Pale Moon Rider (46 page)

“No. No, let him sleep.”

“I’ll say goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight. And thank you so much for everything you have done.”

Maggie’s eyes twinkled in the direction of the study. “Thank
you
, miss. I was beginning to lose hope for him.”

The door closed behind her and Renée was left alone with the fire, the shadows, and the music. Her eyes were heavy and her body tired, but she stood and walked through the dressing room to the study, hesitating with her hand on the latch for a moment before she quietly turned it and opened the door.

Tyrone was sitting with his back to her, his head bowed forward in concentration. He was playing Mozart, and she waited until the long, magical fingers finished displaying their artistry before she walked over and stood beside him. He glanced up once … then twice as his eyes registered surprise and pleasure seeing her wrapped in his robe. Her hair flowed smooth and sleek over her shoulders, tamed free of curls, shimmering with every slight move of her body.

“You play beautifully, m’sieur.”

He smiled and touched his forefinger to his brow in a salute. “Since I believe that is the first compliment that has not contained the words ’madman’ or ’buffoon,’ I shall accept it with thanks.”

“You
are
mad,” she allowed with the faintest hint of a smile. “But you play beautifully nonetheless.”

“Do you?”

She shook her head. “
Maman
tried in vain to teach me, but”—she held up her fingers and wiggled them—“they always wanted to go one way and the music the other.”

“Here,” he said and edged the bench back enough to make room for her on his lap. “Put your hands over mine; I’ll take you in the right direction.”

His fingers were much longer and the music he played was simple and slow, the tune familiar enough that she was able to anticipate which keys he would carry her fingers to next. His body was warm against her, beneath her, and by the time his hands came to a standstill, her body was a mass of hot and cool sensations, thick and sluggish in places, molten and fluid in others. The skin across her breasts was tight with anticipation, while elsewhere, it was throbbing with the shame of wanting him.

“I feel so guilty,” she said on a shallow gasp. “Finn is in gaol and all I can think of is … how wonderfully warm I feel.”

With her hands still splayed over his, he brought them up and circled them around her waist. “You can do nothing else for Finn tonight. And I shall take it as another compliment, mam’selle, that you feel so warm.”

She closed her eyes and melted into the heat of his lips where they pressed into her neck. His breath scented with brandy, was soft on her skin, and she tipped her head back, needing to feel him, taste him in her mouth. Wary of her damaged lip, he kissed her so gently, she could have wept. Aware of the freshly bandaged injury to his ribs, she turned in his arms, deepening the kiss herself, holding his face between her hands, guiding his mouth down onto the curve of her throat where there were only sighs of pleasure to welcome his explorations.

He loosened the belt at her waist and his hands slipped beneath the silk. They skimmed upward to cup her breasts in his palms, lifting them, raising them to his mouth as it descended to claim them through the soft layer of lawn. Renée arched back with the pleasure and her bottom brushed against the piano keys, producing a broken chord of mismatched notes. With slow, leisurely strokes of his lips and tongue, he teased her through the fabric, leaving two wet circles clinging transparently to her nipples. His hands meandered down her thighs and when they rose again they brought the hem of the shirt with them, exposing the milky whiteness of her bared limbs to the candlelight.

The chords were stronger this time, lingering on the air as she leaned against the row of ivory keys. When he eased her thighs apart, her hands struck other notes, startled notes that resonated softly throughout her body, for his mouth was on her belly, then buried in the silky triangle of golden curls. She gasped at the outrageous wickedness of his tongue as it flickered and swirled across the tender folds and peaks. She groaned at the first deep incursion, a slippery, sliding thrust of sensation that nearly lifted her off the keys entirely. Her hands spread wider to brace herself for each new onslaught as he explored the sleekly sensitive surfaces and probed the mysterious, lustrous depths. Shivers ran down her thighs while her hands, her fingers, skidded involuntarily over notes that were alternately sweet and sharp, jarring and gentle. He played her with the skill and expertise of a master musician building toward a shattering crescendo, each time holding back a single thrust, or a single stroke, holding her firm until her inner vibrations calmed, only to start again and again until she was in a trembling agony of wanting.

When he grew impatiently envious of his own skill, Tyrone stood and unfastened his robe. He was naked beneath, his erection standing strong and vigorous against his belly. With her body shivering and tightening around him, he drove himself deeply and urgently into her, groaning when he felt the eager grasp of her flesh, knowing by the sheer heat of her body that she was well beyond any desire for delicacy or finesse. He was hard and full inside her and she moved with him, against him. The combined effects of their rushing thrusts created an irrepressible cacophony of sound beneath them that was as rhythmic and frenetic as the motion of their bodies. It stretched into a single, prolonged chord as he stiffened into one last, explosive thrust—their climax mutual, wild and fiercely unrelenting, stunning in its absolute purity.

Then it was only their gasps they heard. Their shivered, disbelieving cries rent the air, and it was the fractured, ragged moans of their own unstructured ecstasy that eventually caused them to dissolve, panting and blissfully spent, into each other’s arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“
W
here did you learn to play the piano so well?” They were lying in bed, arms and legs twined together. The curtains had been deliberately left open so the daylight would waken him, but Tyrone had barely closed his eyes all night. He lay staring up at the ceiling most of the time, replaying the events of the past two weeks, wondering at exactly what point he should have listened to his instincts—which had noticeably been in turmoil since the first time he had clapped eyes on Renée d’Anton—and walked away.

“Are you referring to the fine symphony we played last night? To that I can only say … inspiration. Lovely ivory skin to stimulate the passion of the composition, stirring crescendos to inspire my baton … ouch!”

She released the pinch of flesh she had between her teeth and angled her face to look up at him. “If you would rather not tell me—?”

“There are some things that are awkward for a rogue and scoundrel to admit to. Like an excellent education and a life of relative privilege few who possessed my inferior bloodlines would have thrown away so cavalierly.”

“There is nothing inferior about you,” she assured him, snuggling back into the curve of his body. “And I pity those who would underestimate you because of your blood.”

“The truth is difficult to underestimate. I was born the son of a game warden and, had fate not intervened at an early age, I would likely be doing the same now with a wife and seven mewling children about my ankles looking to me to improve their predetermined lot in life.”

“I rather doubt that,” she said, smiling. “I think you were born a rogue and shall die a rogue and”—her breath caught a moment in her throat—“and whoever is lucky enough to share a part of your life along the way will be forever changed.”

While he thought about that, his hand continued to stroke her hair and when he responded, finally, he was frowning. “It was never my intention to change anyone, nor did I anticipate anyone changing me. I have always been content to take each day as it came. I have made no plans, plotted no courses in life. All in all, a poor prospect for domestication.”

“And yet you have all of this,” she said, indicating the richness of their surroundings.

“I do not deny I like my creature comforts. But if I had to walk away from it all, I could. And I would, in an instant. It is hardly the kind of life,” he added in a murmur, “that I could ask—or expect—anyone to share.”

Renée propped her chin on her hand and looked up at him, at the smoky gray of his eyes, the seductively
inviting fullness of his lips.

You could ask me
, she mouthed silently in French.
You could ask me and I would walk … no, I would run to the ends of the earth with you.

But he did not ask. His eyebrows quirked a little with curiosity as he watched her lips move, but in the end, he only kissed her briefly on the top of her head and gently untangled himself in order to sit up.

“I have been giving it some thought,” he said, stretching out his arms, testing the pull on the bandages, the mobility in the wounded ribs. “The first order of business should be to find out exactly where Roth is keeping Finn. If he is in the town gaol, the cell has a lock that could be picked with a dull knife. If he is in the converted wine cellar at the Black Bull, we will have to rely more heavily on Roth’s greed.”

Renée reached out and gently ran her fingers over the old lacerations that crisscrossed the slabs of muscle on his back. “Why did you not tell me he did this to you?”

His head turned slightly. “It happened a long time ago. And it was personal, between Roth and myself.”

She slipped up onto her knees behind him, “Do you still think of me as business?”

Tyrone looked down at where her hands circled his waist. His flesh stirred, betraying the very unbusinesslike pleasure he felt at such a simple gesture, and he sighed, “That was not what I meant. I just didn’t think you should feel obliged to worry about something that has nothing to do with your present predicament. Or with getting Finn back, for that matter.”

“I do not mind worrying about you,” she said softly.

“Yes, well,” he pushed himself off the side of the bed, “I mind.”

After casting a cursory glance around the room and not locating his robe, he walked naked into the dressing room, but he had barely opened the door to the commode when Renée appeared in the entryway behind him, her shoulders swathed in the bedsheet.

“You will let me help you, will you not?”

He looked at her, looked at the commode, then shut the cupboard door again. “I gather you mean with Finn?”

“Roth will not hurt him, will he?”

“No.” The word alone did not seem to be enough to appease her, so he walked back to where she was standing and took her face in his hands. “This is not
France
,” he said gently. “And Roth is not Robespierre, regardless of how much power he thinks he has over everyone’s destiny. In this country, an accused man has to stand trial, regardless of the charge or the evidence against him—a process that could take weeks, or months, depending on the crime. Even I would have my day in court, to be judged innocent or guilty by a jury of my peers, before they led me up the steps of the gallows.”

“How can you joke about such a thing?” she asked in a whisper.

“I do not joke about it, mam’selle. I simply choose not to dwell on the reality of it twenty-four hours a day. If I did, I would not be able to breathe. Just like now,” he said, tenderly kissing her bruised mouth. “I am having great difficulty breathing because I cannot stop thinking of what I was about to do when you interrupted me.”

She blushed and withdrew with an impatient sigh. “I want to help,” she insisted. “Finn is my responsibility. He is only in gaol because of me, because of trying to help me. Nor do I want you to put yourself at any more risk because of
us.”

“A kind thought, but unfortunately we haven’t time to fit you for a tricorn and greatcoat.”

As soon as she heard the door to the commode shut, she was back at the doorway. “You are going to meet with Roth as Captain Starlight?”

“Would he negotiate with anyone else seriously?”

He poured fresh water into the washbasin and reached for his shaving gear although the reflection in the mirror suggested there would not be much improvement in his overall appearance. There were dark circles under his eyes and an underlying pallor to his skin. His ribs ached like hell and he longed for another forty hours in bed without having to think or move or find a way to save the world.

“This hero business can be quite taxing,” he muttered as he scrutinized his reflection.

“Will you let me shave you?” she asked, brightening, anxious to help in even so small a way.

“Have you ever done it before?”

“No. But I watched Finn shave my father a thousand times. It does not look the least bit difficult.”

“Ahh. Well, we will give you a lesson another time.”

“May I at least watch?”

“If you promise not to make me laugh when I have the blade over my throat.”

She came into the dressing room and sat on a straight-back chair. Tyrone took up a fine-bristled brush and a bar of soap and worked up a lather, spreading it thickly on the shadow of dark stubble that had sprouted overnight on his chin and neck.

“Does M’sieur Dudley usually do this for you?”