Beauty Tempts the Beast (22 page)

His mother, Mary.

Would this misery ever end? How much worse could the night get? Oh God, Catherine. She had mentioned something earlier in the evening about rumors and secrets of the manor. Did she too know of Harry?

He leaned forward, his hands gripping the back of a chair. The fire blazed before him. It heated his skin, intensified his pain. Harry was the only thing he had in this world. He would do anything— anything—to keep him safe.

“Go, Miss Suttley. This night is over.”

“No.”

His jaw tightened. “No? I’ve asked you to leave my room. Return to your bedchamber.”

“I’ll not let you push me away again.”

Ashworth swung around and found her standing on the blankets, hands on her hips. Naked.

He gulped. Nay, he could not let her beauty, his desperate need for fulfillment, sway his purpose. He must banish her. From his room. From the house. From his life. She was ruining him, unraveling him.

Everything had been perfect, safe, secure, until she came into his life, demanding he marry her.

“How did you know of me? Why did you come here?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I told you I came here to hide myself.”

“You ran from one marriage to another with a stranger?”

Her lips twitched. “I have my reasons.”

He crossed his arms. “You’ll not tell me.”

“I revealed one of my secrets already. You have not shared one of yours.”

His laugh was cold, short-lived. “Why bother? You find out my secrets on your own. Now, go on. The night has ended between us.”

Vivian lifted her dimpled chin. The firelight danced across the pink tips of her nipples, the smooth plane of her stomach, down her long legs. “I will not go. You must force me from your presence.”

His pulse jumped. The stubborn wench. He would not let her rule him.

Ashworth strode to the blankets, swept her into his arms and started for the adjoining door. But something happened in those few paces. Her warm skin melted against his. Her soft hair swept over his arm, tickled his ribs. Her tantalizing breasts pressed upon him, her smooth bottom brushed atop his limp flesh.

A ribbon of honeysuckle slipped over his skin. She licked circles on his shoulder blade. Swirls and warm moisture, just like her mouth on his shaft.

Suddenly, he was rampant.

He bowed and took possession of her mouth, sucked her tongue with ferocious power. She wrapped her arms about his neck, holding onto him as if he were her life-force.

His flesh awoke, her bottom swayed across the tip. Liquid leaked out the top. He must have release.

Now.

“Vivian, I…” His voice trailed off as he stared into her bottomless gaze. No hesitation, no doubt, nothing forbidden clouded her eyes.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Oh, yes, please.”

He didn’t want to do it this way the first time. The first time in nearly eight years. But he could not control the wild urges in his blood. Head buzzing, pulse frantic, he could only think of his hardness deep inside her warm channel.

Ashworth released one arm from under Vivian and pulled her legs around his waist. No foreplay, no affection, no worshipping. Only the primal need to be as one.

“Now. Oh, God, now.” Her voice broke.

Leaning her back against the tapestry, Ashworth thrust her hips downward and impaled her on his desperate arousal. Glorious, tight moisture welcomed his plunge. Vivian gasped.

He closed eyes, afraid to see visions, afraid to see disappointment in her gaze.

Lust, nearly a decade in the making, swelled, expanded. He thrust her down on him again. And again.

Nerves prickled under his skin, sweat dripped down his face.

“Vivian…”

“Don’t stop. No, not yet.”

But he couldn’t stop the mounting ecstasy. It soared like a monstrous wave. Cresting…

He grabbed the smooth cheeks of her ass, lifted her high on his arousal and slammed her down again.

Knees weakened, legs trembled.

She moaned in his ear. “I—I never knew…yes, more…”

Then a splintered cry and Vivian’s sheath convulsed around his flesh. Her spasms shattered any restraint he had left.

Years of denial and wild desperation exploded. He drove himself into her again and again, then shouted into the still room. At once, he was numb and euphoric, satiated and delirious.

Ashworth gulped in mouthfuls of air. Then, the reality of what just happened slammed through his chaotic brain.

He dreaded opening his eyes. He could not stomach seeing a terrifying vision of Vivian covered in blood. Even more, he could not witness the discontent in her eyes. Vivian had told him of what occurred the last time a man was intimate with her. She spoke of how the act lacked gentleness, tenderness. He had not sought to her needs or tried to please her. He used her body for his own purposes.

Ashworth had just done the very same thing. He had not cradled her in affection, or revered her body with gentle caresses. He was selfish, thoughtless. Not much better than the man she’d run from.

Looking past her to the tapestry, he slid her off of him and set her on the floor.

“My lord?” Vivian’s fingers swept across his jaw. “Why won’t you look at me?”

Ashworth turned away. His knees still shook from the intense climax, but he held himself steady and crossed the room. He scooped up his nightly potion and swallowed it in a gulp. “Go,” he said over his shoulder and prayed she would not refuse or argue as she had done before.

“You still will not let me in.”

Why did she want to be let in? What was there to see but a man who could not control his impulses?

A man who lacked the ability to show tenderness and vulnerability. A man who hid himself away for fear the rumors and nightmares may be true.

“I’ll not ask you again.” Still naked, Ashworth climbed into his bed and covered himself with a thin blanket she had left behind.

He heard Vivian gather her clothes and pad over to the door. “You cannot know the truth unless you seek it.”

Then she vanished into her room and left him to suffer in the haunted silence.

Martin did not know where else to search for Vivian, but he did know how to relieve the raw lust prowling in his groin.

Despite being away for so many years, the dirty streets of St. Giles had not changed in his absence.

He walked through the smells of waste, emotion surged into his blood. Fury, desperation, anguish. All merged into a hard knot at the base of his throat.

The deeper he walked through the alleys, the dimmer the light became. People shuffled by him, some giving him odd looks, others ignoring him completely.

He knew these people. Knew what it was like to live like this, to not know when the next meal would come.

Martin turned the corner and a group of ragged children raced past as they chased an animal. A rat perhaps? Those predatory rodents grew as large as dogs around here.

He stopped. There it was.

On the corner, beside a twisted dying tree, stood the home of the only woman he ever loved. His gut pitched.

He lifted his chin and crossed the street, stepped over garbage. He had to see it. The room, the memories of Mary, something must be left behind.

“Evenin’, sir. Somethin’ I can offer ye?”

Martin stared as a woman emerged from the shadows. The evening light cast her hair in red, her lips in rosy plumpness.

His heart skipped a beat. “You look just like her.”

She stepped forward. “Like who?”

“Mary.” He nodded toward the door. “She had red hair and lips begging to be kissed.”

The woman, probably not yet twenty, still had enough innocence to blush. “I remember her. ’Twas just a girl then.”

Martin looked from the whore to the tiny window, as if he expected Mary to glance out it. “She’s been gone a long time.”

“Aye. Can’t forget the night she died.”

Rage and grief rose up to choke him.

As much as he loved Mary, he could not make her his bride. She had lived here too long, never gaining the proper education or the acceptance of society. She could never become the wife he needed.

A small hand settled on his arm. Martin glanced down to see the whore smile up at him. “I have a room just down the row.”

He nodded at her. The restless urgency of his encounter with Miss Blake hadn’t dimmed. Neither had his gnawing rage over Vivian.

“They say it’s haunted.” The girl pointed to Mary’s door as they passed. “Her spirit lingers there, looking for her killer.”

“So they never found who murdered her then.”

She shrugged. “Never found the baby neither.”

Martin stopped walking, his lungs tight.

The baby.

Heat flushed up his neck.

Again, the mention of Mary with a baby. But it couldn’t be possible. No.

If Mary had a baby, it must have been another lover’s and it was no wonder she didn’t want him to know. Perhaps the one who was with her that night. That man—his supposed friend—lied to him about lack of experience. He must have been seeing Mary for months, a year at least, to get her with child.

His hands fisted. Black spots swam before Martin’s eyes. He should have killed Ashworth that night while he had the chance.

The whore stepped around a sleeping drunk and opened her door. “Ye comin’?”

Martin glanced back up the row to Mary’s door. That bitch. That stupid bitch. She shouldn’t have crossed him.

He clenched his jaw, wiped the sweat from his brow. Fury seethed in his blood, swirled through his heart, and plummeted to his groin.

He turned back to the girl, and stared her down until she had to look away. Mary paid for her indiscretion. Vivian would be next. Then he’d deal with Ashworth once and for all.

Catherine adjusted the neckline of her evening dress as she spotted the rear stairs. Charles was in another of his moods tonight, barely speaking at dinner and then drowning himself in brandy. He took no notice of her attributes, despite how often she tried to catch his eye.

Damn it, he did love her once. He whispered his desires in her ear as they danced, trembled as they kissed. Now he was nothing more than a shell of a man, a self-pitying eccentric, who pretended to have an engagement with a baron’s daughter.

She swallowed the anger rising in her throat and climbed the stairwell to the servants’ quarters. For two days she had failed to catch a glimpse of the yellow-haired gentleman Martha mentioned. Tonight she would seek him out.

The wind swept against the house at this late hour with its unyielding intensity. She hoped to find most servants abed, other than the one she needed.

The hall was dark, save for the flickering candelabras along the walls. All doors were shut. How would she determine which room belonged to her quarry?

Catherine slipped past an alcove with stuffed chairs and tested the first door. She knocked gently, not even certain what she’d say when someone opened the door.

But there was no answer.

With a small twist, she opened the door, peering into the shadowed darkness. The partial moon cast splintered light upon tables, chairs, bookshelves, and desks. This was not a bedchamber.

She entered the room and quickly shut the door behind her.

She found writing tablets and novels. A globe and several maps. This was a schoolroom!

But for whom? Was there a child here? Could it possibly be the Harry the servants spoke of?

Her stomach tingled with excitement. If Charles had a son, and had gone to such great lengths to hide him, he would be willing to do anything to protect that secret.

Catherine had had enough of this manor, of his indifference. Despite his unspent wealth, her patience was running low. As a widow, she may not have the best pick of the eligible peers, but she would not suffer at Silverstone for much longer. She would find his secrets, she would blackmail him with them, and then she would return to London as his wife. In name only.

She noticed a door along the far wall, one that must lead to either the child’s room or the teacher’s room.

Catherine sashayed around the desk, chair and scattered tables. A light glowed beneath the door, bringing a smile to her lips. Certainly a child would not be up so late. And if a gentleman were here speaking to the servants, his duty would most likely be as a tutor.

Perfect.

It would be polite to knock before entering, but what if he refused to let her enter? She must put aside all thoughts of proper etiquette and be daring.

She sucked in a deep breath and turned the knob. Light from the room spilled onto her, making her blink. She saw a yellow-haired man on his bed, spectacles perched on his nose while he read a book on his lap.

The man did not move as she clicked the door shut behind her. As she took a step closer, she could see that his eyes were closed. He had fallen asleep while reading.

Catherine studied the man, as something about him seemed familiar. His age must be close to her own and yet there was something in the lines on his forehead, the grooves around his eyes, which made him appear years older.

She was nearly beside him when he startled awake. Blue eyes widened beneath the magnified glass.

His face paled. “Dear Lord, Catherine?”

He knew her name! She bent closer, inspecting the sharp corners of his chin, the slash of his cheekbones.

“My word, is that you, John Hughes?”

John had been a close friend of Charles during their school days and after. In fact, the two of them and that other lad, Martin something, were inseparable at times. It wasn’t any wonder that John would follow his friend here. Yet, was their friendship worth giving up a future in society?

John scrambled off the bed, clearly distraught at not only her presence in his room but probably for his blunder in calling her by name. She grinned. It was most comforting to be in the position of power.

“You know I’ve been here,” she said as he pulled a shirt on.

“Get out.” His back was to her but she could hear the sharp edge in his voice.

“But I’ve been so bored here. Now I’ve found an old friend.”

He turned to glare at her. “I am not an old friend.”