Secrets of Midnight (22 page)

And she ceased talking too. Why continue when she was
speaking largely to herself? The only time Donovan had showed any interest was
when she'd mentioned Linette crying herself to sleep, and he'd said at once
that her sisters were welcome to visit the house as often as they wished. She'd
been surprised, warmed by his response actually, and had thanked him, but as
for the rest, she might as well have been conversing with a brick wall, Donovan
was so brooding and unsociable. At last she could stand the weighty silence no
longer, and she rose from her chair.

"Go on up if you'd like," Donovan said
gruffly before she could utter a word. "I'll be there shortly."

So at last the
man speaks!
she
fumed, using every bit of her
restraint not to lash out at him and thank him for the enlivening pleasure of
his company. Instead she said, primarily for Ogden's benefit—the butler had
been standing stiff as a statue beyond Donovan's chair and listening to them
all night, after all—and quite meaningfully enough to raise a stoic brow, "Don't
be too long, Donovan, my darling. I'd be so disappointed to fall asleep before
you kiss me good night."

Oh, Lord, had she really purred that ridiculous
nonsense? Was she mad? Seeing that Donovan had stopped swirling his brandy, his
midnight eyes full upon her as she hastened from the room, Corisande wanted to
kick herself, but instead she fled up the stairs.

It was the nervousness taking over, she was certain of
it. Making her tongue rash. Making her foolish. Last night at least she'd had
sherry and champagne to dull her senses, but tonight she had nothing to calm
her racing heart. Yet she remembered her heart pounding last night too—oh,
bloody hell, she didn't want to think about it!

Corisande saw that her bed was turned down again the
moment she entered her chamber, and wishing in vain that she might sleep there
alone by herself, she quickly shed her clothes and groped inside the wardrobe
for her flannel nightgown . .
.
but it wasn't there.
Groaning to
herself
, she found instead a gossamer bit
of muslin trimmed with delicate pink lace, and she knew at once that Rose
Polkinghorne must have come to call.

There were two new dresses, too, but she didn't waste
time looking at them. She slipped the muslin nightgown over her head—for heaven's
sake, there was nothing to it!—and felt her face grow red with embarrassment.
The fabric was nearly transparent, and it wasn't voluminous either, like her
flannel, but hugged the curves of her body like nothing she had ever worn
before.

Corisande groaned aloud this time, wishing she had
thought to bring her cloak with her. She would have liked nothing more in that
moment than to douse
herself
from head to toe with
lavender perfume. But the damned cloak was in the drawing room while she was
here,
and with Donovan no doubt on his way upstairs . . .

She didn't tarry any longer, pulling the pins from her
hair and dropping them onto the floor as she raced through the sitting room.
Thank God she didn't need the water closet tonight. She could just dive into
bed and bloody hide, that thought making her bolt into Donovan's room all the
faster—

"Good God, woman, are you trying to run me down?"

Chapter 19

Corisande gasped and veered to avoid careening into
Donovan as he sidestepped to avoid her too. Spinning around, she gaped at him,
loose strands of hair half covering her face, but she wasn't
so
blinded as not to see that his shirt was hanging open—oh, dear Lord, he was
already undressing!

At least, he had been undressing. Now he was simply
staring at her, his gaze sweeping over her from head to foot. With a shriek she
crossed her arms over her breasts, demanding in a hoarse croak, "Turn
around this very instant! Damn you, Donovan Trent, turn around!"

But Donovan didn't want to turn around. God help him,
he wanted to stare and stare, the hissing fire burning brightly enough that he
could see nearly every tantalizing inch of Corisande just as God had made her.
And her nipples weren't pink as he'd thought they might be last night, but a
dusky brown he could plainly see through her nightgown even as she desperately
tried to cover herself. A dusky brown like the muslin-veiled triangle at the
heart of her thighs.

"What are you doing here? I—I only left the dining
room a few moments ago. What are you doing here?"

She sounded nearly beside herself, her voice having
become a high-pitched squeak. It was enough to make Donovan cease his staring,
barely, and look at her stricken face.

"What do you think I'm doing here, woman? You told
me not to be too long, and I do sleep here."

She opened her mouth to speak, but this time no words
came at all. Instead she turned and fled toward the bed and tore back the
covers, leaping beneath them and pulling them up to the bridge of her nose.

In fact, she looked like a tousle-haired mouse peeping
out at him, and thank God, too, that Corisande had covered herself, giving him
much-needed respite to calm his thundering senses. He'd almost gone after her,
the sight of her trim, heart-shaped bottom all the temptation any man should be
made to stand in one lifetime. Ten lifetimes! He doubted he'd ever seen any
woman fashioned more seductively, lithe and long-limbed and yet curved and
round

Groaning to
himself
, Donovan
went to the washbasin and filled it with water, then bent over and splashed
himself full in the face. He did so, not once but several times, wishing that
it wasn't tepid but ice-cold. Ice-cold to stop this infernal burning inside
him, this madness he seemed scarcely able to control.

By the time he stopped splashing himself he was
drenched, his chest matted and soaking, his shirt dripping wet, as well as his
breeches and boots. And yet he felt like hanging his head in the water,
doubting the dunking had done him any good.

Dammit, why
had
he raced up here? Corisande hadn't meant those bloody
words,
he knew that, which was nothing new to him.

He'd been called darling countless times before, my
love, my heart—by elegant, beautiful women who uttered such endearments as
easily as they changed lovers. Even Nina hadn't meant them, lovely ebony-haired
Nina with her sultry dark eyes and scarlet lips, his mistress for a time and
the mother of his child. And it had suited him fine, always had. He'd never
been bothered at all, no, never given it a second thought or yearned for even a
moment that those words might be heartfelt.

Until now.

Something was gnawing at him, eating at him, and he
didn't like it. He didn't want it! He'd never before considered the possibility
. . . God, it was ridiculous! This . . . this whole insane attraction for a
woman he bloody well intended to leave, to annul, to forget! With a low growl,
he splashed his face again, but there was more water on
himself
and the floor than in the basin.

"Do . . . do you always make such a mess when you
bathe?"

Donovan fell still, snorting wryly to himself as he
held his face in his hands although he felt not a whit of humor.

Bathing? Was that what the chit thought he was doing?
Hell and damnation, Corisande was more a raw innocent than he had ever
imagined. That realization couldn't have proved more grounding either; at least
she had no idea what havoc she'd just caused inside him. Thinking it was time
he got hold of himself and saw to what else needed to be done, Donovan
straightened and grabbed for a towel.

"I . . .
well,
surely you
know that I didn't mean what I said in the dining room. It was only for
Ogden—to make things look convincing. I really didn't mean it at all."

Donovan glanced over at the bed, Corisande apparently
having calmed herself enough to drop the covers to her chin. "No?"

His tone was so heavy with sarcasm that Corisande
bristled, but she made herself relax, imagining he was simply offended that she'd
commented about him making a mess.

And he had made a mess! She had never seen anything
like it, water splashing all around him, hitting the wall, cascading onto the
floor and soaking the carpet. She hated to think what he would do with a whole
tubful of water . . . but, of course, she had no intention of ever seeing him sitting
in a tub or watching Donovan dry
himself
for that
matter. She averted her eyes as he stripped off his sodden shirt and began to
towel his chest and under his arms, Corisande even going so far as to roll over
so she was facing the other way.

"That's probably a good idea. I wouldn't want to
offend you while I undress."

Stiffening again at his sarcasm, Corisande rolled back
over, a retort ready to fly—and then wished she'd stayed put facing the
opposite wall. Donovan was standing with his back to her, a back so broad and
powerful and incredibly contoured with sinewy muscles that she couldn't help
looking at him, although she told herself that she should turn away at once.

She stared almost transfixed as he bent over to tug off
his riding boots, his muscles flexing, his arms looking strong and powerful,
too, and she certainly knew that to be true. She'd felt them around her more
than once; why, even tonight when he'd pulled her against him in the drawing
room, Donovan's body lean and so hard—

"Perhaps I should stand behind the screen if you're
going to ogle me."

She gasped to find Donovan studying her, his expression
as dry as his tone although his eyes held a disturbing hint of what she had
seen in them before when he'd been staring at her. "I—I wasn't ogling you.
I was looking at the mess you made, is all. I can just imagine what Ellen
Biddle is going to think tomorrow morning—"

"That's not the only mess she'll find." He
cut her off cryptically, his hands moving to his breeches. "I sleep naked,
in case you'd like to know. So you might want to—"

"Naked?" Corisande half screeched, forgetting
her resolve to play the happy bride altogether as she clutched the covers
against her breasts. "You mean . . . last night, you . . . no sleeping
wear at all?"

"None. Never worn the stuff. Too confining."

"Too confining?" Her voice had again become a
high-pitched squeak, but that was the last of Corisande's worries as she rolled
over so fast that she nearly tumbled from the bed. Clutching the edge of the
mattress, she tugged the bedclothes well over her ears, but that didn't prevent
her from hearing Donovan's every slightest movement, an intense flush of heat
racing from her scalp to her toes as he pulled off his breeches and tossed them
to the floor.

She squeezed her eyes shut as he walked about the room,
first dousing lamps and then stoking the fire, her heart beginning to pound.

And when he came toward the bed, his side of the bed,
and yanked back the covers, she thought she might choke, her breath strangled
so in her throat. Oh, Lord, what she would give for a glass of sherry now—no,
the whole decanter! She remembered nothing of this last night; she doubted she
would have even considered coming out from behind that screen if she'd known he
had stripped down to his skin.

She waited and waited, feeling as if she were turning
blue while Donovan had yet to climb into bed. Then she heard a sharp intake of
breath and a low curse, and her eyes flared wide. What in heaven's name . . . ?

She rolled over onto her back despite the sudden
compression of the mattress, crying out and sitting bolt upright as a knife
blade flashed in the firelight. "Donovan! Dear God, what—"

"Shh, woman, I'm not trying to murder you, if that's
what you're thinking . . . just making things look as if you've been properly
bedded—damn! I cut too deep."

Corisande heard another sharp intake of pain,
understanding flooding her as Donovan leaned on one knee over the center of the
bed, the room not so dark that she couldn't see blood dripping onto the clean
white sheet from where he'd slit the inside of his forearm. Oh God, she'd seen
such a pool before when she'd gone with Oliver's wife, Rebecca, to help tend to
their daughter Sophie after her wedding night. But then there had been so much
more blood and ugly purple bruises and tears, so many tears—

"Get me a towel, Corie, before I make this look
more a pig slaughter than a deflowering—dammit, quick! I'm bleeding all over
the place."

Corisande was already scrambling from the bed, nearly
tripping in her haste to reach the washbasin.

"Careful, woman! I don't want you bumping your
head again. Then we'll really have a mess on our hands."

She grabbed a sodden towel since she couldn't find a
dry one, and rushed back to the bed, Donovan sitting at the edge with his hand
clamped over the wound. "Here, let me," she commanded urgently,
sitting down beside him and pressing the towel to his flesh when he removed his
fingers. "Turn your arm upright—that's it. That should help the bleeding
to stop."

She sat there for long moments as neither one of them
spoke,
Donovan wincing as she gradually released the
pressure. At last she decided she could lift the towel, the wound still oozing
but not bleeding as profusely as before. She pressed gingerly around the area
with her fingertips, marveling at the muscular strength she felt in the
slightest flex of his arm.

"I doubt you'll need a bandage. Does it hurt very
much?" She glanced up when Donovan didn't answer to find him staring at
her, their faces only inches apart. She gulped, suddenly feeling quite woozy
inside, her gaze falling from his eyes to his lips, sensual, masculine lips so
close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath upon her. "I . . . said
does it hurt—"