At Your Pleasure (7 page)

“Your very presence is an offense. You come to persecute my family—am I to welcome that?”

He let go of the branch. The leaves shivered audibly. “Were you politic, you might pretend to welcome it.”

Yes, perhaps it would be wiser to cultivate his kindness with false shows of friendship. But here, in this wood, she could not bear to pretend. Before she had met him, she
had
been happy; there had been no cause for false smiles or lies. Here in this wood he had lured her into betraying herself, and afterward everything had changed.

She had made herself vulnerable for him once. She would not do so again.

“I am not politic,” she said. “I never have been.”

He lifted a brow. “True enough. And so what are you doing out here, impoliticly?”

“One of the tenants is ailing.” She lifted the basket. “I go to visit.”

He glanced to the basket, then back to her face. “How convenient for you.”

Under his steady stare, she fought the urge to shift and fidget. “I have watched you wear this look before,” she said. “In London, when someone was making an argument you found foolish, you made men stammer with this stare. But there is no argument to win here. I am truly only delivering food.”

He slackened the rein, allowing his horse to reach the manchet. “You watched me in London, did you?”

Why had she admitted that? It was these woods, she thought. Surely they worked some sort of twisted magic on her—and on him as well, for he took a step toward her now, saying more quietly, “I watched you as well. But I never saw you looking.”

The words stopped her breath.
I watched you.
His presence now, his gaze upon her, felt like a hot, delicate touch all along her skin. She hoisted the basket, desperate to have something, anything, between them.

“The first time I saw you afterward,” he said, “you flinched when he touched you. And it was all I could do not to gut him where he stood.”

She searched for her voice and found nothing. Even her balance suddenly seemed effortful to maintain.

“And then, for a time, I wondered if it was not you I should kill,” he continued, very low. “For if you had the
courage to bear him, then it could not have been cowardice that drove you to spurn me.”

It had never been cowardice. He
knew
it had not been cowardice. “I had no ch—”

“You will be glad to know that hatred of you was a madness I overcame.” Still he spoke in that soft, deadly voice. “I remember the night I conquered it: you danced the saraband in wine-red velvet with the Duke of Or-monde. You stumbled, and someone near me wondered if you were with child. I found it easier, thereafter, not to think of you at all.”

The light was too bright in these woods; it pricked her eyes to tears. What bitter irony lay in his remark! She remembered that night too well. Faced with her husband’s contempt and the court’s sneers, she had felt despair wrapping her soul in weighted chains. Everything had seemed black to her. One kind word from him would have meant . . . everything.

But not now. She was no longer that weak, frightened, friendless girl.

She took a sharp breath. “Yes, well. It served you very nicely not to think of me. What would your fine friends have thought, had the court discovered you once confessed your love to the woman they ridiculed?”

The corners of his mouth tightened. “Indeed. A proper fool I would have looked, to prate of my affections for a woman who had gone so willingly into her very happy marriage.”

The injustice of it struck through her like fire. “Yes, God forbid! And God forbid you had decided to offer
me your
friendship
instead. I suppose that, too, would have mortified your pride!”

“No.” He looked her squarely in the eye. “It would not have served either of us, would it?”

In the silence she fought to hold his regard—and to hold on to her anger, too. He spoke truly: they could not have been friends. Her husband would never have allowed it.

“And at any rate,” he said, “I was never your friend, Lady Towe. And you were never mine.” The ghost of a smile chased across his lips. “Never mine,” he repeated lightly. “Indeed.”

He gathered back the reins, pulling his horse’s head around. “Tell me,” he said in a different, more impersonal voice, “what you are doing in the woods.”

She tried to breathe past the knot in her throat. “I told you—”

“You have a twig in your hair,” he said. “A leaf stuck to your skirt. You’ve been climbing. Why?”

She gripped the basket harder. His harsh manner sent a flutter through her stomach: no longer did she speak with her former lover. Now she answered to his majesty’s agent. “I thought to collect fruit for the Plummers. Their boy’s leg is broken.”

He laughed, an unkind sound. “Do you think me an idiot, or are you become one yourself? A difficult question to judge.”

He spoke to her like a peasant caught poaching on the master’s lands. “Mind your tongue, sir!”

All at once he was in front of her, his hand closing
like a vise on her elbow, his face like stone. “Mind
your
tongue,” he said. “I will admit to a small, godforsaken corner of my brain that remains intent on the notion of sparing you discomfort during the coming days. You may call it errant idiocy or you may call it nobility, but something within me
does
protest at the notion of consigning a woman I once loved to the flames. For that is what a woman suffers for treason, Leonora: only once in a very great while is Parliament kind enough to grant her the axe, and I assure you, there is no kindness in Whitehall at present for the children of the former Lord Hexton.”

He let her go. When she nearly stumbled, she realized she had been pulling, pulling at his grip, and her flesh ached where he had held her.

“No one compels you,” she managed. Her lips felt numb. “No one forces you to do this to us. Do not pretend you do not enjoy it! You have waited years to make my family pay! To make
me
pay!”

His smile was a terrible thing. “Pay for what, Nora?”

Her throat closed. Yes, pay for
what
? He had spoken of marriage so often, but never once had he approached her father for her hand. What cause for complaint did he have against her family for wedding her elsewhere?

“For the pleasure of it,” she spat. “For your wounded vanity at the way my brother beat you within an inch of your life.”

“I recall that,” he said in a bored voice. “He does an excellent job of thrashing a man who does not lift a hand
to oppose him. But no, you misguess my motives. You, more than anyone on this earth, should understand what I mean when I say I am driven to this task by
duty
.”

Duty: that was the ideal she had defended, once, when refusing to run away with him.
If my father forbids our marriage, I will go with you. But it is our duty to speak plainly to him first.

She felt something hot rising in her, scalding away everything but hate. How
talented
he was at drawing barb upon barb from a history that she had once viewed as the sweetest chapter of her life.

“If you wish to lock me in my rooms,” she said, “to keep me indoors against my will, do not expect
me
to play the jailer. Find the guts to turn the key yourself!”

“And so I will,” he said immediately, and held out his hand.

She looked at it wonderingly. He expected her to touch him now? To sit behind him on his mount and willingly be taken to her prison? “I would not put my hand in yours for all the king’s gold!”

Instantly she recognized it for a childish remark. At least it afforded her the satisfaction of seeing him scowl.

He swung back onto the horse. “Then your preference is for rough handling?” he asked from the height of his saddle. “Very well. You may try to run, if you like.”

She stood rigid. “I will deliver the basket first.”

“One of my men will deliver it.”

He was not going to concede. Her anger swelled. She set down her basket. “You will have to bully me, then.” She spread her arms, showing him her palms. “Come,
give me bruises to show my maidservants. Let them see how the king’s justice is done.”

“Do not test me,” he said quietly. “I will give you something more than bruises. If I lay my hands on you, Nora, you will regret it extremely.”

“How like a man,” she cried, “to threaten with his fists! I have lived with a brute before, sir; I have nothing to fear from you that I have not survived before—”

Her voice broke as he leapt off his horse. She told herself she would not retreat, but as he stalked toward her, she betrayed herself with a quick step backward.

His grip closed on her shoulders and she tried to jerk free. “
You
are cowardly,” she spat, “to abuse a woman half your strength—”

His mouth came down over hers.

4

H
e backed her into a tree, not gently. Nothing in his manner asked for permission as his body pinned hers in place. This could not be happening.

It
was
happening. His hands slid through her hair, gripping her head as his tongue penetrated her mouth. The taste of his mouth was sweet, bilberries and sugared tea; he had broken his fast before riding out. She sagged into the rough bark, surprise giving way to alarm as she realized her own helplessness.

Worse yet, she was not numb to him, not indifferent at all. Her body remembered the way of it. His mouth on hers awoke hot sparks in her blood, currents that knocked her heart into a hard rhythm.

I cannot allow this.

But he held her motionless, taking all choices from her as his mouth stroked hers. She found herself fighting her own bodily instincts, against which her wits had no purchase. Her hands: what to do with her hands? They
remembered gripping his shoulders, sliding down the bulk of his upper arms, cupping his elbows, feeling the hard flex of the muscles beneath his skin. They wanted to retrace that path.

Instead she made them into fists at her sides, but then her eyes disobeyed her. They closed and the world contracted to his heat against her, the stroke and play of his mouth, the fragrance of the apple blossoms and the touch of the sun.

She did not love him anymore! But it made no difference: the smell of his skin had not changed. It kindled old hungers; she was still on her feet but felt as though she were falling. His kiss was so skilled. She remembered now that rude revelation when Towe had first kissed her: she had known in a moment that there would never be a comparison to Adrian’s mouth. What could ever rival it? Her flesh felt riveted to his, alive to it, intuiting the muscled contours beneath his clothing, the dense breadth of his thighs, coming alive bit by bit. Her body had always known the language of his; she had learned it in the manner of a native recovering the mother tongue.

Panic twisted with a deepening hunger. The longer he ravished her with his kiss, the more she remembered of how it had been between them, how sweet and hot and drugging, and she grew weaker, years of accumulated, repressed longing breaking free to crush her all at once.

His hand slipped free of her hair. Her breath faltered as he traced the line of her cheek. His touch seemed . . . tender. Not a stranger’s. He touched her confidently, as though he remembered as clearly as she what she had liked;
and patiently, caressingly, as though this touch meant something more to him than lust.

His knuckles brushed down her throat, the lightest whisper over her collarbone, down to her bodice, the lace that veiled the tops of her breasts.

A groan slipped from her. Once, long ago, here in the shade of these trees, he had put his mouth to her nipples and sucked. She wanted him now to do so again.

As though he heard her thoughts, his mouth dipped to find the top of her breasts.

The note.

In another second he would find the note!

Dread commanded her. Her fist came up and slammed into his ear.

He released her as though scalded.

His lips were wet from hers, his eyes green as the leaves behind him. Locked in his hot look, she felt herself flush, then go cold. So close she had come to forgetting herself! If he had found the note . . .

Dear God. She was no girl any longer, and this man was not her tender lover. The only promises he made to her were threats.

“You must confuse me with someone else,” she said, her voice broken. “One of your London women.” There had been so many of them. They had seemed to keep him well entertained. “I have no interest”—oh God, what horrifying words to recognize as a lie—“
no interest
in playing whore to my jailkeep.”

Something flashed over his face—disbelief, she might have said. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
He looked away, showing her his profile as he drew a long breath. A humorless smile twisted his lips as he looked back to her.

“Your tongue is too sharp to belong to a whore,” he said. “You would leave your clients bleeding.”

She tried to steady her breath. Her blood still hummed. “I doubt that. For a woman’s words to wound would require a man to
listen
, first!”