Suzanne Robinson (19 page)

No man had ever looked at her as Luke was looking at her now. Never had she encountered such gentleness; never had she expected it from Nightshade, whose gaze most often seemed to bore through the back of her head and out the other side. Perhaps the very softness acted upon her as laudanum, teasing qualms until they were fine wisps that floated away in the air, leaving her captivated.

She was still sitting in a hard little chair with the herbal in her lap, but somehow Luke was kneeling beside her. His hands were over hers on the book. They were warm and clean and beautiful, and she had never seen anything so wondrous as those hands—strong, lean, but so careful not to bruise her own. Yet even after gazing upon them, she might have remained composed,
if he hadn’t spoken in that rough, hoarse voice she seldom heard him use.

“Do you think I have a soul, Primmy?”

He asked, revealing dread, uncertainty, and a hurt longing that sent jabs of compassion through her heart. In spite of the Hawthornes’ care, Luke doubted his own humanity. The things he’d been forced to do to survive had left wounds that had never healed.

“Of course you have a soul,” she said. “All of us have souls. Some are good, some not very good, some evil.”

“Like me.”

She shook her head and smiled. “My dear Luke, no man who tries to help as many as you have is truly evil.”

“I hope you’re right, Primmy. I hope what you say is true after I do this.”

“What—”

His mouth stopped the words. She would have protested, but his hands slid up her arms, bringing with their touch the memory of their appearance. Touch and memory provoked a desire to discover what the rest of him felt like. It was a desire she had been experiencing since he’d first kissed her. Once he was doing it again, she lost the battle to resist temptation. With small, tentative movements, her hands slid to his forearms.

When lightning didn’t strike her for her licentiousness, she pressed her hands against his arms to feel their hardness. She hadn’t realized how the feel of him would feed the sensations he evoked with his mouth. Never had she imagined the way he would respond.
When she tightened her grip, he surged against her as if propelled by a tidal wave. Emboldened, she moved her hands up his arms and flattened them against his chest. At this, Luke began to whisper endearments, placing his lips near her ear while his hands moved over her.

The whispers made her brave. Her fingers found coat lapels and brushed them aside. As his lips trailed kisses down her cheek to her neck, she grew impatient with the waistcoat that formed a barricade against her questing hands. Her fingers worked on buttons and slipped inside the garment, only to meet another frustration, a cursed shirt.

She might have given up if Luke hadn’t breathed in her ear. A hot wind soared into her body, setting fire to her most private flesh and to her mind. A fever possessed her and drove her inexperienced hands. They kneaded his flesh through the fine cambric of his shirt, causing Luke to gasp. He pulled at the garment; she heard it tear. Shaking now, her hands slid under the material to press against warm, surging flesh.

The feel of him seemed to stoke the blaze inside her. Luke must have known how she felt, for he responded to her touch by lifting her to him. Prim discovered that her bodice had come loose and was falling away from her shoulders, but before she could worry about it, his lips grazed the flesh that swelled at the top of her corset. Then he pushed her back, dragging her hands from his body. She opened her eyes in confusion to find him looking at her breasts. Again without warning, another garment came undone.
This time it was her corset, and to her amazement, Luke gently cupped her breast and lifted it free of all concealment. Then his lips touched her nipple, and Prim’s body jerked. Spikes of sensation stabbed through her, and she cried out.

It was the sound of her own voice that jolted her from the hot whirlwind that engulfed her. Sucking in her breath, she pushed Luke away and clutched her chemise and corset to her breasts. He fell back and gave her a startled look.

“No!”

His chin came down; he raised his eyes and Nightshade was suddenly before her. He uttered one word.

“Yes.”

Prim scrambled to her feet and retreated. He followed with much more grace and began walking toward her like a cat stalking some terrified field mouse.

“Come here,” he said.

Struggling to fasten her bodice, Prim shook her head and kept walking backward. His lip curled, and he took another step. She did, too, and hit a bookshelf. She wasn’t quick enough, and he was on her, pressing his body against hers, blocking her flight with his arms and capturing her mouth with his. Prim tore her lips free, desperate to stop whatever implacable force possessed him—and her. Her heart had betrayed her, and now her body.

“No! You are preparing us for inexpressible misery.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Prim.”

His hips worked against hers, but she grabbed a fistful of hair at the back of his head and hissed at him.

“Salacious wretch, stop this at once.”

“I mean to have you.”

Prim yanked on his hair, causing him to wince and stop moving his hips. “Are you making me an offer, Sir Lucas?”

That made him look at her with sense in his gaze. “What?”

“Are you making me an offer of marriage?”

“Course not.”

Until he denied it, she hadn’t realized she’d had any hope. Prim fought the tears that threatened to expose her foolishness and snarled at him.

“Then you will condescend to remember my honor, sir.”

Breathing hard, he stared at her. She watched him swallow, and was relieved when he stepped back and walked over to a window to gaze out at the bright autumn day. It took her a few moments to right her clothing, and she fumbled with buttons and fabric in misery.

She didn’t know how it had happened, but she was so in love with Luke Hawthorne—or was it Nightshade—that she was ready to abandon all principle, all honor, simply in order to touch him. She must have an inherently low nature to succumb to sin like this. Even more terrible, she wanted to touch him though he had no attachment to her and no intention of making her an offer. Her fingers tangled in buttonholes as truth came home to her—Luke did not return her regard. She didn’t understand how he could
kiss her, touch her, and yet feel nothing but duty toward her, but then, he was a man, and men were contradictory, unfathomable creatures.

I must get away from him. I cannot remain here, seeing him, knowing he has no love for me. Dear heaven, I can’t stay and meet his fiancée. That would be the ultimate wretchedness
.

Prim lifted trembling hands to shove pins back into her hair and cleared her throat. “Sir Lucas, we had best come to an understanding.”

He was still looking out the window. She watched a muscle work along his jaw. The hand lying on the windowsill clenched into a fist.

“You’re the one who started—What kind of understanding?”

“I have decided that our arrangement is unacceptable. Indeed, it is the height of impropriety, and I wish to end it. I wish to leave at once and therefore I ask you to return my book of hours.”

He turned his head, exposing her to a black-eyed and menacing gaze. “Leave. Why?”

“I told you, Sir Lucas. Our arrangement is unacceptable and improper.”

“That’s no reason.” He cocked his head to the side and inspected her with skepticism. “There’s something else.”

To avoid his eyes, Prim stooped and picked up the herbal. Under the guise of inspecting it for damage, she kept her gaze away from his while she searched for a suitable excuse.

“After …” Her courage failed. She stiffened her
backbone and tried again. “After what has just occurred, I think I am justified in distrusting the frail ruse of your parents’ chaperonage.” Finally she was able to lift her eyes and face him. “Sir Lucas, you cannot be relied upon to behave toward me with respectability and decency.”

Luke shoved himself away from the window. “Me? I can’t be relied upon? Who was it that fondled me like I was a Hell Corner harlot?”

Her face aflame, Prim set the herbal on the table. “It is scarcely delicate of you to speak in that manner, sir.”

He was before her with the table between them so quickly she nearly gasped aloud. Planting his hands flat on the tabletop, he leaned toward her and scalded her with that Nightshade glare.

“Scarcely delicate, she says. Bloody hell, Miss Primrose blighted Dane, you got a lot to learn. There ain’t nothing delicate about sex.”

“Your language!”

“Rot my language,” he shouted as he banged his fist on the table. “You and your etiquette and your manners be damned. You don’t mind me as long as I clean myself up and behave like some trained dog, but you sure as eggs don’t want to dirty yourself with my touch.”

Luke banged the table again. “No, that ain’t right. You want me. I been with too many women not to recognize one who’s stirred, like you were. You want me, all right, but you’re ashamed of wanting me. So don’t you go blathering to me of impropriety and indecency. You’re the one who’s indecent.”

She wanted to cover her ears; she wanted to hide. But most of all she wanted to throw his accusations back at him. He was the one who desired and yet had no good intentions. She wanted to shout at him as he shouted at her, but if she did, she would lose her tenuous hold on her composure. She would go too far and reveal how much she wanted him—and how much she wanted his affection. Such an admission would expose her to a ruthlessness of which Nightshade was the master. He would use her weakness against her. And after he had done with her, what would happen? He would still go to his lady fiancée, and she would be sent off to America—alone.

Taking refuge in her breeding, Prim clasped her hands and forced her voice to remain steady. “I will not be addressed by you, sir, in that manner. It is clear that my remaining under your protection is impossible, and I intend to leave for America at once. Please give me my book so that I can send it to my brother, who is its rightful owner.”

“No.”

“I thought you might refuse. Very well. I shall leave without it, and you will be forced to return the book yourself. Since you’re accustomed to returning things that don’t belong to you, it shouldn’t be a difficult task.”

She cried out when his hand lashed out and gripped her wrist. He pulled her so close she could see the glittering bronze flecks in his eyes.

“You leave,” he said softly, “and I’ll burn the damned book.”

“You will not.”

The gaze he directed at her had spent millennia
encased in a glacier. “Miss Dane, I have knifed a trap and dropped a bloke what cheated me off the roof of a storehouse. What makes you think I wouldn’t toss that book in a fire?”

“You are hurting me,” she said.

He looked down at her wrist as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. He let go. Prim rubbed the reddened skin, and as she did, Luke swore.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. I said you ain’t leaving.”

“Do you intend to keep me here forever?”

“Daft creature, I’ll keep to our original bargain. If you still want to leave after my fiancées visit …” He straightened and walked to the door.

“It seems I have no choice.”

Luke stopped and gave her a cold smile. “No, you don’t.”

“However, I decline to give you any more lessons.”

“We’re keeping our original bargain, Miss Dane.”

“Hardly, sir, since you’ve threatened me.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Did you know you’re a bloody stubborn little—”

“How many times must I warn you of your language, sir?”

“Thought you wasn’t giving any lessons.”

“One of us must uphold standards of decency,” Prim said stiffly.

“Then I got your word that you’ll stay?”

“I do not give my word to dishonest ruffians.”

He began to walk toward her. “If you don’t promise, I got to think of a way to keep you from doing something foolish.”

Prim thrust out her hands to forestall him and he stopped.

“You have my word.”

“Sure?”

“Are you questioning my word after you’ve asked for it, Sir Lucas?”

“Don’t set up a hue and cry. I was just asking.”

Prim turned her back on him. “I believe our business is finished. Pray excuse me.”

“I suppose that’s your high-and-mighty way of getting rid of me.”

“It is.”

“Choke me dead, Miss Dane. And here all this mortal time I thought you liked my company.”

Turning swiftly she encountered Nightshade’s insolent smile.

“Go away!”

She had to listen to his laughter, fading with his progress toward the great hall. But she could still hear it even when he stopped there, and Prim rushed to the ironbound door and hauled it shut. She want to the farthest corner of the Old Library and sank to the floor. To her dismay, she could hear him whistling as he left: the hall and walked along the gravel drive. Prim lowered her head, covered her ears, and hummed to herself to drown out the sound of his voice.

After a while she moved her hands and listened. Silence, thank Providence. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and succumbed to misery. For the second time in her life she was in love with a man who did not love her. But the devastation of her heart was incomparable.

There had been times in her life when she felt grief. When her parents died, of course. And then there had been another time of misery, when she had left childhood behind and become a young woman. Suddenly everything changed.

Countless restrictions upon her conduct appeared. No longer could she be silly or careless or climb trees or raise her voice or explore the park that surrounded the house. She had to wear her hair up and her skirts long—which made life uncomfortable and cumbersome. She could go nowhere alone, while her brother could roam as he willed. In the space of a birthday, her world shrank and her freedom vanished.

In return, her governess and her mother had promised rewards, marriage and children. At first Prim hadn’t been impressed with the magnitude of these rewards, but one day her parents presented her with an arrangement, a betrothal to Lord Percival Percy, the younger son of a duke. Lord Percival was a most eligible young man of rank and fortune. Neither of these qualifications mattered to Prim.