At Your Pleasure (36 page)

He shoved another jackanapes out of his path, cataloging likely trouble in the expressions of those eyeing her,
nudging each other, jerking their chins in her direction. It was not only her elegance that made her conspicuous. The simple provocation of her silhouette caused drunkards to imagine that her tastes would run as coarsely as their appreciation of her bosom.

He had nearly reached her when trouble erupted. The fight spilled suddenly between them. One of the brawlers sprawled at her feet, gawping up at her. “Here’s an angel!” Seizing hold of her skirts, he cried, “Angel, show me your favor!”

The filth-faced drunkard hanging from her skirts yanked Nora off her balance. Helpful hands caught her by the elbows, and for a moment she thought herself spared; but the hands instantly grew lewd, slipping to deliver a sly pinch at her breast, a firm grope to her buttocks. She whirled to swat them away, but all at once, there were too many hands to defray, and yellow, toothy grins encircled her.

The crowd lurched. Bodies packed thick as pelts crushed into her, stinking of sweat and alcohol. She elbowed free of a sweaty grip but somebody, stumbling, caught hold of her hair and snapped her backward at the waist. She cried out as she clawed at the fingers that pulled at her scalp.

They loosed her all at once; she straightened, gasping, to discover Adrian taking her assailant by the throat and physically tossing him away. Another vulgar, questing hand found her buttocks and Adrian stepped past her, laying the rogue out with a fist to the face. His arm
closed around her waist; clearing a path with his elbow and shoulder, he hauled her forward.

“You,” he growled in her ear, “were to stay in your damned room.”

She had no breath to reply; she could only clutch him and try to keep her footing. The brawler who had caught her skirts stepped into their path again and Adrian caught him by the hair and hauled his head into an uplifted knee. Almost effortless, almost elegant, this violence; the man groaned and slumped to the side, falling beneath the trample of feet.

People began to scream and shove harder. She could not understand what had turned the mundane chaos into a stampede, but everywhere now men were fighting, and those who tried to move away were thwarted by jeerers who pushed closer to encourage the brawlers. Somebody’s fist flew toward her, and before she could shriek, Adrian deflected it with his forearm. Finally, finally, she spotted the door, through which more men were piling in to join the fracas. Adrian broke through these newcomers and pulled her into the hall, where the smoky heat and noise subsided with shocking abruptness.

“Move,” he bit out, letting go of her waist but placing himself behind her, directing her by the shoulders toward the stairs. “Up!”

She had wished to speak with him. To confront him. To demand plain speaking, or any kind of speaking at all. She had not realized they passed this night in the seventh circle of hell, or certainly she
would
have stayed in her room!

Face burning, her skirts gathered tightly in her fists, she hurried up the stairs. He marshaled her so closely with his body that every step brought him brushing up against her.

At the top of the stairs he seized her elbow and took the lead again, dragging her down the hall almost too quickly for her to manage. The door to her room he knocked open with his shoulder. Grizel, who had been brushing down a dress by the fire, bolted up.

“Out!” he roared.

Grizel threw a panicked look toward Nora, who managed a jerky nod. The girl gathered the dress to her chest and hurried out.

The door slammed. He leaned back against it, staring blindly into space, his breathing audible. His head turned slowly toward her, and the hard look in his face made her throat close. His silence crisped the air like an oncoming storm.

He shoved off the door and stalked toward her. She would not back away. She was not afraid of him! Only she had never seen such rage in his face—save that night he had railed at her while Hodderby burned . . .

He stalked past, stripping off his coat and waistcoat. In his shirtsleeves he looked out the window into the coaching yard. His grip on the sill turned his knuckles white.

Whatever he saw made him spin back toward her. “I would throw you through this damned window if I thought it would fix your brain!”

Her knees folded, landing her heavily into a cane chair. “I did nothing to provoke them. There was a fight—”

He drew back his fist and slammed it into the wall.

Powdery wattle rained onto the floor. Her tongue felt like lead, but a paralyzing prickle passed down her skin.

“You little
fool
. Have you no care for yourself? To walk into that room—” His laugh was ugly. “But why do I ask!
I
am the fool to wonder! Again and again you have proved your reckless disregard for yourself! What is today next to your other exploits? A grope of your bosom—nay, even a rape on the floor—would be nothing compared to your idiocy with the gunpowder. Your life is but a toy to you, is it? You gamble with it so
freely
—”

Mouth tight, he stared at her for an unspeaking moment. Then he snatched up the chair next to him and smashed it against the wall.

“Stop!” She was on her feet. “Cease this childish—”

“Childish?” he roared.
“Childish?”
He sprang toward her, and now she did scramble backward, for in his face was the fury of a marauding savage. She ducked around the bed and he lunged across it, seizing her arm and dragging her bodily over the mattress. A strangled cry escaped her as she spilled onto her knees on the floor.

He hauled her up and pulled her to the window that overlooked the yard.

“Look,” he said in a murderous voice, his hands hard as manacles on her shoulders. “Behold the company which you so blithely tempted today!”

She held very still, not daring to move. The heat of his body surrounded her like a great, raging fire, and his bruising grip flexed erratically on her arms.

He shook her once. “
Look!
Behold the work of
childish
men!”

Half the brawlers had spilled out of doors. They had set upon one of the London-bound coaches, rocking it wildly as the coachman, atop the roof, screamed curses at them.

“This rabble is bound for London,” he said in her ear. “Rape is a game to them—an execution a holiday. Imagine their joy if they learned your name.”

Cold spilled over her. He could not mean . . . “My brother’s execution? Is that why they travel?”

He snapped her around to face him. “Forget your damned brother! His cause is as dead as he! Are you so intent to follow him?”

For an unending moment they stared at each other. She could not have managed a word. Her very lungs froze for horror.

He made a noise of disgust and released her. “Christ. Tell me—have I married a Jacobite? I did not think so—but if I am wrong, prithee tell me now, so I may
wash my hands of this lunacy
!”

“No.” The word came out brokenly.

“No?
No?
” Viciously he mocked her. “No, you are no Jacobite? So only a madwoman then—a lunatic who destroyed her home for sisterly love! Hodderby is ruined, Nora! Your demesne is laid waste! But perhaps you aim higher yet. Tell me, how far will you go for your accursed family?”

The blood had drained from her head. She put a hand to the windowsill for balance, but the world continued to spin.

“Answer me!” He screamed so loudly that his voice lost all color. “Did I marry a drone? Are you a lunatic? So tenderly the Colvilles care for you—how far will you go to repay them?
How far?
”

Such hatred in his voice! Such murderous anger. “I am done with their cause,” she said hoarsely. “I am
done
! But that does not mean I will watch David die gladly—or that I will let him go to the block without trying to save him!
Surely
you must understand that!”

His expression went blank. And then he gave her a terrible smile. “Always a new reason,” he said. “Why do I bother? There is no saving you from yourself.”

Turning on his heel, he strode toward the wardrobe that stood along the far wall. The heavy piece topped his head. The violence with which he threw his weight into it—and the ease with which it began to move, scraping and bumping over the floor—frightened her further yet. It bespoke an unnatural strength, born of berserker’s rage.

Once the wardrobe blocked the door, he stepped away and with cold, unnerving precision began to unwind his neckcloth. Tossing that aside, he took up his sword from where it stood by the hearth, then sat, laying the weapon across his lap as though he anticipated the use of it.

He did not look at her but stared into the flames.

Her throat tightened. She would not be afraid of him. She
would
speak. “Where is he now? Is he safe from them?”

His mouth twisted. “As safe as can be, with that mob in the courtyard. They would make quick work of him.” Darkness moved across his face. “Or you,” he said. “Lacking
the brother, those vermin would not scruple to make do with the sister.”

Dear God.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I spoke to no one.”

His smile looked cutting. “How
wise
.”

The silence that opened then seemed to suffice for him. Sprawled in the chair, legs outstretched, his sword across his lap, he tipped his head to gaze on the water-stained ceiling. But despite his casual posture, she sensed an alertness about him. He listened closely to the noises in the coaching yard.

Her eyes wandered across the evidence of the rage he now restrained—the cracked wall, the broken chair. In contrast, his stillness grew the more chilling. She had to try several times to find the courage to speak.

“They must try him first, mustn’t they?”

Glancing to her, he lifted a brow.

“They cannot simply execute him,” she said. “He must be tried in the House of Lords!”

“Your father was impeached.” He spoke as though to a dim-witted child. “The Colvilles lost that entitlement.”

“But even a common prisoner is entitled to some sort of trial!”

He looked away again. “Indeed. You must remind the lawmen so, when next they consult you.”

He sounded almost bored now. It wounded her. In her place, would he let his siblings be put to the axe? Would he not do everything in his power to protect them? “Perhaps I will remind them! Perhaps I will petition the king myself! If he allows men to flout and
abuse our laws, perhaps he
is
a fraud, and no true king for England!”

His chin came down. He looked at her narrowly.
“Sit,”
he bit out.

But his bullying suddenly enraged her. So he regretted marrying her. A just fruit for his use of force! She had not asked to marry him! She had not asked to be placed in this bind! “Why should I sit? Are you afraid to hear me speak? Do you think someone will overhear? Or will you yourself turn me in for a Jacobite? A fine turn that will be for your courtly ambitions, to expose your wife for a criminal!”

He straightened slowly, the movement sinuous, like a snake uncoiling. “Sit,” he said softly, “and shut your mouth.”

“No.” He might recline like a pasha, indifferent to the ugliness of which he spoke, her brother’s violent end, but
she
was not fashioned from such cold clay! Damn him for bullying her into this hellish place, and then scorning her for trying for endure it! “What difference does it make to
you
what happens to me? I am a great inconvenience to you, so let my rashness be the cure! If you think me a drone, it will be a great fortune to you, no doubt, for the mob to find me!”

He exploded from the chair. In one lithe move he lunged toward her and caught her by the shoulders. “Think me indifferent?” he said. “Let me correct you,
wife.”

A cry broke from her throat as he drove her backward, straight against the wall. His fingers flexing and firming on her upper arms, he loomed over her.

The strangeness in his face froze her to the core.

“Can you,” he said, in a voice of terrible softness, “
can
you be such a fool? Can you imagine that I have witnessed, indifferently, your loyalty to a man who, but for God’s grace or the devil’s own luck, would have blown you to smithereens for his notion of a lark? Can you
imagine
—”A muscle ticked in his jaw; he drew a hard breath through his nose. “Can you
imagine,
” he said, “that I would not gut him from gullet to groin, were it
not
for you?”

A smile sharpened his mouth, dark as night. “Ah,” he whispered, lifting his hand to catch a lock of her hair, making her flinch. “But that would be an injustice, I think.” Her heart was pounding; she did not recognize this man who studied the hair that he lightly clasped. “For if I am rageful, Leonora”—his eyes speared hers—“then it is not so much for your brother, my love. The largest part of my wrath is for you.” Slowly he leaned down to her mouth. The brush of his lips sent chills over her skin.

“My lovely little idiot,” he said against her lips. “Having risked all you held dear to suit your brother’s feckless whims—having housed gunpowder in the heart of your hold and kept silent the secret that might have killed you, and your whole household too—what else am I to feel? Tell me: shall I feel
love
? But in love lies no lesser a danger, for in such moods as this one, I find my love and rage combine.”

His fingertips settled along her jaw, light as breaths as he directed her face upward. But as their eyes locked,
some primitive instinct in her raised a shudder. He studied her so intently. A predatory heat infected his regard.

“And so,” he whispered, “can you believe, for love’s sake, that if I thought striking you would knock your brother from your brain, I would use my fist? And I would not stop until you bled, Leonora. God help me, but I would count the drops of blood I spilled as though they were years I might add to your life.”

He slammed his fist into the wall by her ear.

Crumbs of wattle dusted her cheek. But she did not flinch, for his face was finally naked of its masks, and the desperation she saw in it caused her mouth to go dry and her heart, very briefly, to stop.