Healing Hearts (4 page)

The knowing gleam in his eyes made her shiver now. And bristle. She threw back her shoulders and faced him with as much bravado as she could muster.

“Bold words for a man who cannot sit a horse, my lord.”

As if her taunt presented a gauntlet he could not fail to take up, Riverton hauled himself upright. His features twisted into a grimace as he surveyed his mount. The large gelding stood a good seventeen hands high, Emma guessed. She linked her hands to offer Riverton a leg up.

His brows veered darkly downward. “I’d sooner put my neck in a noose than my booted foot in a lady’s hand.”

“So bloody stubborn,” Emma sighed.

“Such salty words from so gently reared a miss.”

Despite an accompanying fanfare of grunts and groans, Riverton managed to insert his foot in the stirrup and boost himself into the saddle unaided. This was a man never to be underestimated, Emma recognized.

He grinned at her with an expression so triumphant Emma felt another inner icicle thaw around her heart. He leaned down and extended his hand to her.

“I know it’s not quite the thing, Miss Whiteside. But would you mind riding with me?”

Beneath his lightly drawled words, a more somber bedrock lent gravity to his tone. Speechless, Emma studied Riverton’s face. His smile had vanished again. He was still deathly pale, his blue eyes dull with pain.

“You believe you will pass out again.”

“Distinct possibility.”

“Where do you wish to go?” she whispered, taking his hand without a thought for consequences.

His sure, firm grip locked on her forearm, shocking her. He hauled her up with masterful strength and set her astride the chestnut gelding, her skirts bunched nearly to her knees.

“I leave that to you, Miss Whiteside.”

Riverton placed the reins in her hands and slumped against her back.

During their journey, Adam drifted in and out, but the scent and softness of the young woman curved against him left him in a constant state of semi-arousal.

“Emma,” he murmured.

He wrapped his arms around her narrow waist, the tops of his fists deliberately brushing the curved undersides of her breasts through layers of clothing. One day he’d peel every stitch from her. The sooner the better.

“Please, my lord.” Her feeble, half-hearted plea could be taken either as protest or encouragement.

Adam chose the interpretation that suited him best. His hands roved more freely. When the wind pushed the hood of her cloak away, he nudged the material still further with his chin, hunching over to rest his head in the curve between Emma’s neck and shoulder.

He knew he was behaving abominably and taking outrageous liberties with a gently reared maid. But with Miss Emma Whiteside snuggled in his arms, he felt more alive than he had since all the bloody losses and suffering he’d witnessed at Albuhera. The memory of the way she’d returned his kisses and set him ablaze made him hard as marble.

As a battle-scarred man with a frozen heart and numbed soul, he had little to offer a woman aside from his protection. For many, that would be enough. But this girl was not of that category, despite the astonishing passion with which she’d returned his kisses.

She stunned him. Made him feel. Made him want. And taking her as his mistress would simply not do.

To the brave and beautiful Emma Whiteside, he wanted nothing less than to offer his family’s name, enveloping her in all the security and consequence his title could provide. If she would have him. If she refused him, the pain would far surpass the residual effects of his wounds.

He nuzzled her neck, kissing the tender skin below the curve of her jaw, nibbling her ear—the only parts of her exposed to him. Emma tensed, but he felt an excited quiver ripple through her.

“This isn’t at all proper, my lord.”

“Adam.”

“Adam.” She exhaled his name in a small, uncertain sigh of contentment.

“Do you wish me to stop, poppet?”

She remained silent so long, he nearly missed her low, trembling “No.” And then, more forcefully, “You know I don’t, you terrible wretch.”

“Excellent. Because I’m not at all sure I can.”

Adam bent toward her again, kissing her temple, her cheek. Her delicious, velvety flesh heated beneath his questing lips. Her reaction made his spirits soar and his pulse race. She leaned back against him, the soft cushion of her curvy rump presenting a particularly cruel bit of torment between his spread thighs. His cock leaped and throbbed as he pushed the thick ridge of his erection against her, groaning into her fragrant hair. Sweet torture. Could she feel how hard and hot she made him?

He tasted her from her tender earlobe, across her jawline, up her smooth cheek to the corner of her mouth.

“May I kiss you now, Emma?”

“Isn’t that what you
have
been doing?” She sounded completely breathless.

All Adam could think about was the kind of noises she would make when she was lying naked beneath him. Would she cry out and moan? Scream his name? Yes, he wanted to hear his name on her lips, when he made her come. Over and over again. His fanciful visions made him burn as nothing else had ever done.

“I want more,” he said, his voice stark and raw. Only a supreme exertion of will kept him from whispering what he wanted more explicitly into her ear.

But their awkward positions and the trotting gait of the horse slamming them together and apart did not allow Adam to continue his seduction. A particularly jarring bump caused him to strike the edge of his hard jaw beneath Emma’s chin.

Lights twinkled before his eyes. Emma yelped, informing him that he’d made her bite her tongue.

“We can’t have that,” he said. “I can think of far better uses for it.”

Far better.

Vivid sexual fantasies enthralled him. God, he ached. His balls were tight enough for copper pennies to bounce off them. Too stiff to move and too tired to think, he put a little more space between him and Emma and dozed the remainder of the way.

***

When the large chestnut gelding clattered over the cobblestones in the courtyard, both Mrs. Billings and Jemmy came running from different directions, the plump housekeeper wiping her hands on her apron, the stable boy stumbling over his feet.

Jemmy gawked at Emma’s tumbled skirts. She jerked them down as best she could with Adam’s weight leaning upon them.

“Where have you been, Miss Emma? You gave us such a fright!” Mrs. Billings broke off in the midst of her scold and surveyed the magnificent Thoroughbred and the second rider, still slumped against Emma’s back.

“Good heavens! Is that Viscount Riverton? What on earth has happened to him?”

“He—I—” Emma took a deep breath and started anew. “His lordship was exercising on the cliffs when I happened upon him. His leg gave out. Give me a hand with him, Jemmy. We must get him inside.”

The young stable boy helped Emma dismount and between the three of them, they managed to carry the viscount inside and lay him on the damask settee in the parlor.

“Thank you, poppet,” Adam murmured. “But you promised you’d take me to bed.” He’d barely managed to pop open one eye and slur the words before falling asleep again.

Mrs. Billings stared at Emma, sucking in her breath.

Emma colored. “I promised him no such thing. He’s out of his senses and doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

“What’s wrong with the man, child? And what in heaven’s name
did
you promise him?”

“He’s in a lot of pain, I think. And he wore himself out, trudging over the cliffs.”

The housekeeper nodded, her cloud of curly white hair bobbing around her face, despite the mob cap perched on the crown of her head. “They say he was very badly wounded in Spain. Albuhera, I recollect it was, where Master Michael—”

“Yes,” Emma cut in. “I’m aware of that.”

Mrs. Billings pressed her lips into a tight, thin line. “I see, then.” But her stern expression was belied by the gentleness with which she touched Emma’s hand.

“I know you, Miss Emma. I know what’s going ’round in that hard head of yours. You can’t blame the poor man for serving king and country. And just look where it’s got him.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “What a fine figure of man he used to be.”

He still is!

Emma swallowed the lump in her throat.
Did
she blame Riverton merely for marching off to war? Still? Phrased the way Mrs. Billings had put it, the sentiment seemed so petty. Emma’s eyes burned. Michael had always been headstrong. As headstrong as she, she was forced to admit—perhaps even more so. She thought of the many occasions when her twin had led her astray, challenging her with his risky behavior. She’d broken her arm once, falling out of a walnut tree that Michael had dared her to climb, while he’d sat on the ground, laughing.

Emma shook her head to dispel the images, her emotions roiling like the crashing sea. Her feelings for Riverton were so complicated now she’d never sort them all out.

“Any word from Papa?”

“No, Miss Emma.”

Emma looked away from the pity in the housekeeper’s eyes and studied Riverton anew. She grazed her fingertips against his brow. She did not suppose she would ever tire of gazing upon him. Or touching him.

The gesture did not escape Mrs. Billings’s hawklike eyes. “I believe the viscount to be a good man, Miss Emma. He always was that. Whatever suffering he endured cannot have wrung such character out of him.”

Emma snatched her hand from his forehead. “Better he doesn’t wake just yet,” she advised the housekeeper. “He has exhausted himself.” She paused. “He said a bath would ease his sore muscles.”

“Best we start heating the water then. Jemmy, there’s a good lad, get his lordship up the stairs. Miss Emma will help you with that. Mind, you come straight back to me in the kitchen, Miss Emma. You’ll have to manage the hip bath yourself, boy.” She looked from the wiry Jemmy back to Adam’s powerful frame and shook her head. “If his lordship doesn’t rouse, you’ll have quite a job on your hands, lad.”

“I’m stronger than I look, Ma.” The stable boy grinned. “If I’m able to handle ornery beasts as big as that hunter outside—and I am—” the lad puffed out his chest, “—I reckon I can dunk his lordship with no fuss.”

Emma smiled at the boy’s confidence. Between them, they managed to drag Adam upstairs. Emma sat on the edge of the bed, gazing down upon Adam. Even asleep and unconscious he made her blood heat. She pressed a gentle kiss to his lips and then tiptoed from the room.

“There’s only enough tea left for one weak pot,” Mrs. Billings told her, shutting the cupboard door. “The viscount will be hungry when he wakes. You cannot feed the poor man bread and butter, Miss Emma. We should have a pie or a chop for him, at least.”

Emma sighed. “We won’t even have butter, if Jemmy sells these two tubs.”

The housekeeper set aside one small ramekin of the creamy spread for their household use. “Nothing for it, Miss Emma. We cannot slaughter a chicken, we agreed. Be glad we’ve still got a cow and a few hens left.” She looked up from the market basket she was filling with eggs. “Have you got those handkerchiefs ready for me, child? They’ll be good for a few pence, even without the fancy monograms.”

Emma produced a small pile of folded muslin squares. Mrs. Billings clucked her tongue. “Such a pity to cut up your pretty chemises. Without your elegant embroidery they won’t fetch near the price of the others.”

Emma bit her lip. Where had Papa gone? What had he done? If they were turned out of the house tomorrow, how would she ever find him? Could she become a man’s mistress to save their livelihood? Now? After she’d seen what joy the touch of man who tangled her emotions could bring?

She squared her shoulders, hardening her resolve.

“I’m afraid it’s as you say, Mrs. Billings. Nothing else for it.”

***

Adam awoke in a bed not his own. Nor was he lodged in the rooms he’d taken at the Bird & Barley. Afternoon sun slanted into the bedchamber from a narrow parting in the drawn window curtains. He wore another man’s nightshirt, but his own clothes had been brushed and were folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

He stretched and groaned, and then slowly dressed. His left leg remained a bit stiff, but the worst of the pain had ebbed away, leaving only the dull muscle soreness that visited him after strenuous exertion—a strengthening ache he could live with. Not nearly as bad as usual today. He surveyed the room. A copper hip bath, a pile of damp towels heaped next to the foot, as if someone had forgotten to whisk them away. Someone had bathed him?

The indomitable Miss Emma Whiteside?

Not very likely, though it pleased him to entertain
that
notion. Yet, somehow Emma had managed to transport him to her home. He smiled as memories of their ride came back to him like shards of a colorful mosaic. He thought of the way he’d fondled and caressed her, inhaling her wonderful scent. The way his touch had plucked reluctant sighs of contentment from her.

The sounds of a violent argument belowstairs erupted through the bare floorboards. Adam couldn’t decipher the words, but a man’s booming voice clashed with a woman’s horrified cries.

Emma.

He had to reach her. He glanced swiftly around the bedchamber in which she’d placed him. Her room, he wondered? All soft shades of blue and cream. Not masculine. But no feminine frippery, either. How the hell had she gotten him up here?

His walking stick lay across the foot of the bed and he snatched it up, scrambling as fast as he was able across the room. He clattered down the stairs, nearly stumbling in his haste.

A burly man in a many-caped cloak, a man who had not even had the manners to remove his dusty hat upon entering the house, confronted Emma across the sitting room. Muddy boot prints tracked over the polished wood of the front parlor, the pattern like those of an animal stalking his prey.

The sight of those careless footprints on the bare, carpetless floor made Adam’s blood boil, in a way it had not done since he’d dragged Michael Whiteside’s body from a ditch at Albuhera.

Emma gripped the back of a damask-upholstered settee. Adam suspected she’d leapt behind the long, low sofa in order to put some distance between herself and the intruder. Adam sized up her adversary. As his gaze swept the room, he also noted the absent rugs, and the dearth of the sort of figurines and boxes that usually cluttered sitting rooms.

“Today?” Emma offered the bearlike man a glare that could have shriveled a gooseberry, but her knuckles were white and her voice broke as she beseeched him. “I’d thought…tomorrow. Please, Mr. Farraday, you must give me a little more time.”

“You are out of time, wench,” Farraday spat. “I’ve come to collect.”

With an agility that belied his beefy frame, he moved around the piece of furniture that separated them and seized her by the shoulders. He bent her backward, attempting to steal a kiss, as Emma strained, horrified, to avoid his grasp.

“Get your damned hands off her.”

The thump of Adam’s walking stick drew Farraday’s attention. Emma froze when she saw Adam standing at the foot of the stairs, her face a white mask of horrified shame.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” the other man demanded.

“Riverton.”

Farraday blanched and released his grip on Emma, but quickly recovered. He offered Adam a distrustful shrug. “This doesn’t concern you, my lord.”

“Reckon it does.” Adam enunciated each word as crisply as if he were biting the end paper from a musket cartridge before loading the gun. “Since Miss Whiteside is my betrothed.”

He turned toward her and held out his arm. “Emma.”

Emma stared from one man to the other as if a bolt of lightning had riveted her to her place behind the large piece of furniture. Revulsion filled her eyes when she looked at Farraday—shame when she gazed upon Adam.

Damn it to bloody blue blazes, he thought. The hell with her stiff-backed pride. He would have leapt to her side and knocked the other man senseless if he could. But he’d left his agility in a Spanish ditch.