Captive Scoundrel (17 page)

Justin struggled wildly, his cries satanic, his sobs heartrending, calling Beth over and over.

Faith tried to calm him with soothing words, to stroke his brow, but she couldn’t stop him from thrashing about. She held his arms by his side. “Wake up, Justin. You’re having a nightmare. You’re safe. Beth is safe. Darling, please open your eyes. Look at me.”

He stopped struggling and looked at her…with the same unseeing orbs of her nightmare, the empty eyes she’d seen that first morning, and she gasped in terror. “Justin! Wake up!” She shook him, called his name, but it was no use. He was gone.

Justin was gone.

Gone from her forever.

She’d treated him abominably and now she would never have a chance to show him how she really felt. The wail of anguish that was torn from her incited him to renewed combat.

Heart beating apace with her struggle, Faith tried to use her weight to hold him down, but he threw her aside with incredible strength, and she landed in a heap on the floor, while he continued to grapple with some unseen assailant.

Returning to his side, Faith sought divine help. Astounded by his strength, desperate to stop him, lest he do himself harm, Faith straddled him as she’d seen Harris do, but he fought her with the desperation of the damned, hurting her in his frenzy.

She protected her face with her hands as he reached for her, but he grabbed her shoulders, digging into her bruised flesh, and shoving her to the far side of the bed. “Justin, stop. Please.” She dragged herself up and tried to grab his wrists. But he used her hold on him to his own advantage, and turned her, twisting one of her arms painfully behind her.

“Stop it!” she screamed as loud as she dared, afraid to alert anyone to the happenings in the sickroom.

He towered above her, crushing her twisted arm beneath her.

“Justin! You’re hurting me!”

Eyes wide with horror, awareness registered on his face.

Justin stopped moving, as if he were seeing her for the first time. He took in the crumpled bedding, their awkward positions, and let her go. “Faith?”

“You know me!” She began to sob. She couldn’t stop, even as she pulled her sore arm free. “You’re not gone.” She touched his dear face. You’re here and you’re…” Mine, she nearly said. “Oh, Justin. I thought….”

“My God!” He cradled her as if she were made of spun sugar. “What have I done?” He set her away, to examine her, remorse in his expression. “If I hurt you…oh, Faith, I’m so sorry.”

“You were fighting demons,” she whispered, loving the feel of his lips on her neck, raising her chin to give him access.

He kissed her eyes, her tear trails. “One demon, yes.”

“Who?”

He took a breath, held her face between his hands. “Vincent wouldn’t let me stop the carriage from going over the cliff. He tried to keep me from rescuing Beth.”

When Justin let her go, Faith felt adrift. He gazed at the ceiling, searching. “That’s not how it happened. I think…Faith, I remember. I think I remember the carriage accident.”

“Tell me.”

“Did I hurt you? Really?”

Faith saw the life in his eyes, felt his lips on her fingers, and thanked God he could see and speak to her. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “And so are you.”

He tucked her face beneath his chin, which she thought a fine place for it to be, and he squeezed her. He told her of his search to find Catherine and Vincent after they had taken Beth, of the cliff in Bognor, where he found the carriage. When he told her Vincent said Beth was in the carriage, he faltered.

“If it’s too difficult….”

“I want to. Are you warm enough?”

Faith smiled. “Tell me.”

He took a breath. “When the carriage went over, the cab whipped about and the door tore from its hinges. I knew Beth would fall out and be dashed against the jagged rocks below.” His sigh was ragged. “Tonight, in my dream, I was fighting Vincent, though I never did. What I did was run to grab the carriage, to hold it back, but it dragged me over with it.”

Faith held him tighter. “I can’t imagine it.” She shuddered. “And I’m glad I can’t.”

Justin lay his cheek against her hair, his heart slowing. “If Vincent discovers you helped me, you’ll be in jeopardy too. It’s driving me crazy, thinking he’ll darken our lives this day or the next … to finish the deed.”

“You’ll be ready, Justin, when the time comes to confront Vincent. We’ll see to it.”

“I could kill him for making me believe Beth was in that carriage. Cat didn’t want Beth … for other than a pawn. She wanted to trade Beth, to keep me from divorcing her, so she and Vincent could continue their relationship accepted by society.”

Shock rocked Faith to her core.

“To get Beth back, I agreed, promising Beth and I would go away. I think Catherine was satisfied. But Vincent was not.”

“Where was Catherine when you…the last time you saw her?”

“Standing beside Vincent, a good fifty feet from the cliff.”

“I can’t understand, then, how she died.”

“I’d wager Vincent has the answer.”

Faith had lived in a world where no evil existed, and though Vincent had frightened her with his apparent madness…“It’s hard to believe anyone could be so evil.”

“I’m not sure your parents did you a service, keeping the world at bay. There are evils all about us. You have to realize that.”

“There is nothing wrong with raising happy children. My parents loved each other and all of us and we knew it. That’s an extraordinary legacy to pass on to your children.”

“Faith, you walked into the house of a murderer with your parents’ blessings. You almost helped him carry out his plan. You were too innocent to know what was happening.”

She pulled from his embrace. “My parents allowed … urged me to come and help you. I knew something was wrong, so I stopped your medicine. I saved your life, ungrateful man. I’m not a child.” She hadn’t helped him without help from above, she knew, but it was important Justin see her as a woman, not a child.

“Hush.” He pulled her back against him.

She should push him away. She really should. Instead, she punched him where she could hurt him, his kneecap.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“No.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“You don’t. But I’m glad you told me. I hope you feel better for sharing your pain. Your nightmare is over, you know.”

“Is it?”

Faith knew, given Justin’s experience, that she would have to show him how good life could be. Telling him would be useless.

“Lie with me and let me hold you,” he whispered.

It was easy for Faith to comply. When he’d looked at her so blankly, she felt as if part of her had died, too. Right now, she most wanted to be in his arms.

Justin sighed in contentment. “You do know how to make a man forget his problems, Faith.”

“I try,” she said, knowing exactly what he meant.

Justin let Faith’s peace flow through him as her body settled along the length of his. “Are you certain you’re not hurt? I thought I was fighting a man, and I imagine I was rough.”

“I’m strong. I held my own against that demon inside you.”

“Aye, and I’ll wager you have the bruises to show for it. At dawn’s first light, Faith, I’m going to examine every blessed inch of you.”

“I’d like that.”

Oh, God. His body responded quick enough. Did she want him as much as he wanted her? “Then I’d as soon not wait for dawn.”

After several, long, silent beats, Faith’s gentle hands began to wander over his back, and her life-giving touch washed over him like sunshine after a raging storm.

Justin gave over to the sensations pulsing through him. “You are something,” he whispered against her hair. Intoxicated, he kissed the pulse in her neck. Then he pushed aside the fabric of her nightdress, the better to tease her with his tongue.

With a breathless gasp, Faith’s hands sifted through his hair, pulling him closer, urging him to continue.

He intended to fulfil her every unspoken request.

With his lips still at her breast, he slid his hand from her hip, ever so slowly, toward the inner silk of her thigh.

“What are you doing?” She stopped his hand’s journey, trapping it between her knees. “You can’t.”

“My poor innocent chi—”

“Do not call me child!” She brought his hand back to her breast. “Is this the body of a child?”

He kissed that very beautiful exhibit. “Most assuredly, you are not a child. But I am a cad. You have no experience of men. And I—”

“Have much experience of women. How many?”

“Does that matter?”

“What matters, I suppose, is that our lives have come together now. You startled me when you touched me there. I didn’t know…I don’t know…what to do, or what to expect.”

“Will you put yourself in my care?” he asked.

“There is no other to whom I could answer yes.”

He was as shaken by her easy trust as he was humbled by it.

“We’ve come a long way together have we not, Justin?”

“I’d like for us to go the rest of the way.” He brought her into a stream of moonlight so he could look into her eyes. “‘Tis more than a business arrangement I want, Faith. Become my wife in deed as well as name. I want us to raise Beth together, for you to be her mother. I never thought to want another by my side, but I want you. To share my life and learn the passion that can exist between us. May we begin now, Faith?”

“Yes, please.”

Justin gazed in awe at her curls crowning his pillow, her emerald eyes shimmering with passion.

Warmth purled through his ready body, and a sense of destiny engulfed him, as he recognized Faith as the missing half of him. He drank in the sight and scent of her. “I feel as if you’ve always belonged to me. Does that make sense?”

Faith nodded. “Don’t try to explain it. It’s…mystical.”

“Mystical,” he whispered sliding her nightgown up her legs, stopping at her knees, waiting for permission to continue. “May I?”

“I want our bodies to be as close as our souls are.”

Justin watched awareness, and full-blown desire, wash over her. He stroked her inner thigh again, until her whimper filled him with sudden, hard need. He wanted to bury himself in her warmth, to become one with her.

Leaving her gown at the apex of her thighs, he untied the last satin bow at her bodice. She helped him slip the gown over her head, and wonder filled him. Faith Wickham, a woman of innocence and passion, and all his.

Her gown got tossed and he gloried in her womanly form. “Exquisite,” he whispered palming her waist, then drinking from her lips again.

When he made to lay her down, Faith put her hand to his chest, in restraint. He stopped, wary, but her eyes danced as she raised his nightshirt over his head. Then she ran her hand along his chest, speeding his heart. “I’ve had the strongest notion to do this of late,” she said. “Do you mind?

“Only that you stopped. Touch me as you will. Anytime.”

“We’re agreed then. We both wish to be touched.” She budded his nipple. “And kissed and held.” She slid her hands to his shoulders and brought him over her.

Skin to skin, for the very first time, their sighs mingled.

Justin rolled them to their sides. “I don’t know how I survived until you entered my life,” he whispered.

“Barely,” was her pert reply.

This was the most splendid moment of Faith’s life. The man she had loved, from almost the first, gazed at her with passion. She cherished each angle and line of the scoundrel’s face.

He poised above her now, tense, anxious. “Would that I could take you without hurting you.”