Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (28 page)

Holding his breath, he eased the doors open a crack. Cosette surprised him by being on the other side, her hand on the doorknob. Her hearing still excellent, alerted by the sounds in the hall and room next to hers,
she had gotten out of bed and was at the door when he
opened it.

“Yes?”

He could not have been more surprised than if she had sprung up at him. Duncan took a breath to steady himself. “Pardon, mademoiselle, I did not wish to disturb you.”

She looked at him shrewdly. “That is obvious, since you did not knock.”

He did not want to alarm her, and said simply, “I am
looking for Beth,” as if he had merely lost his way within the intricate pattern of the house.

She had known his blood was hot the moment she had looked at him.

“Why, she is in her room, of course. Asleep, I trust,” she said pointedly.

“Of course.” Duncan nodded, already easing his way out. “Good night, mademoiselle. A thousand pardons. Sleep well.”

The old head bobbed in acknowledgment as Duncan closed the door. “And you do the same,” she advised softly. Then she chuckled to herself, something she had not done in more years than she could remember.

Where the devil had that woman gotten to? he wondered, crossing to the end of the hall. In frustration, he laid his hands upon the sill of the window that looked down at the deserted garden.

That was when he saw the slight form moving about the bushes.

Duncan’s instincts were well honed from his years
upon the London streets. His hand went to the hilt of the
weapon that was never far from his side. He squinted, looking about the garden for signs that there were more than one about. He dared not lift the casement for fear of alerting the intruder.

There seemed to be only the one.

But there were many shadows in the garden, and he could well be mistaken.

Swiftly, Duncan took the backstairs two at a time. “Be on your guard, Jacob,” he warned softly, as he went to the back door.

Jacob needed no more to silently lay aside the pot in his hands and to take up his sword.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Beth started at the sound and turned to see the drawn sword. She gasped as she saw the moonlight gleaming on the long blade. The next moment, recognition set in as the man brandishing the sword stepped out of the shadows.

“Duncan!”

Duncan did not know whether to hug her to his breast or give her the benefit of the back of his hand soundly across her posterior.

“ Tis the mistress,” Jacob crowed, a hooting laugh punctuating his words.

He put up his own sword and shook his head as if it
was a grand joke on them all. But Duncan still had his
extended.

“I do not think you need arm yourself against her, Duncan,” Jacob prodded helpfully.

“Then you are most heartily mistaken.” After a moment, Duncan sheathed his sword. “Return to the house, Jacob. You have the first watch at the front door. I will come in two hours to relieve you.”

Jacob nodded, glad to be of the kind of use he was accustomed to. This cleaning up was something he found far too demeaning.

There were many who thought him simple-minded, but Jacob knew when to withdraw his sword and when to withdraw his presence. This was such a time, even if he was not standing watch. He smiled at the two people before him.

“Aye, Duncan. Good night, mistress.” He bowed grandly before her. “Pleasant dreams.”

“The same to you, Jacob,” she murmured at his retreating back.

Alone, Duncan gave vent to his anxiety. He grasped
Beth by the shoulders with his steely hands, suppressing
the urge to shake her. She had given him a turn or two, disappearing like that.

“What the devil are you doing here?”

She looked at him defiantly. Though he was here be
cause of her, that gave him no authority over her, no right to order her about or question her actions.

“Walking.”

Duncan knew that look. The woman was spoiling for
another fight, and he was not. He released her. “I hunted
the house for you.”

She waved a hand and turned her back on him. “You had but to look out the window. I have been here all the—“ Beth stopped and turned to look at Duncan, caught by the meaning in his words. “You hunted for me?”

“Yes.” She had given him a start when he could not find her, and he meant to take her to task for that, for causing him anxiety, for being someone who caused
him anxiety. He wished for his feelings to be free again,
not entangled as they were.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, he remem
bered.

“And frightened your great-aunt in the process, I might add, as I prowled about.”

Had he truly been worried about her, the way she had about him? she wondered. Her temper was suddenly at rest as her heart took over.

“I doubt that.” She smiled sadly. “She is not easily frightened, that one; she has seen too much.” Beth looked around the desecrated grounds. “As have the gardens.” Unshed tears of regret rimmed her words. “This was a beautiful place once, Duncan.”

“And it can be again.”

She knew he was right, but it would be so difficult to
restore what once was ... and it could never be completely accomplished. Nothing was ever the same after it was ruined.

“Yes, but—“

Duncan took her hands in his. “Beth, you have the look of a haunted apparition about you. We cannot resolve any problems out here tonight and it would serve no purpose to be so consumed with despair and worry. Neither has ever benefited any situation, to my knowledge.” He took a step backward, urging her to follow him into the house. “Come to bed.”

A knowing smile played upon her lips. “Yours or mine?”

She was a vixen, but he knew what lay just beneath the surface, and he would walk through fire just for a taste of her lips.

“It matters not, for I will join you wherever you are.”

She withdrew her hands from his to fist them at her waist. “And I have no say in it?”

He sighed. He suspected that Beth probably liked to

argue more than she liked to eat. She clearly seemed to enjoy it more than having him make love to her.

“You always have a say in it, Beth. But I pray in my
heart that the say will be ‘yes.’ “

There was so much in his eyes that she could not
read, but this much she knew to be true. She cupped her
hand to his cheek.

“Then set your heart at ease. For all you have done today, I could not turn you away.”

But his eyes darkened. He did not want her body in trade for actions he would have rendered anyway. “I do not want your gratitude.”

She lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “Nonetheless, you have it.”

His eyes held her fast to where she stood. “I want something more. Something with a far dearer price attached to it.”

As always, he had her heart beating quickly, hammer
ing at her wrists and throat like a drummer boy in the militia, announcing a battle. But there were to be no battles fought tonight.

Tonight was for surrender.

“Perhaps you have that, too.” He opened his mouth to speak, but she lay a finger across his lips to silence him.
“But for the time being, content yourself with what there is, as you have bidden me to do.”

Beth stood on her toes and twined her arms around his neck. Her body leaned into his in supplication.
“Make me forget, Duncan. Make me forget what I have
seen today and what I have yet to see.”

He picked her up in his arms as easily as if she were but a small child.

“I will do my best.”

His lips found hers in a rapturous kiss that began the merciful process of numbing her senses as they ignited fires within her, fires that had never been completely banked from the first time.

Duncan pushed the back door open with his shoulder. Jacob was no longer in the kitchen. Duncan knew he was at his post before the front door. Balancing Beth in his arms, he paused now only to secure the lock on the
back door. Duncan thought there was no eminent danger tonight, but he had not come to his present age by wan
tonly throwing caution to the winds.

She could have remained in his arms forever for the feeling being there spawned within her. She felt secure and on the brink of excitement at the same time. The man was a wonder.

“Jacob?” Beth looked around hesitantly as Duncan carried her up the stairs.

Duncan laughed softly to himself as he took another kiss from her lips.

“Will not save you tonight, my love. He is standing guard, and your grandmother and grandaunt are long asleep.” He carried her to her room, as if setting her feet down upon the long, faded carpet would break the spell that was being woven. “There is but the two of us.”

God help her, but she loved the sound of that. “For tonight, that is more than enough for me.”

For tonight, he thought.

And what of tomorrow, and all the days that would follow? He knew he was having thoughts that were foreign to a manly breast, but he could not shed them any for the knowing. She had cast a spell over him, one he
would have to work hard at overcoming when the time
came.

“I have but two hours,” he reminded her, as they came to her room. The door stood open, just as it had when he left it.

“Then we shall have to make the most of it.” Without
waiting for Duncan to speak, Beth pressed her lips to
his once more with an urgency that Duncan found over
whelmingly intoxicating.

His blood roaring through his veins, Duncan could hardly wait until they were within the privacy of her
room. Her mouth, as it glided hot and questing along his throat and lips, was driving him to the very brink of no control. Beyond the perimeter were creatures he was not
certain he could contain.

Yet she easily pushed him beyond all that he had ever
known with her eager mouth and her grasping, slender fingers. Even the sound of her breath as it echoed in the room excited him.

Before he could successfully close the doors behind them, Beth’s hands were on his body, hot to touch, hot to assure herself that here at least there was something that had not been stripped away from her.

She sought the mindless ecstasy that only Duncan could give her.

Setting her down, Duncan caught Beth’s hands in his and looked into her face. The moon provided the only light within the room, and barely lit it.

“Beth,” he breathed, his heart pounding, “there is no
race.”

She shook her head, her hair flying loose. “Oh, but there is. The world is spinning too fast for me to stop now.”

He pressed her to him, as if to absorb some of her pain. He felt her heart against his, blending, melding.

“Then we will slow it down,” he promised, against her lips.

Though the fires of desire drove them both, Duncan struggled not to allow her questing hands and mouth make him lose what last shreds of control he still retained.

Clothes left their bodies quickly, so quickly that he feared some were torn. How would they explain that on the morrow, when Cosette eyed them?

But matters of clothing and reproving great-aunts
soon faded from his mind as flames licked his body. She
was nude before him and cleaving her body to his. He could think only of her, of wanting her.

Of dying within her.

With a sigh of absolute surrender, Duncan fell into the inferno that was waiting for him. It consumed him and he went to it willingly.

Anything to have her.

He worshipped her with his hands, with his eyes, with his mouth. Like a man possessed, he placed his brand upon her at every point that was exposed to him. He could not get enough of her.

Like a starving man, he feasted and was still hungry,
drank and was still thirsty.

His mouth and hands played upon her as if she was a rare instrument, to be strummed reverently in order to make her body sing.

As Beth arched and moved beneath him, he discovered secrets that he had only guessed at . . . secrets of her body that Beth had never known.

He created waves within her. Waves, and unspeakably
wonderful sensations.

Beth’s eyes flew open as explosions rocked through her body, bombs discharging in her like precisioned musket fire, one after the other.

“Oh! Oh!” she gasped in surprise, immediately biting down on her lower lip to still the cries that continued to rise up within her. Her body rocked to and fro as if it did not belong to her, as if it was governed not by her mind, but only by Duncan and his wondrous touch.

“Shh,” he warned, “you’ll wake them all.”

But still his questing fingers did not stop. Nor could she have stood it if they had.

His tongue trailed along her quivering belly until he came to the very source of her heat, the very source of her passion. There was just a moment’s pause, and that only to tantalize her with.

And then he plunged onward.

Beth felt his mouth touch her and struggled to bring him up. She did not know whether to be offended, or overjoyed. This couldn’t be. This—

Was wondrous.

As she struggled to push him away, she succeeded only in driving him further in.

And then, as the heat of his mouth irrevocably
claimed her, there was no strength in her body left to re
sist. He drove her upward, ever upward, and she found that she was thrown into the eye of the storm, tossed about from wave to wave until she was completely limp.

Her skin, damp with sweat, gleamed in the moonlight
like that of a temptress. Duncan could resist her no longer.

She looked at him, dazed, as he raised himself up on his hands and slid his body along hers until their eyes met. Her body pulsed as rainbows crashed through her.

“What did you do?” she cried weakly.

He could still manage a smile, well pleased. “Made love to you, Beth. As I will do again and again.”