The Bride Wore Pearls (28 page)

To his surprise, Anisha suddenly reached out, scooping up the pearls he’d left lying loose on the night table. With a faintly wicked smile, she looped them around his neck, twisted them twice, then placed the opposite end around her own.

“I forgot,” she said, her voice husky with desire, “that I’d promised to wear the pearls for you.”

He laughed and looked down at the incongruity of it. The strand was long and made to be worn in three or four loops. In this fashion, however, even twined round the both of them, the pearls still trailed down her shoulders, just brushing between her breasts where they twisted, the contrast of the pale, shimmering ivory against her warm skin a wildly erotic vision.

Once again, it was as if Rance lost track of time as their bodies were perfectly joined in a slow, exquisite rhythm, their mouths and hands moving over one another as they shared their bodies. For what felt like hours he loved her, watching, bewitched, until she fell into a sensual, almost dreamlike trance, her smile soft, her gaze both far away and yet totally bound to his.

In time, it was as if she swept him away with her, washing him out to sea on a tide of sensual pleasure, setting him adrift in some otherworldly place where he became a part of her, and she a part of him; a place of utter physical harmony where their bodies and their breath were as one. The room, the faint creaking of the bed, even the flickering lamplight, became not a blur but a sort of sensual continuum, a part of their every touch and sigh.

Only his concern for her remained in the back of his mind, a tenuous and slender thread that bound him to reality even as his body was bound to hers. And eventually, a clock struck in the depths of the house, leaving him acutely aware his time with her, were it to last a hundred years, would always feel too short.

Anisha felt it, too, and seemed to bestir herself willingly back to awareness. These were stolen moments and they knew it, the both of them. A time out of place, and likely never destined to be repeated. And when eventually her gaze sharpened to his and she shifted onto her knees to begin to move on him in earnest, Rance thought he might go mad simply watching as the edge of her pleasure neared.

Eventually she unwrapped her arms from his neck and seized hold of the headboard behind him. Again and again she rose, urging herself against the full length of his cock, which was hard as marble now. She threw back her head, the slender tendons of her throat tightening. The pearls slid back and forth in the dampness between her breasts and soon Anisha, too, was slick and hot against him, and Rance had to forcibly resist the urge to tumble her backward and take control by mounting her hard again.

Instead, he eased his hand between them and found the hard nub of her desire just above his shaft. He circled the pad of his thumb round and round, and Anisha cried out, then began to moan.

The beauty of her need as she rode him pushed Rance over the edge. He thrust inside her again and again until they came together in a meteoric shower of shuddering pleasure, his very life force surging inside Anisha. Exquisite, inexplicable sensations shot through him like molten lightning and left him gasping. Left him shaken to his very core.

They collapsed onto the mattress together, still shuddering, tangled in the pearls, Anisha coming to rest against his shoulder, weightless and perfect.

The breath still heaving from his chest, Rance crooked his head to look down at her, still unable to get his mind wrapped around all that he’d experienced tonight. This was
Anisha.
The woman he admired more than any on earth. His friend and confidante.

His lover.

And yet through all the shuddering need, incredible pleasure, and shattering light, a new thought haunted Rance.

How was he ever to give this up?

Could
he give it up? And if not, what did he have to offer her?

Very little, in truth.

Was that not the very reason he had avoided this thing for so long? The very reason he had held fast to their friendship even as he’d attempted to keep her at arm’s length, both emotionally and physically?

But for once, he resolved not to think about what was
not
. As he grappled for sanity and for breath, Rance vowed that for tonight, he would think only of what was. He would savor the feel of this perfect woman’s bare skin against his, and the weight of her head tucked on his shoulder.

Later, she had said, they would think about guilt. And hating himself now—in this sweet and perfect moment—would only dishonor her perfection.

The future . . . ah, now that was another thing altogether.

When his breathing calmed, he unwrapped the long strand from around his neck, then restored his end to her. “Lovely,” he murmured, twisting his head around to nibble at her earlobe.

She laughed, the beads spilling from her hand as she clasped them to her breast. “I confess, I didn’t choose them,” she said. “But had I known you found them erotic, I would have worn them every day for the past year, merely to torment you.”

He nuzzled her lightly on the cheek. “The last year has been torment enough, thank you,” he said. “But why have I never seen them?”

Anisha fell back against his arm and stared up into the silk canopy above. After a few moments passed, she told him about the pearls, and how so often she put them on, only to take them off again, reminding Rance yet again of how precariously between two worlds she was caught.

“So you did that again tonight,” he said softly, his gaze drifting over her face. “Put them on, and took them off? Then just tossed them in the dish?”

She rolled into him and smiled. “Careless, was it not?” she murmured. “And foolish, perhaps, to put on something so untraditional instead. Someday I’ll send round to Garrard’s and have the strand shortened, I suppose.”

“But the jeweled collar and earrings were your mother’s, weren’t they?” he murmured, gazing at her. “And that charm round your ankle—that tiger’s claw set in gold—I recognize it, you see, for Ruthveyn wears one round his neck. Those were hers, too. All of that is deeply traditional.”

“Not
English
traditional,” she said, looking away. “Not in the way people here expect. But it is very hard sometimes to—”

Her words jerked to a halt and he kissed her cheek again. “What?” he murmured. “Go on.”

She cast him a chagrined glance. “It’s just a strand of pearls.”

“It’s not
just
anything,” he said. “It is a symbol. It is . . . your heritage.”

“Yes. Exactly.” For an instant, she caught her lip between her teeth in that way she so often did. “Sometimes, Rance, it’s hard to be so many things at once,” she eventually said. “To be a good English wife, as I once was, and a good mother, and . . . and to still be true to one’s inner self. To keep the heart of one’s self intact, and to acknowledge, even inwardly, one’s differences. Yes, it is just a strand of pearls, and like my own essential
Britishness,
I try to wear it well. Yet so often . . . I fail.”

Rance had no good answer to that; no simple platitude that would settle her inner conflict or undo the hurt he suspected her father and husband had slowly inflicted, or the doubt that they had inadvertently instilled in her heart.

Instead, he pulled her firmly against him, set his lips to her forehead, and spoke the truth of his own heart. “Nish, you have failed at nothing,” he whispered against her skin. “Never. And you’ve earned the right to be yourself; earned it by being a dutiful daughter and an exemplary wife and mother.”

In the dim stillness of the room, his answer seemed to please her, though he knew in the light of day she would likely have quarreled with it as too simplistic. But tonight she did not, and instead scooted tight against him, wrapping an arm round his waist and nestling her head in the crook of his arm. For long moments he lay there, simply listening to her breathe.

She could become so easily the keeper of his heart and his soul, he realized. Perhaps she already was. Perhaps he had entrusted his heart to her at almost first sight. He remembered the rage he’d felt upon seeing Jack Coldwater watching her; the cold, stark fear that the hate surrounding him might come to touch
her
.

Even now he could taste it like bile burning in the back of his throat. Rance forced his eyes shut and forced away the filth of his memories. Not even in his thoughts would he taint this perfect moment.

Eventually he felt her relax in his embrace, her body molded to his, and watched as the lamp’s wick began to sputter, until at last Anisha slept. And though he lay beside her, soothed by the sound of her soft exhalations, he drowsed but little. His mind was caught up in the whirling machinations of those dreaded questions. The
how
s and the
why
s and the
if
s.

He looked down at the long tresses that spilled over his arm like a waterfall of raven silk, at the small, perfect breasts pressed to his ribs, and never had the answers seemed to matter more. And never had the truth seemed so illusory, so just beyond his reach.

He thought again of the slip of paper Anaïs de Rohan had given him, and he felt that fleeting sense of hope brush past again on wings so soft and ephemeral the hope mightn’t have existed at all. The
Fraternitas
’s newest Guardian, he feared, still possessed the naïveté of girlhood. And this—a near decade and a half of fomented scandal—no, this would not be resolved by good intentions and a piece of paper, however well meant it all was.

But even had he been publicly exonerated and the real criminal caught—even if he understood his strange obsession with Jack Coldwater—he would still be who he was. A man hardened by years in prison and on the battlefield, and by too many days and nights passed with sybarites like Ruthveyn in a drug-induced haze of pleasure.

He was a mercenary and a libertine who had lived first by his skill at the gaming table, and later by his wits and his sword; no better, really, than Pinkie Ringgold and that tribe of bullyboys surrounding Quartermaine. And about the only thing he was innocent of was murdering Lord Percy Peveril.

And yet it was not this, entirely, which gave him pause. He was not ashamed of who he was. He had survived a life that would have done in many a man—hell, the despair alone would have broken most of them. But the cloud of guilt hanging over his head had blighted his entire family. It had killed both his parents; one quickly, the other slowly. It had driven his sister from London and into the Highlands. It had pushed his so-called friends so deep into hiding that all that remained to back him up was the strength of the
Fraternitas
.

And nothing had changed. He could count on his fingers the members of the
ton
who believed him innocent of knifing Peveril.

As to Anisha, she was perilously placed as it was. Indians were fast becoming not England’s allies but her subjects—slaves, practically, in some quarters. Anglo-Indian marriages, once marginally acceptable to society, were all but unheard of now. Prejudice and avarice were bleeding the heart out of the Hindustan. Anisha was right to fear for her children’s future. A black pall was slowly falling over India, and even Lazonby could feel it.

For Ruthveyn, his wealth, his title, and his usefulness to the Queen had helped overcome much prejudice. But Anisha had not her brother’s good fortune. Despite her elegance and beauty, Anisha had made few friends here. Time would tell whether tonight’s dinner party had helped or hurt in that mission.

Rance’s musings were cut suddenly short when he heard the clock downstairs strike four, the sounds doleful in the darkness. Cutting a glance at the heavy draperies, already drawn for the night, he wondered how much longer he dared wait before slipping away.

The answer was
not long.

On his next breath, a soft knock sounded at the door. Rance looked down, faintly uneasy, and jogged Anisha awake. Her eyes flared wide in the gloom, and she rolled up onto one elbow. “Umm?”

“Mamma—?” came an urgent hiss through the keyhole. “Mamma, are you up?”

“
Teddy
!” Anisha came awake with alacrity. “Teddy, are you all right?”

Rance was already on his feet and snatching up his things. As Anisha leapt from the bed and jerked on her silk robe, he planted a swift kiss on her lips and vanished into the dressing room, pushing the door half shut on blessedly silent hinges.

“Mamma, I can’t sleep,” said the boy through the slab of wood. “Can I come in?”

Setting one shoulder to the doorframe and tilting an ear, Rance heard the lock snap and the bedchamber door creak open. “Teddy, love,” she said softly, “big boys do not sleep with their mothers. You know that.”

“I
know,
” he whined. “But I
can’t
sleep. Not
anywhere
.”

He heard a rustle of silk, as if she’d knelt to hug him. “Come here, mouse,” she said, her voice gentle. “Now, if this is about the broken vase—?”

“No,” said the boy.

“The trampled daffodils?”

“Not exactly.”

“The snake in the scullery sink?”