Heather Graham (15 page)

He was taking her away. Away from London. Away from the docks.

Away from the opportunity to escape for home.

“Please!” she whispered suddenly. But he had already nudged the great horse. They were already riding hard into the darkness. She could smell the night, feel the strength of the horse beneath her. And that of the man behind her.

“Please what?” he demanded.

“Don’t—take me away!” she said.

He was silent. His arms tightened around her. He rode at a reckless speed, and she felt the force of the wind against her face.

Somewhere in the wild ride, he reined in, caring for his horse if nothing else. He could see in the darkness, it seemed. He dismounted, and she heard the sound of a softly rushing brook. He started to walk the horse through trees and bracken. When he came to the brook, allowing the horse to drink, she slid down from the great animal herself. She turned in the darkness, so panicked that she would have run anywhere.

But his hands were fiercely upon her.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“You don’t want me!” she cried to him. “Just let me go, I beg of you! I’ll make it back to London. I’ll find a ship—”

“Are you mad?”

“I—”

“I’d never let you go in this darkness, in the night!”

“Then—”

“Lady,” he snapped incredulously. “Don’t you understand? It’s over, you are wed! My wife. You will do what I tell you to do, go where I say you will go!”

“I will go home!” she cried. “Somehow I will escape you, and I will get home!”

He arched a brow. He picked her up and set her high atop Beowulf once again.

“Most certainly, my lady, it will not happen tonight!” he assured her. Then he was up behind her again. And they were riding hard.

She saw very little of his great ancestral estate that night, for he seemed to be a man beset by some demon. They rode across a drawbridge and came to a castle that seemed to reach to the night sky. A boy hurried out for the horse, and she was lifted from it.

He drew her into a foyer where a very old and exhausted-looking man awaited them. “My lady!” He bowed deeply to her. “Welcome, we all welcome you wholeheartedly! Your every wish we will try to fulfill.”

“Thank you, Garth,” Pierce said impatiently. “It’s been a long day. The Lady Rose will meet the household in the morning. If you’ll excuse us …”

His hand around hers was fierce. He did not escort her up the huge stairway. He dragged her up it.

They reached a doorway to a suite of rooms. Pierce’s quarters, she thought. They were magnificent. A massive sitting room led to a bedroom with a huge canopied and draped bed. There was a roaring fire. The bedclothes had been pulled back. There was a sheer gown upon the mattress. There were wineglasses and a wine bottle on a black bear rug before the fire. All these things she saw …

Then the longing to bolt came over her.

She was alone with him. Captive at his estate. In his rooms.

His wife.

There was no escape now. No escape. Not the way that he looked at her.

He walked about the room, keeping his distance from her, staring at her. He plucked up the wine bottle and he took a long swig from it, as if it would help.

She was the one who needed the wine! Something to help her endure this travesty.

“You bastard!” she lashed out suddenly. “How could you let this happen!”

“I told you. I am resigned.”

“Because you wish to punish me!” she accused him.

He arched a dark brow. “Should you be punished?”

“You fool!” Tears of outrage and disbelief were stinging her eyes. “I will hate you forever, I will make you pay for this! How can you be so stupid! I had no part in it!”

Pierce paused at the anguish in her voice. If she had been part of the trickery, she was a wonderful actress.

“Well,” he murmured, watching her. “It is indeed an irony! But you are my wife now.” He took a step toward her. She leapt back, staring at him with wild emerald eyes.

She shook her head. “Don’t come near me!”

“Don’t ever think to command me, mistress! I will do as I please. Your merchant father has managed to sell you. You’re mine now. Legally. You’re Lady DeForte. And I will damned well touch you—if and when I please!”

“You’ll not!” she insisted. “Not again!” she cried out. “Don’t come near me.”

He arched a brow and came closer. Closer. When he reached out a hand to her, she turned to fly. He caught hold of her arm, sending the wine bottle flying to crash against the hearth. Flames leaped and roared. He jerked her against him and felt himself grow hard and rigid beneath his trousers just as her body came against his, softness and curves and silk.

Damn her! What was it about her that could cause this rise of desire, this tempest of emotion?

“No!” she shrieked, struggling against him. He held her tightly. She realized the futility of her struggle. She stared up at him, panting like a wildcat.

“We’ve just been wed.”

“You can’t—imagine to do this!”

“Do what?”

“Be man and wife.” Tears glazed her eyes. “I hate you, and you loathe me. You think me guilty of horrible things, and I hate you all the more for thinking them! How could you possibly believe—”

“Jesu!” he exploded suddenly. He stared at her, searching her eyes. To her amazement, his hands were suddenly on the sides of her cheeks, gently molded to her face. “I don’t know what I think or feel at this moment!” he said huskily. “What you did to me—”

“What I did to you!” she cried out incredulously. She struggled for the words to describe her feelings. He was referring to the night they had spent together. The dream.

The nightmare.

“You are accustomed to such things. For you it was nothing. For me it was disaster!”

“Disaster! Oh, madam! I lay asleep. Then there was this startling warmth, the curve of you against me. You swept me from the mists of dreams. You seduced me—”

“Seduced you! I did not!” Wildly she tried to pull away from him. His fingers were rigid around her arms. She went still, meeting his eyes with hers an emerald flame. “I would rather seduce an entire tribe of pygmies!”

He paused, smiling. “You’d rather marry an ape, and you’d rather seduce pygmies? My, you are in a sorry situation, m’lady!”

“Please, let me go home!”

“You are home.”

“I cannot be your wife.”

“But you are.”

“You don’t want me—”

“You are mistaken. I do want you. I touched you and found fire. I thought that I had gone to heaven, I was so seduced! And yet you say you were no part of it, and now you play the absolute innocent. I don’t know what to think, or what to believe. Sometimes I’m so angry, I could throttle you. And then at other times, I simply want you.”

“Let go of me!” she pleaded. She couldn’t bear the way that he looked at her. There was an honesty about him. She was trembling. She was feeling the same sweep of heat she had known in her dream.

“I never hurt you, Rose!” he told her softly. “And I will not do so now. Jesu, I swear, you will want me again, too.”

“No! I was drugged!” she told him.

Watching her, he felt a startling surge of desire. Her breasts were incredible and tempting and he could remember the feel of them all too well, rounded, the nipples hardened little peaks. He could remember the curve of her hip, the length of her legs …

The speculation in his gaze alarmed her.

“You insisted on this marriage!” she reminded him. “Have the decency to make it one in name only.”

He arched a brow, and stroked his chin, as if considering the possibility.

Then he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t think so.”

“We despise one another!”

“’Tis sad, isn’t it?” he said, and walked toward her. She backed away. She watched him; he continued coming forward. She suddenly discovered herself backed against a wall with nowhere else to go.

She raised a hand as if she would strike out in self-defense. He caught her wrist. “You’ll not hit me,” he warned her.

“I’d take a sword to you if I could!” she vowed.

He shook his head slowly, his eyes dark upon hers. “I don’t think so. And I don’t think you are quite so wretched as you pretend. Your lips parted to my kiss, and your flesh awakened to my caress. And oh, lady, your limbs did entwine most sweetly with my own!”

“Stop it! It was the drug!” she whispered fervently.

“I think that it was more.”

“I will fight you violently!” she promised him.

“I don’t think so,” he said softly, studying her eyes. He shrugged. “But it won’t matter. We are locked in this thing now. Man and wife.” He reached out suddenly, pulling her into his arms. She struggled wildly against him, but he held her still, his fingers threading through her hair, tilting her head to his. A protest left her lips, but it was quickly swallowed into the passion of his kiss. He parted her lips to his, the fullness of his mouth. She tried to twist. He held her still. He plundered and invaded the sweetness of her, force becoming coercion, his desire coming alive all throughout him. She tried to raise her fists against him; he drew her closer. He kissed her until the breath was all stolen from her body, until he felt her trembling wildly beneath him, until her hands against him went still. Only then did he lift his lips from hers, whispering softly, “I did not hurt you!”

“I tell you, it was the drug!” she said desperately.

“I don’t think so. I think that there is a fire within you, exciting and warm. And I think that I can touch it, find it, stoke it, no matter how you claim to despise me.”

“I tell you—”

“M’lady, I’ve an idea,” he said very softly, watching her with his head slightly cocked.

“And what is that?” she demanded.

He let his arms fall from her, and he turned away, walking away from her. Then he turned back. “Why don’t we discover what was, and what was not, the drug?”

She didn’t reply. She was very still, returning his gaze, framed by the firelight. A dark, hot tremor shot through him as he saw her there. She stood on the huge black bearskin before the fire. Golden light, soft and ethereal, fell gently upon her. It touched the soaring highlights of red within her hair, making the length of it shimmer around her shoulders and down her back like a cascade of liquid flames. The beautiful commoner’s daughter. He’d been trapped into this marriage. Was she guilty or innocent? Did it matter? He burned. The whole of him. His throat burned, his loins burned, he shook with the heat of it. Of wanting her. Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was desire. Maybe it was both, and more.

He strode across the room to her. She might have been about to fly. To streak across the room, fleeing from his touch.

But she stood still. Her heart pounding visibly, her chin raised just slightly.

He paused just before her. Not touching her. Waiting. Her scent was as sweet as the rose for which she was named. Her breasts rose and fell in a swift, fascinating rhythm.

And her eyes met his. Emerald, fierce, defiant. She was trembling.

“Was all the magic in the wine? Or may it not exist elsewhere as well? Let’s discover it, shall we?”

He reached for her, pulling her hard into his arms. She cried out, startled, her body stiffening. “Rose Woodbine!” He spoke her name harshly, just over her lips. “You are my wife now. What a couple! Here we are, master and mistress of our own destinies! Yet tonight, lady, I will be master! But I swear, I will do my damned best to be tender!”

He swept her up into his arms.

And to their bridal bed.

SHE WAS SCARCE IN
his arms before he felt the startling rise of the curious magic again. What was it about her that could make the longing stronger than thought or emotion? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to care. He bore her down upon the softness of the bed, amazed at his reaction to the feel of her beneath his hold. But whether she did or did not recall anything about their night together, she clearly did not want to repeat it. Beneath him, she was squirming to rid herself of his weight, half thrown over her.

And each time that she moved, she did incredible new things to him.

“Rose!”

He caught her hands. Laced his fingers through hers, and brought them down to the bed by the side of her head. Her eyes met his. The anger was still within them. And more. Something Rose Woodbine always tried so very hard never to show. Unease, discomfort … fear?

He smiled, straddled over her, and leaned down to test her lips again. His mouth claimed them before she could twist or turn. He allowed her no movement, but his kiss was tender, slow, seductive. He lifted his mouth from hers. There was something wild in the emerald of her eyes. Another kind of fear.

She did remember.

“Why are you fighting me?” he asked her huskily.

“This is no real marriage!” she charged him.

“The king himself was there,” he reminded her. He arched a brow, smiling ruefully. “What did you think? That you could wed me and go about your own way again?”

She stared at him, then said with a quiet dignity, “You’re still in love with the Lady Anne.”

A sound of impatience escaped him. Anne. For long moments he had actually forgotten Anne. Rose could do that to him. Rose could fight him like a tigress, and still the silk of her skin, the scent of her, the feel of her beneath him, could make him forget everything. Anne! He closed his eyes. She was lost to him. She was wed to Jamison, and the king had determined that the union would stand.

Well, damn the king. For the sake of his honor alone, he was going to have to find Anne and Jamison. And he was going to have to hear from her own lips that she was reconciled to her marriage.

Later. But not tonight. Before God, he had cared for Anne deeply. But there was nothing that he could do now.

And he had a wife of his own.

His fingers curled ever more tightly around hers. His eyes met hers again. “Lie still,” he commanded her.

She moistened her lips, shaking her head. “So our marriage is legal,” she whispered frantically. “You’ll still leave to search out Anne. You’ll seek out Jamison until you do find him. And he’ll be prepared, and you’ll be careless because of your fury. He’s treacherous and he might very well discover a way to kill you. Then—”