Dreaming (21 page)

“So I followed him, and then Gus barked and Richard fell off his horse and the smugglers snatched him. Naturally, I wanted to stay with him, him being—”

Richard tightened his grip on her so she wouldn’t spill the tea about his title. Her mouth clamped shut. He had to give her credit because she didn’t give his signal away and look up at him as he would have thought, nor did she ask him why he’d gripped her shoulders.

“Him being what?”

“Being so important to me,” she said with a glib-ness he’d have thought impossible of her. He stared straight out the windows, schooling his expression to hide his reaction.

Dion continued to absently twist the letter opener while he looked directly at her.

She still stared at her clasped hands. “What are you going to do with us?”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Well, I suppose if I had my choice, I would say the best thing would be to take us home.” She almost whispered the words.

“And where is home?”

“
Devon
,” she said, before Richard could stop her.

“Fine.”

Her head shot up, her face incredulous. “You will? Truly?”

Without responding, Dion rose and crossed the room.

There was something—Richard wasn’t certain what, but something strange was going on. He felt mortal, manipulated, as if some giant hand were charting the course of his life, and it wasn’t the course he wanted.

The pirate Dion opened the door and looked at Richard, then at her. “You’ll go home.” He gave Hamish a nod of dismissal. “Eventually.”

The larger man strolled through the door after him, and just before he closed the door, he added, “After the ransom.”

The door clicked shut.
Letty
sat frozen in the chair, her only anchor the reassuring warmth of Richard’s Hands on her shoulders. The only human sound was the distant thud of
bootheels
ascending the stairs.

She exhaled a breath that she hadn’t even known she’d been holding. Her whole body began to shiver.

“After all this, surely you’re not going to become hysterical now.”

She looked up at Richard, unable to stop the shaking. Her words came out in a quivering choked whisper. “I—I think I might be.”

He grasped her hands and drew her up, searching her face. To her absolute shame, tears spilled from her eyes and dribbled down her cheeks.

“Come here, hellion.” He opened his arms.

She fell into them and sobbed against his chest. “I think I’ve had too much adventure. I’m ready to go home.” Her voice trailed off and she shivered slightly, her clothes still damp from the water.

Her cheek rested against his chest, which was damp and warm, his shirt touched with the salty scent of the sea, and she closed her eyes, unable to do anything except curl against Richard. She felt the stroke of his hands on her back and she just let herself be weak for a moment.

“I’ve managed to mire us into this fix . . . ” She mumbled her confession into his chest. “I shot you. Gus bit you. You’ve had to jump into the sea twice and you’ve been half starved. Yet you’re still being gentle with me.” She gave a soft sigh. “Despite what you say, Richard, that is terribly heroic.”

“Heroic? I don’t think so.” His laugh held a touch of scorn and self-mockery. “Perhaps recompense for the life I’ve led.”

She stood there, letting him hold her and wondering at the kind of life he had led. He was so very different from her—worldly where she was sheltered. He was bitter and cynical. She had hopes and dreams. He had anger hoarded deep inside him like golden guineas itching to be spent, and she had a wealth of love just waiting to be freely given.

How odd they were, and how odd that it would be Richard—her opposite—whom God had fated to be hers. And she believed in the very depths of her soul that as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow, Richard was destined to be hers.

She didn’t care that it was impossible for her to understand his experience. She could sense that it overwhelmed him, so much so that he didn’t know how to let go of it. She could feel the taint of it, the cynicism and the bitterness, even if she knew not what it was that made him so.

And taint or no, it didn’t change the way she felt about him. Love went beyond mortal sins. No matter how stained his past, her heart wouldn’t change just because he wanted it to.

He hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t know what love was. Otherwise he’d have known that while love could change, grow, bend, and mellow, it would never die. Never.

So she took a moment to look up at him, to just let him fill her vision as he filled her dreams. She was aware of subtle differences in him. His skin was paler; the warm brown tan he usually had was starting to fade. The beginnings of a thick dark beard framed his mouth—lips that of recent years were too often thinned into a cruel line.

The thick, bristled dark beard covered his sharp-angled cheekbones and square jaw. His hair, which had been slicked back from the sea, now was drying with a slight wave, and it straggled even too long and unkempt for a rakehell.

But when she looked at him, disheveled and gruff and unmoving, he was as wonderful as he had been the first time she had ever seen him. Time had stamped his face with subtle changes.

The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly from excesses of weather and life. His brow had deeper lines, as if he spent too much time frowning. His face was more angular, thinner, and when one looked close, there were a few scattered gray hairs near his temples.

He looked tired. She studied him, looking for the cause and knowing it really wasn’t physical fatigue that plagued him. He looked world-weary, as if he was tired of fighting so hard to be what he wasn’t. Or perhaps he was tired of living a rife with no direction. Perhaps he was tired of her.

He was looking at her with a look that said that he still didn’t know what to do with her. She reached up to touch his cheek, because something inside her said she had to.

Or perhaps it was something inside him that called out to her. Whatever, she sensed the need to touch him. Her fingers drifted along his strong square jaw, bristled with a few days’ beard. She started to touch his lips, but his hand whipped up to grasp her wrist very hard and still it.

The cynic was there, looking down at her, hard and bitter and reclusive. But there was something else; some of the brittle edge was gone, and she could sense that he was forcing it.

“There are times, hellion, when I look into your face and I’d wager I can see clear to Kingdom Come.”

Her eyes grew misty and she tilted her head, so desperately wanting more from him than he appeared able or willing to give.

The mockery in his expression faded, a chink in the wall that showed a small snatch of what was behind it: utter and absolute despair.

“Please,” she whispered, knowing she needed to help him somehow but unable to know exactly what it was he needed from her.

Neither of them moved.

“Please.”

His hard look softened, as if hearing her plea was more than he could handle. With a low moan of defeat, he gripped her head in both hands and covered her mouth with his, and this time there was no violence to his touch.

His hands loosened their grip on her head and combed through her hair to cup the back of her head in his palms. His tongue traced her mouth, and she opened to him. He stole her very breath the way so many years before he had stolen her heart and given her dreams and wishes and hopes.

Yet no dream, no fanciful wish, no bedchamber door or down bed pillow could ever be as wonderful as the reality of a kiss so intimate. She’d never have imagined a more deliriously wicked thing than this kiss. She could taste him, and his flavor was sweeter than those
honeybuns
she always sneaked.

He tasted . . . male and necessary, as if he was something she must have to be fully a woman. It was a kiss in which lips and mouths and tongues melded, while his hands held her possessively—as if she belonged to him.

A wish so great, so wonderful, so unimaginable that she had never even chanced to dream of it. The ultimate fantasy: that he truly wanted her to be his.

She knew with her soul she would never again be the same person, dream the same dreams. In her whimsical mind she had wished for his kiss to be her first. Now she wished for her kiss to be his last.

Warning bells went off in her head.
Watch what you wish for . . .

His claim sped to the very heart of her, and her youthful yearnings—seeming so naive now—faded like yesterday’s dream.

“Well . . . well . . . ”

Richard froze. His mouth left hers with a lurid curse.

Letty
peered around Richard’s shoulder to the doorway, where Hamish leaned against the doorjamb with his arms crossed. He grinned wickedly.

“So you have gotten her tongue.”

Chapter 12

Two days later in
Wiltshire
,
England

The Duke and Duchess of
Belmore
were at home, awaiting the birth of their first child, when a rider—a man with hair as bright as a
ha’penny
beneath his beaver hat—thundered through the iron gates of
Belmore
Park, clutching a handful of good-luck charms. In a breathless flash, he jumped two hedgerows and reined in his mount scant inches from the front stone steps of the manse.

For years the estate had been a somber, regimented cavern of a house, where everything was as rigid as Cromwell’s laws, where love had never been, and probably never would have been, had not the MacLean, one very powerful Scottish witch, stepped in and made a little matchmaking magic between her niece, Joyous
MacQuarrie
, an inept but endearing half-witch, and Alec
Castlemaine
, Duke of
Belmore
.

The rider dismounted and the massive front doors opened to a flood of footmen: one to take his mount, one to hold the door, and one to escort the Viscount Seymour directly into the His Grace’s study.

Neil Herndon, Viscount Seymour, dubbed by his friends as the most superstitious man on English soil, tucked the amulets and charms back into his vest pocket and pulled off his gloves, tossing them and his hat to Henson,
Belmore’s
head footman. Then he followed the other servant, his
bootheels
clicking across the marble floors.

He entered the study just as the Duke of
Belmore
rose to meet him.

“Alec.”
Seymour
greeted his friend. “Your message said you’ve word on Richard.”

“Come, sit. I received a ransom demand in the middle of the night.”

“A ransom? Thank God.” Neil sank into a deep leather chair, relief all over his face. He propped his elbows on his knees and stared at the design in the carpet for an emotional moment. He raised his head and sagged back in the chair, his look meeting the duke’s. “At least he’s bloody well alive.”

Richard Lennox, Earl of
Downe
, was their closest friend and had been for over twenty years. His disappearance had only been noted in the last few days, when no one could locate the earl after he’d ridden away from his estate in the middle of the night. With no word, those left behind suffered the weak human reaction of imagining the worst in spite of their best efforts to do otherwise.