The Courtship (30 page)

She lay there, twitching and jerking and arching as far as the soft ties on her wrists and ankles would allow, until the pleasure gradually faded. She looked over at him as he sat in the chair beside the bed, drinking some more tea and reading the
Gazette
.

He wasn't even looking at her. She wanted to cry, but of course she wouldn't. She wanted to kill him, but of course, at the moment, she could not do that either. Perhaps she could curse him to death. But there were no words coming out of her mouth. She just lay there, feeling the pulses of pleasure slowly fade, leaving her empty and cold and ready to murder him. So that was his discipline. He called it not quite ecstasy, the bastard.

Objectively, his punishment was incomparable. It was a Level Ten, at the very least. Hollyhock bunches were nothing compared to this.

She wanted to stab him in his black heart. With her father's sword. She jerked on her left wrist. To her astonishment, she was suddenly free. She lay there and blinked. The damned tie had simply slipped loose. Now the other wrist. Surely she couldn't be so lucky as to free that one too. How had she moved her wrist just then, just before the knots had slipped loose?

She'd turned her wrist inward, then given a sharp jerk. She did it again. The knots slipped open over her other wrist. She did the same thing with each ankle. She was free. His head was buried behind the
Gazette
. He wasn't paying any attention to her at all.

She felt fury pump through her and a high degree of admiration and respect for his discipline methods. He had driven her to the brink of madness, then left her. Yes, it was very effective, but surely he could be watching her face, perhaps even teasing her. But no, the miserable wretch was reading. Very slowly she sat up, shook off the cravats, and without a word, with no warning at all, she jumped from the bed and onto him, flinging him backward. The
Gazette
pages scattered over the floor. The chair toppled and they fell over together, she on top of him.

S
HE GRIPPED HIS HAIR and banged his head several times against the rug. It was unfortunate that the damned rug was so thick and soft. She wasn't making any headway at all. She banged him again. “You bastard,” she yelled right in his eye. “You wretched bastard. I think your discipline was disgraceful. I would rather be walloped on the side of the head with a beam. I would rather be forced to eat boiled turnips with no salt, which is a nice solid Level Three punishment. But not what you did, this despicable not quite ecstasy discipline. I hated it. Do you hear me, Spenser? I hated it.” She smacked his head down again against the rug.

He was laughing.

She reared up, still beyond herself, and stared down at him. She banged his head yet another time. He was still laughing. At her.

“You made me wild and then you had the gall to leave me.” She was sitting on top of him now, leaning over, her hands around his throat. Her ripped nightgown hung loose, nearly falling off her shoulders. “You clod, you left me and came over here to read your newspaper. A bloody newspaper. You even drank tea. I am going to mash every bone in your wretched body.” She started with his neck. She was trying her best to choke him to death. She just might succeed. Helen had very strong hands. Her breasts were nearly touching his face.

He grabbed her wrists and pulled her fingers off his throat. He grinned up at her like a man who had just filched a packet of silver and discovered, to his utter amazement, that it was gold. “Will you declare that I am the master of discipline? That you are only a very distant second to me? Just look at you, Helen, trying to kill the man who so perfectly disciplined you.”

She stopped cold. She sat up on him. Her nightgown still hung around her, nicely open, and he just looked and slavered and enjoyed. “You're right,” she said slowly. “It was a two-part discipline that was more than effective. It was devastating.” She leaned down and kissed him. Then she bit him, then licked where she had bitten. She felt his hand on the back of her head bringing her back down to him. Because he had no shirt on, her breasts were against his warm flesh.

He kissed her wildly, without restraint for perhaps thirty seconds. “Oh, no,” he said into her mouth, grabbed her arms and shoved her back up. Her eyes were slightly crazed, her lips parted, as were his.

“No, just stay there, Helen, even though you are crushing me into the floor. Now, dearest, I have to say this. You misled me. I had believed you possessed of one of the premier brains in all of England—at least that is what you led me to believe. I must reevaluate that now. Ah, I forgot that you are, after all, a woman, with all the drawbacks, all the problems, all the lacks inherent to your charming, albeit occasionally incompetent sex.”

She started to come down to kiss him again, then she paused and frowned. “Whatever are you talking about?”

He shook his head, disappointment written all over his face. He sighed, then said, “Well, you see, that took you much too long.”

She grew utterly still. She splayed her palms on his bare chest, a very nice chest with crisp hair. “What took me too long?”

But she knew, oh, yes, she knew. He loved her hands on him. He wondered if she could feel his heart speeding up. He said, “It's the little half flick that you do with your wrists, that quick turn inward, that does the trick. The knots just slip right off. Yes, it took you a very long time to find the answer.” Then he reached up and cupped her bare breasts in his palms. “Just beautiful,” he said. “Now, before you have your way with me, do you agree to marry me?”

She just sat there on top of him, her nightgown hanging off her, her hair tousled around her face, disbelieving what he had done to her. She had never known a more beautiful man in her entire life. All of him was beautiful.

“I mean this, Helen. No more ecstasy, no more insane desire. I won't make love with you again until you promise you will marry me.”

She still just sat there, leaning into his palms now, letting him hold the weight of her breasts. She closed her eyes. “I cannot.”

In a flash, he threw her off him. She was on her back in the middle of the rug and now he was on top of her, lying flat on top of her so that she couldn't move.

Their noses were nearly touching. He yelled in her face, “Why the hell not? The truth, Helen, now, or I will tie you down again, and this time I won't build in an escape route for you.”

She swallowed.

To his astonishment, tears were seeping out of her eyes, streaking down her cheeks. He cursed.

He rose above her. She immediately turned onto her side, bringing her legs up to her chest, and she cried. She stuffed her fist into her mouth. It didn't matter. The tears kept coming.

The discipline mistress of Court Hammering was lying on her side on the floor crying her eyes out.

He cursed again, leaned down and pulled her upright. “This will surely bow my back,” he said, as he managed to pull her up and over his shoulder. He staggered to the large wing chair in front of the fireplace. He eased down into it, pulling her across his lap, holding her tightly against him. “No, sweetheart, don't cry. It shatters me. You know that a big girl shouldn't have to cry about anything at all. No, a big girl would tell me immediately what bothers her. I can tidy up any mess, Helen, solve just about any problem, strike down any person who is bothering you. Of course, first, you have to trust me.”

He rocked her. Finally she dried up. She was hiccuping. He smiled as he kissed her hair.

“He's alive,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

He blinked. “What did you say, dearest? You're thinking I'm alive and quite all right, even though I had to lift you off the floor and pull you over my shoulder and actually carry you over here to this nice big chair that thankfully holds both of us?”

He felt her draw a deep, steadying breath. He pulled her nightgown over her naked side. He eased her up. When she was sitting, her head lowered, her hair nearly covering her lovely profile, he said, “What's wrong, Helen? You didn't like my games?”

“Yes,” she said. “Your games were exhilarating. The escape—that was very clever of you. If I had not happened upon turning my wrist in just that way, I wouldn't have found it. I would have felt very stupid when you finally showed it to me.”

“Marry me, Helen. I'll devise new knots to tease you. I'll contrive a very special discipline for you on our wedding night.”

She turned then, and the nightgown fell open. He resolutely kept his eyes on her face. Her eyes were red, her nose was red, and there were tear streaks on her cheeks. He gently touched his fingertips to her beloved face. “I'm not making love to you, roaring over you, all frenzy and madness. No, I am containing myself. I am simply holding you, all calm and controlled, and your nightgown is gaping open, and your beautiful breasts not three inches from my itching fingers.”

She smiled, but it was a pitiful thing, that smile of hers, and it fell away completely when she said, “I said that he is alive.”

He said nothing at all. He didn't want to. He had an awful foreboding. He wanted to tell her not to say any more, but he didn't. He waited for the guillotine to fall.

“My husband is still alive. I received a letter about six months ago. I don't know where he is. The letter came from Brest, on the far west coast of Brittany.”

He grunted. He had traveled through the picturesque town some seven years before, when the Treaty of Amiens was still holding together. “There's nothing there as I recall, except fishermen. Why is he there? Why isn't he here? What happened to him? Are you certain that it is his handwriting? What is the damned fellow's name?”

“Gerard Yorke, the second son of the First Secretary of the Admiralty, Sir John Yorke.”

Well, that was a kick. “Isn't the First Secretary as old as that oak tree just outside the window?”

“Yes, at least as old.”

He had to keep calm, keep a firm grip on things. There had to be a way out of this, there had to be. “Have you written to him? Or did you go to see him when you were in London?”

“I wrote to Sir John, telling him about the letter. He did not reply. I wrote him once more and enclosed a copy of the letter. He still did not reply. The day after Gray and Jack's wedding, I went to the Admiralty at Whitehall. He refused to see me. He sent his secretary to tell me that his son had died a hero's death and that he had nothing at all to say to me. He didn't know why I would send him a ridiculous letter that wasn't even written by his son. He said that since I had not even managed to provide my husband a child, I had no claim on him or on his family.”

“He sent his secretary to tell you this?”

“Yes, the poor man was embarrassed to his toes.”

“Why didn't you tell me this two nights ago at the inn when I poured out my soul to you?”

“Because at that moment in time I didn't want to marry you, nor any man, ever again. Just look at the one husband I did take on—he returns to haunt me and I never even liked him after about two weeks of being his wife.” She shuddered at the memories, sighed, and looked down at her hands. “Maybe it wasn't even two weeks.”

“I see. Why didn't you tell me when I had you here, all nice and tied down to the bed?”

She cursed. He was so surprised that he just stared at her. “Why?”

“Oh, all right, you will just keep pulling and tugging, won't you? Well, here it is—I wanted to see what you would do to me.”

The woman would drive him mad, he thought, staring at her, and he wanted it more than anything he had ever wanted in his life. He lightly ran his fingertip down her cheek and over her jaw. “You are so bloody soft. Did you like what I did to you?”

“I don't know if I should tell you the truth.”

He hugged her even more tightly and said, “I have this feeling that you and I will come back to that again, later, probably many times. Now, have you told your father?”

She shook her head. “Why? There is nothing he can do. Besides, he never liked Gerard. I don't want to worry him. As for Sir John, perhaps he didn't know his son's handwriting all that well. But I did. It was his handwriting, or an excellent forgery. The main reason I wrote to Sir John and tried to see him is that he is the First Secretary of the Admiralty. He is powerful. If anyone could find out anything about Gerard, it is Sir John.”

“And yet he didn't want to hear about it. He refused to see you. That seems odd, doesn't it?”

“Yes, and I don't understand it. His son's body was never recovered.”

“What happened?”

“Gerard was killed aboard a ship that wasn't more than a quarter mile off the coast of northern France. One of the cannons exploded and set the ship afire. They couldn't get the fire out. Just about every man jumped overboard, including Gerard, who was the first mate. No one stayed on board, even the captain. The problem was that Gerard couldn't swim. Isn't that odd, a man in the navy who spends all his time on the water, and he can't swim? I have been told that many sailors can't swim. In any case, a severe winter storm then struck, but not in time to douse the fire on board the ship. I was told that only half a dozen sailors managed to survive the swim to shore.