?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he admitted. “I’ve just begun to sort it out.”

“Should I feel pleased that you’ve broken your concentration to help me undress? Or is that why you’ve come?”

“Unless you choose to wear your dress to bed,” he said.

“And then you’ll go work in your library until I’m asleep? Again?” she asked, studying him.

One of his brows rose imperiously.

“I was shot in the arm, Michael,” she said. “You mustn’t think I’m all that delicate.”

“Else you will tell me of the roof you thatched and the bricks you mended?” He smiled.

“I truly am better, and it has been more than a week. I’ve missed you,” she said. There, a hint and an invitation in one.

She didn’t need
that
much cosseting.

For a moment they simply looked at each other.

She stood and closed the distance between them.

“You have a dangerous mouth, Margaret,” he said, bending his head to kiss her. Softly at first, then deepening the kiss until she saw only darkness behind her closed lids. She leaned into him, wanting to be touched. To be held by him. More kisses, please. A day’s worth. A week. A lifetime.

He pulled back finally, his breathing as harsh as hers. They leaned against each other. For support, she thought, smiling.

She could remain this way for the rest of her life. Enthralled by this man. First he’d captivated her curiosity, then her body. Now her mind, her heart, and perhaps her very soul.

He slowly withdrew something from his waistcoat, held it up for her to see. She smiled as she realized exactly what it was. A long length of pink ribbon.

“Where did you get that?”

“I took it from the modiste’s supplies,” he said, coming to her. He wound the ribbon behind her neck and around her throat. “But do not think me a thief,” he said. “I had Smytheton pay her for it.”

“You’ve had it all this time?”

“I keep it with me always.”

“Waiting, perhaps, for the propitious moment?” she teased.

He moved his hands behind her back and with great deliberation opened the first three buttons of her dress. The gaping bodice allowed him to press his lips against her collarbone, the curve of her shoulders.

He gently helped her off with her dress, his eyes narrowing as he viewed her bandage. He bent his head and kissed the edge of it just as he did every night.

He did not, however, remove her shift. He simply grabbed it at the hemline, began to tear it. Her hands reached out and rested on his wrists.

“I will buy you another one,” he said.

“You said we should practice economies,” she said softly, her voice tinged with humor.

“I’m too impatient,” he said. “Besides, I think our fortunes can survive a shift,” he said. He continued to tear the garment until it parted at her neckline.

Naked, except for her bandage, she stood in front of him. He gently pressed his palm against her bare breast.

“The sight of my hand against your skin arouses you, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. She felt as if she could barely breathe.

The back of his fingers slid along the tip of her nipple. Her breasts were extremely sensitive lately, so much so that even that smallest movement was enough to make her gasp. His fingers imprisoned the nipple gently, elongating it. His other hand wound the length of ribbon midway around the fullness of her breast.

His gaze was intent upon her face. Knowing exactly what she felt. Aware, always, of her response to his touch.

He pulled on the ribbon gently with both hands, sliding the satin along her flesh slowly until he reached the tip. The gentle friction against her engorged nipple was an exquisite delight. Back and forth, slowly and delicately, until she caught her bottom lip with her teeth, trapping a moan between her lips.

“Which of your breasts is more sensitive, I wonder?”

He moved the ribbon, repeated the gentle torture.

“Both,” she murmured slightly.

“Are you certain?” he asked. “We can try it again.”

“I’m certain,” she whispered.

So, it was to be seduction again. Overpowering and enervating. Fire traveled through her at the thought of it. Anticipation laced with desire.

Always for him.

“Kiss me, Michael,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Your kisses are too intoxicating.”

“Please.” A pretense of a pout.

“Later.”

“Now.”

“No,” he said, a light of wickedness in his eyes and enchantingly talented fingers.

“Another question, then,” he said, leaning close to her. She could feel his breath on her cheek, his inquisition one spoken only between lovers. “Do you like my lips on your breasts, Margaret? Or my fingers? Which brings you more pleasure?”

“Both,” she said again, smiling slightly.

“You can’t have both right now,” he said, pulling back. “You must choose.”

“Your lips.”

“You want my mouth on you?” he asked softly.

She nodded. The heat in her body was increasing.

“Show me.”

She pulled the ribbon free, handing it to him silently. She lifted her breast, then reached up and hooked her other hand behind his neck, pulled him down to her. “Here,” she said, lifting her breast up for his anointing tongue. She felt fierce and demanding in passion.

“Valkyrie,” he said, and placed his mouth on her.

Her hand kept him in place, the sweet and gentle suction too much a sensation. A moment of exquisite delight. She closed her eyes in order to savor it and him.

Long moments later, he pulled back.

“Is that what you wanted?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s been so long,” she sighed.

“Only days,” he said, stroking his finger from the center of her breasts to her throat.

“Eons,” she argued.

“An eternity?”

“Yes.”

His thumb gently stroked over a nipple.

“You’re trembling,” he said.

“Yes.” It seemed to be all she could say.

He bent and carried her to the bed. She really should protest, but his mouth was too close to hers. She kissed him instead. First, a short darting touch of the tip of her tongue. But then, he pressed his hand to the back of her head and held her there, deepened the kiss.

When she pulled back, he pressed his lips against her throat as if he wished to measure the pulse of her heart.

He lowered her to the bed, stood beside it looking down at her.

She wanted to be beautiful for him. His eyes answered her wish, made her feel like a goddess.

He removed his own clothes, smiling at the intensity of her study.

He moved around the bed and lay beside her. Only then did he reach for her again, pulling her atop him. She spread her legs until she straddled him, under
standing immediately that he didn’t want to hurt her shoulder.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said helplessly.

“It is not that difficult. I shall volunteer to serve as your tutor,” he teased.

He moved his hands, one resting on her buttock, the other against her stomach. Another sensation, strange and carnal and certainly wicked made her open her eyes and stare at him.

He grinned at her, the expression in his eyes intent.

In each hand he held the end of the ribbon. He had wound it between them. She felt it being pulled, slowly between her legs. It was blissfully decadent, almost too intense a feeling.

“Retaliation?” she asked, finding it difficult to speak.

“I do not like to think that I allow a debt to go unpaid.” Another long stroke.

“Is that what it was, a debt?”

“A most glorious one. The memory of it will fuel my dreams for my lifetime.”

He pulled the ribbon so that his fingers were against her intimate curls. His fingers stroked along its path, tucked it among soft and swollen folds. Gently. Tenderly.

“Do you think we can die of this?”

“Pleasure or each other?”

“Either or both.” Her lashes were too heavy. She let her lids flutter shut. His hands, those talented, wonderful hands, continued to slowly pull on the ribbon, tease her with his touch.

He lifted her slowly, wound the ribbon once around himself, and then entered her slowly. A wanton, that’s what she was. A wanton wife. She bent and mur
mured the words against his lips, feeling him smile in response.

He pushed her back so that she sat upright on him, the feeling of being so completely filled almost too much to bear. He pressed the heels of his feet on the bed and surged upward into her then shockingly pulled on the ribbon again. The sensation was almost unbearable.

“I cannot touch your breasts if I continue with this,” he said. “Do you wish me to stop?”

“Indeed no,” she said. A very proper response. One couched in the most decorous of phrases. In fact, she was adrift in a sensation of pure sensuality. Totally and beautifully sublime. Feeling. Nothing but feeling. And around it, holding her safe, was the image of him. His slight smile, the intensity of his eyes.

“Your breasts are lovely,” he said, his voice husky. “I would like to kiss them.”

She opened her eyes, her gaze on his face. He seemed imbued in a soft haze, as if the pleasure she felt colored even the sight of him.

“Would you?”

“Yes,” he said, and licked his lips.

She looked down at herself. Her nipples had drawn up, the areolas puckered. She placed one hand beneath each breast. “Do you think them too large?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “I have noted, however, that your nipples are…arrogant.”

He smiled and gently pulled on the ribbon. A sharp and exquisite sensation traveled through her, harnessing her breath, holding her quiescent. She closed her eyes at the sensation and trapped a moan with her teeth.

“Very arrogant,” he said, leisurely.

She blinked open her eyes. “Perhaps I am learning
to be a countess after all,” she murmured.

His face was flushed, his eyes glittered at her. “My countess,” he said.

She bent forward, raised herself to him. His mouth closed over a nipple and he began gently to suck.

His hands gripped her hips, began to push her down on him, establishing a rhythm. It seemed as if there was too much pleasure, all of it originating with him. More. Please. More.

He pulled back, his lips wet and hot as he pressed her forward and kissed her. A soft moan emerged from her lips, was captured in his kiss.

“Margaret.” Her name was an odd and enchanting refrain. An urging to bliss, completion. And finally paradise.

M
ichael glanced at the letter from his solicitor. An offer had been made for Torrent, one surprisingly generous.

He glanced over at Margaret seated on the divan reading. She had been so quiet in the last hour that he had forgotten she was in the library at all. She was attired in another of her new dresses, a deep blue frock with a matching scarf wound around her neck and under her wrist to support her injured shoulder. He smiled at the sight of her, her cheek pressed against the side of the couch, her eyes shut. Napping again.

Tenderness surged through him at the sight of her.

He stood and went to her, scooping her up into his arms before she could wake. She nodded at him sleepily. “You’re carrying me again.”

“I am,” he admitted. “To our bedroom,” he added.

“To have your wicked way with me?” She almost purred the question.

“No. For you to nap,” he said, still smiling.

“I’m forever sleeping.”

“Yes, you are,” he agreed. “But then, it’s for a good cause.” He had grown accustomed to the idea of becoming a father. So much so that he was alternately enthralled and terrified at the prospect.

He tucked her into bed and kissed her lightly. She smiled, turned, and curved into the pillow at her side. She was asleep again before he left the room.

Returning to his library, he stared out at the fog-shrouded view from his library. The garden was obscured by an unusual afternoon mist. Fog was more prevalent in autumn or winter, rarely so in summer.

He moved back to his desk, forcing himself to work on the Augustin code. His mood was oddly somber this afternoon, the reluctance he felt unlike him.

He sat, opened the book and took out his notes.

Key codes were nothing more than language, albeit rendered more obscure and therefore more difficult to learn. All that was required to read this specialized code was a translation key, one of repetition, symbolism, or pattern. Perhaps the keyword in the Augustin Journals was separate for each chapter, which would explain the differing notations on each heading.

He opened the book to the first chapter. The margin notes were b 2 3. He selected the second paragraph, located two words beginning with the letter “b.” The third letter in each word was an “o.”

He sat back, stared at his annotations.

“She is recuperating, Mama. It is not the time for visitors.” Elizabeth’s voice.

He turned his head toward the door, jerked out of his concentration by the interruption. He stood, irritated by his mother’s effrontery.

“I mean to have my say with this chit, Elizabeth. Get out of my way.”

“Michael will not be pleased,” Elizabeth said.

“She’s right,” he announced, opening the door and glaring at them. His mother was halfway up the stairs, his sisters trailing behind her.

“My wife is not receiving,” he said curtly.

“I tried to stop her, Michael,” Elizabeth said helplessly.

One quick nod was his only response. He knew only too well what his mother was like when she was set upon a certain course of action.

“I’m afraid I must end this visit,” he said calmly, surveying his mother and sisters. “And insist that you not return in the future unless you are specifically invited.”

His quick nod at Elizabeth rescinded that order for her. She smiled lightly, obviously relieved, and began to walk down the stairs.

“Is it true that you’re selling Torrent?” his mother demanded, frowning down at him.

“And Haversham. We cannot afford them.”

“We could have kept all our properties if you’d married an heiress,” she countered. “Instead, you married your whore.”

He strode across the foyer, enraged.

“My wife will not now, nor ever, be called that word,” he said, his voice echoing through the rotunda. “Nor addressed in that tone.”

“Are you even certain the child is yours?” His mother’s face was mottled with color, her lips nearly bloodless with anger.

“I have tended to see you as an irritant,” he said curtly. “But I have never thought of you as idiotic. Until now.”

“How dare—”

“Not now, Mother,” he said sharply. “I do not want to hear any more of your diatribes.

“Smytheton,” he said, addressing the ever-present butler without removing his gaze from his mother. “Open the door. My mother and my sisters are leaving.

“Perhaps if you retreat to Setton,” he said curtly, “you might be able to survive the horror of my marriage.” His hands rested on his hips; his fingers drummed an impatient tattoo.

“But it’s the middle of the season!” Charlotte burst out.

He glanced over at his sister. “You should have thought of that before you were tempted to be intrusive. Or rude,” he said, turning to his mother. “Don’t come again, Mother, until you’re specifically invited.”

She stared at him, taken aback by his order. An altogether welcome relief to have her reduced to silence. She turned and descended the stairs, pinning him with her gaze the whole time. At the doorway she turned. “You are acting decidedly unlike yourself, Michael. Has she bewitched you as well?”

She proceeded through the door, waving her arm as she did. “Come, girls.” Ada and Charlotte followed her without a backward glance. Elizabeth darted to him, stood on tiptoe, and placed a kiss on his cheek.

“Now I know you love her,” she whispered, smiling. Before he could respond she had disappeared through the doorway. Smytheton bowed, left the foyer.

“I used to think that nobles were insufferable,”

Margaret said. He looked up to discover her standing at the landing.

“You’re supposed to be napping,” he said.

“But then,” she said, ignoring his comment, “I met you. You aren’t like most earls are you?”

“While my mother remains the quintessential example of all that is to be avoided. Didactic, haughty, arrogant,” he said ruefully.

“Was your father the same? Or was he a charming rogue?” She halted a few steps above him.

He gripped the banister, and pulled himself up, brushing a light kiss to her lovely mouth.

“The memories of my father,” he admitted, “are mainly those of his shouting at my mother and her responding in kind.”

He chuckled at her look of surprise. “My mother is not, for all that she would like to appear so, an example of propriety and rectitude. She has only become this way following my father’s death. Prior to that, her lapses of decorum were legendary.”

“Are you certain we’re talking of the same woman?”

He nodded. “She took a riding crop to my father once. He retaliated by shooting out one of the stained glass windows in the chapel.” His grin widened at the look of stunned surprise on her face. “My father’s explanation for the act was that he was mad at God for creating woman in the first place, and my mother specifically. My childhood was not uneventful,” he admitted.

She tilted her head and studied him. “Is that why you claim to be so restrained?”

“Claim?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

He reached for her, clasped her hand, and walked
her down the rest of the stairs. He stood at the base and wound his arms around her waist. “I confess that my mother might be correct in this instance,” he said. “Perhaps you
have
bewitched me.”

He almost always wanted his hands on her. The curve of her back was beautiful, so fragile and feminine that he wanted to put his lips there right at this particular moment. In the center of it, and lower, where it curved to her buttocks. He felt himself swelling even now at the thought.

Like an impatient and unwise suitor, he walked Margaret gently back against the wall.

Her smile seemed tipped with merriment. A thoroughly enchanting look. He adored everything about her. Her laughing face, those fascinating eyes, that beautiful mouth.

“Raise your head,” he said. “I want to kiss you.”

Her eyes sparkled with amusement.

He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. A teasing touch. Too soon transformed into something else. Whenever he kissed her he seemed to lose part of himself. As if he were falling down into a darkly hued cavern where thought was superfluous. Only physical sensation remained intact. The passage of time had not altered the sensation. If anything, it had heightened it.

The desire was there. God knows the need was.

Both his hands slapped against the wall on either side of her. His erection, eternally tumescent and almost boyishly eager, strained against his trousers.

His next kiss was openly carnal. Into it he infused all the instant hunger he always felt, and all the enduring fascination. But most of all, their kiss was filled with love, the power of which still awed him.

His hips arched forward involuntarily. Restraint managed by only a thread of thought.

“Excuse me, my lord.” Smytheton’s voice as he passed through the foyer. There was a distinct note of amusement in the majordomo’s voice.

Michael jerked back from Margaret and stared straight ahead at the wall. A feeling unlike any he’d ever known slid through him.

He leaned his head against his arm, felt the burning sting of embarrassment. “Dear God, I’ve been a rutting bull in front of my butler.”

Michael opened his eyes to find Margaret suffused with merriment. Every time she started to speak, another choking laugh emerged instead. He closed his eyes again.

“Have pity on my consequence,” he muttered against her ear.

“We really should move,” she teased. “He might come back again and it will only be worse.”

He retreated with his wife to their chamber, the sound of her laughter echoing through the pantheon.

The Duke of Tarrant was watching his foals. Not an unknown pastime for him. They ran for their freedom the way all young things do, with a gusty expectation of long life and a rosy future.

Pity that it did not often come to pass.

He stood against the fence, watched the mist covering the ground. A summer oddity. As if even nature warned him of the danger that loomed.

Peter came and stood beside him. A master and his servant. Not quite as innocent a portrait as they appeared.

“I have a new plan,” he said. “We can lure both of them to us and obtain the rest of the books.”

Peter glanced at him. “You want me to take his wife.”

“Exactly so,” Tarrant said, turning and smiling. “See that it’s done quickly,” he said. “I want this over.”

Peter nodded.

He donned his trousers, slipped on his dressing gown on, and leaned over the bed.

“You’re leaving me,” she complained sleepily, her eyes still closed.

“Do you mind?”

“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes reluctantly. She reached up to grip the lapels of his dressing gown, pulled him down for a kiss, then sighed as he stood again.

“Less than a few weeks wed,” she said, sighing dramatically, “and I’ve already been replaced by work.”

“Never,” he said, kissing her again. “But you should rest regardless.”

“An obvious ploy to placate me,” she said.

“Is it successful?” he asked with a smile.

“Yes,” she admitted. “But I feel remarkably decadent sleeping in the afternoon.”

“The prerogative of a countess,” he teased.

She heard him leave the room and smiled.

Love is learned thing, perhaps. She had learned love at her grandmother’s knee, from Jerome in a friendly, easy marriage. Michael, however, had taught her that love involved all her senses, that she could feel passion as well as delight. More emotions strung together than she had ever felt.

One other element to love that she had never before known. It fed on itself, and grew each day.

Michael was working at his desk when a tap on the door interrupted him. He called out to Smytheton, who entered the room in his usual somber way, crossing the carpet soundlessly and bowing unsmilingly in front of him. He picked the message up from the tray, opened it and scanned it quickly. Robert was back in London and inviting him to participate in a night of debauchery.

He penned a reply, inviting his friend to dinner instead, and informing him of his wedding. Margaret’s existence would no doubt come as a shock to the man who believed he was privy to all manner of secrets. Michael smiled in anticipation, and returned the message to Smytheton.

“See that it gets off straight away, will you, Smytheton? I’ve invited Adams to dinner.”

Smytheton only nodded and crept away on silent feet.

When he began solving a code, Michael sketched a grid upon a sheet of paper. As he began to fill in the deciphered letters, the grid helped him identify those missing. If he was fortunate, he could determine early on exactly what kind of code was used, what patterns were missing.

He had already deduced that the cipher in the
Journals
was a poly alphanumeric cipher. A surprisingly difficult one to solve, often requiring both the recipient and the sender to utilize a word key. It could be a phrase, one word, or a combination of words and numbers. But in the past few days he discovered that he didn’t need the word key after all. His experience in solving the Cyrillic cipher proved invaluable, the two codes were so alike. One of the
Journals
could easily serve as the other’s word key. All he had to do was compare the extractions.

Four hours later, he speared his hands through his hair and stared at the deciphered code in shock.

The mantel clock chimed softly. A reminder, then, of Robert’s imminent arrival.

He stood and walked to the window, his mind silent, an empty cavern that resounded with only one thought. What he had read was an act that had altered history. One single deed that had changed the world and resulted in the death of thousands.

How was Margaret involved?

The lesson of the Cyrillic cipher was difficult to ignore. A woman’s treachery had ended a man’s career, made him suspect in a country he only wished to serve.

Had he been a fool? So blinded by his love for Margaret that he had not seen the truth before his eyes?

No. He banished that thought quickly. However she was involved, it was innocently, he was certain of that.

How do you know
? A last, almost desperate, rational thought. The answer was simple.
Because I love her
.