The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle (9 page)

 

It wasn't until the eager young colt Roxanne was riding began to slow at last that he gained enough ground for her to hear him over the noise of her own passing, and she finally reined in to see who had the audacity to follow her. She might have known, she concluded as she recognised Sir Charles Afforde and a powerfully muscled gelding a couple of years older than her Adonis and therefore not at all easily outrun. Nothing to do but turn and greet the last man she wanted to see this morning with careless politeness, she decided. So why did her heartbeat insist on quickening instead of slowing, and why was a wild fantasy of him riding towards her as her lover, her other half and her strength, insisting on playing out in the feral part of her imagination that she dearly wished would give up and go away?

‘Sir Charles,' she managed to greet him coolly enough, as she soothed Adonis who scented a challenge on the morning breeze that insisted on playing with her wildly tangled tresses and reminding her she probably couldn't pretend she was in her drawing room greeting an acquaintance.

‘Roxanne,' he acknowledged shortly, looking as if he would prefer her to be brought before him aboard ship for suitable punishment.

‘I can't recall making you free of my name,' she said recklessly, given the sharp fury and something even more feral and dangerous that she could see in his eyes now he was too close for comfort.

‘Oh, you do that by your conduct this morning, Rox-an-ne,' he replied, drawing out the syllables as if preparing to carry them off to his lair, along with the rest of her, and ravish them away until she couldn't recall if they belonged to her or not.

She hadn't known how much she liked the glint of respect, and that suggestion of wild heat held in temporary abeyance, in his azure eyes whenever they rested on her, until it was banished by the wolfish boldness he turned on her now as he let that heat blaze without control. To punish her. Somehow she'd roused the devil in him by trying her best to exorcise it in herself and wasn't that an irony to conjure with when she had the leisure and safety to do so?

‘A true gentleman adheres to his own standards, whatever the imagined provocation of others,' she told him coldly, as if images of their limbs tangled in some wanton, private dance were a million miles from her mind.

‘How noble of him,' he informed her huskily, sin and desire informing every word as he leaned forwards and snatched a hard, hot kiss from her lips that told her he'd been restraining himself fiercely at their first truly adult encounter, after all.

Only Adonis's dancing, protesting furiously under her as he reacted like the wild spirit he was to the proximity of the gelding Charles rode, reminded her to be equally angry. Young as he was, Adonis was still a stallion. Maybe it wasn't the quieter beast under her tormentor
he was objecting to, after all, she decided darkly, as she glared at the man who rode him. He was shameless and stared at her as if her clothes had blown away along with her hairpins and her cap. At least Adonis's restless reaction to a possible rival gave her the excuse to concentrate on something other than the man who seemed to think he'd bought a right to govern her along with Davy's inheritance.

‘Go away!' she ordered hotly, nodding at Adonis as he bared his teeth at the infuriating gelding, who looked as if he'd whistle and cross his legs to prove how ridiculous he found all this, if he were only a human. Adonis roared a challenge and would have given his imagined rival a nip if she hadn't turned his head at the last moment. ‘You're annoying my horse.'

‘Only your horse? I must be slipping.'

As she controlled Adonis with her knees and her will, she bared her teeth at him in a mock snarl and met his blue gaze with a glare of her own. ‘Oh, no, you're being every bit as annoying as even you can contrive today. Congratulations, Captain.'

‘I haven't even started yet,' he slapped back, then unfairly took the wind out of her sails by suddenly seeming to find them sitting here trading insults irresistibly amusing.

‘Unfair,' she reproached, wondering what a third party would have made of their half-spoken, half-taken-for-granted conversation.

‘Don't do it again without me?' Suddenly his voice sounded less supremely arrogant and demanding than driven and even, heavens above, pleading.

‘Can he keep up?' she heard herself ask, with a nod at the gelding she knew was unnecessary, but it gave her
time to think about how that second kiss might change things between them if she let it.

‘Easily,' he drawled, understanding of her evasive tactics easy to read in his eyes.

She would never be a woman of mystery while Sir Charles Afforde knew far too much about her sex for comfort. Roxanne shifted in the saddle as the sharp goad of something too close to pain bit into her at the thought of just how he'd gained all that annoying insight, whatever Stella's reservations about his reported legion of lovers. If he'd only had even one or two, which she doubted, it was one or two more than she'd had.

‘A little too easily,' she muttered and pretended to believe they were talking about horses while she impatiently gathered up her streaming tresses and deftly tied them back with the length of narrow, corded ribbon Tabby always put in her pocket for just such an eventuality. A pity, then, that the possessiveness in his eyes was all too easily read as his gaze lingered on the shiny ebony mass of it and frustrated her attempts to turn their encounter into something more restrained, along with her hair.

‘I find it extraordinarily beautiful, whatever you do to it, and so I won't beg you never to cut it lest you immediately decided to do so. Even cropped about your ears it would still be an enchantress's lure, so you can forget that notion a-borning, Miss Courland.'

‘Black hair shows a woman's age more surely than any other colour,' she assured him repressively. ‘In a few years time you'll see that clearly enough whenever we meet.'

‘Rather more than a few, I think, my dear, but I can't
see the day ever dawning when I'll find it less than lovely, even if we're both white as snow.'

She felt a quick rush of that fierce heat she was growing so reluctantly accustomed to at the thought of him being there to see her grow old, then a flush of sweetness overlaid it at the idea he'd see beauty in her when youth had abandoned them both. Not that vigour would while they still had breath in their bodies, she decided wryly, as the notion of such a lifetime of intimacy felt even harder to beat than the one of letting him teach her the glories of love in his bed, then watch him walk away. No, that way madness lay!

‘F
lattery is just words when all's said and done, Sir Charles,' she informed him stiffly and tried not to read his opinion of her craven avoidance strategy in his mocking gaze.

‘And words can sometimes mean exactly what they say, Roxanne, but you're obviously not ready to hear them today. We'll revisit the topic when you've gained a better grasp on truth and lies, along with your temper.'

‘There's nothing wrong with my hold on reality, I assure you, sir,' she snapped, exasperated at his assumption he knew her better than she did herself. ‘I'm a respectable lady who has no intention of becoming otherwise, and you're a rake. I won't let you play your games with my heart or my body.'

‘Ah, but I'm not playing, Rosie, dear,' he informed her in a husky undertone that seemed to pick out some wicked air on the way to her ears and warm it. It trailed
heat and shivers down her spine to earth at that feminine core of heat that she really was going to have to learn to control better in future.

‘I don't answer to that absurd nickname any more, or to the presumption you follow it with, so I'll bid you good day, sir.' She would have wheeled Adonis and left Captain Afforde to enjoy a temporary victory, if only he'd let her. Instead he shot out a lean, strong hand and clasped her reins as easily and surely as if they restrained a fluffy puppy instead of seventeen hands of restive young stallion. ‘Let go!'

‘No, you just agreed not to gallop about like a reckless idiot. I didn't expect a Courland's word to mean so little that you discard it so easily no sooner than it's given,' he drawled, ice hardening his gaze as he held hers.

‘I didn't promise anything, and I wouldn't need to go anywhere in a hurry if you'd only leave me in peace.'

‘You gave me your consent to behave like the rational being you so hotly claim to be as surely as if it was written in blood. Now kindly act like a sensible adult if you wish to be treated like one.'

‘Stop it! One moment you kiss me as if you're entitled to, then you claim the right to govern my actions, Sir Charles. I won't be treated like a thing, and I'm no man's possession, nor will I ever be so.'

‘Yet you'll be mine, Roxanne,' he assured her implacably, arrogantly certain that because he said it would be so and then even the fates couldn't argue, let alone Miss Roxanne Courland. ‘Just as surely as I'll be yours.'

‘Mine and half the faster matrons' and
demi-monde,
' she scoffed, trying to convince herself that she hated his
calm assumption she'd accept him as her lover, or even her husband, just because he wanted her to.

‘No, yours alone,' he promised without the least hint of a smile or a crossing of his fingers behind his back.

‘Well, I won't be yours,' she managed to inform him with gruff steeliness, so it was a shame she failed to hold his implacable blue gaze while she did so, wasn't it?

‘Which shows how much you know, Miss Courland—you're mine as sure as the fact that the sun rises in the morning. All that stands between us and that truth is your inability to admit it.'

‘Don't be ridiculous, there's nothing between us whatsoever. I don't intend to marry and I'll certainly never marry you, Sir Charles.'

‘I should wait to be asked if I were you, Miss Courland,' he said, with a return to the infuriating flippancy she'd never expected to greet with such relief.

‘I'd really rather not,' she told him stiffly and dug her heels into Adonis's side so that he sprang across the sands in an eager canter and then an all-out gallop that gave the lie to any hope Sir Charles might cherish that her magnificent colt was too tired to race anything.

Yet try as they might, neither she nor Adonis could completely shake off their unwanted companions. Any attempt to outpace or outfox them with Roxanne's superior knowledge of the area were easily outflanked, and the four of them arrived in Hollowhurst's stable-yard before Roxanne even noticed she'd gone there automatically instead of returning to her new home.

‘Just look at the state of you, Miss Rosie,' Whistler chided and reminded her of one very good reason she'd sent him back to the castle.

None of Hollowhurst's older servants seemed to have
noticed she was four and twenty now and quite capable of running her own life, and, however much she loved them for their care of her, it still irked her that they wouldn't admit she was quite capable of taking care of herself.

‘What of it, when you've seen me look so hundreds of times before?' she protested.

‘Not in front of a fine gentleman like Sir Charles,' he grumbled and Roxanne was glad Charles was too busy checking his mount over to hear.

‘No, but in front of a far greater one,' she told him impatiently and Whistler just shook his head.

‘No disrespect meant to the old master, Miss Rosie, but this one's a good 'un, too. You shouldn't go about looking just any old how in front of him.'

‘I'll go about dressed like a coalheaver's wife if I take it into my head to do so. Now stand aside and at least pretend to do as you are bid for once in your life, will you? I need to get home and see what's to do in my absence.'

‘You haven't got the reins of such a compact household safely in your hands yet then, Miss Courland?' Charles asked her with another of those quizzical smiles he seemed to use to keep the world at bay.

Now where had that uncomfortable insight come from? Just as well not to think too deeply on that for now, she decided and refused to be diverted. ‘No, shocking, isn't it?' she asked between her teeth and smiled just as insincerely back at him.

‘Deeply,' he drawled and suddenly his humour and his smile became open and boyish and let her in. She decided dazedly that she really didn't wish to be in his deepest confidence, but her emotions insisted on
ignoring her. ‘While it would be as improper of you to visit my drawing room alone as it would be for me to ask you to, Miss Courland, do you care to take a stroll in the gardens while Whistler rubs your horse down for you and cools him down? It hardly seems fair to plunge even so eager a colt straight back to your normal breakneck speed of travel before he's had a rest.'

He was right, damn him! Never having been one to ignore the welfare of any creature because she was in a turmoil herself, Roxanne accepted Sir Charles's hands about her waist and very soon found herself lifted down from Adonis's sweating back and strolling beside her host towards the gardens she'd been looking out on such a short time ago before she met him again.

‘Mereson, have a glass of my best burgundy sent out for both of us and we'll insult that fine statue of Jupiter in the Winter Garden by using him as a side table,' he told his hovering butler as they passed one of the many doors to his new home.

‘Very well, Sir Charles,' Mereson agreed with a look that was probably meant to make them feel like errant schoolchildren and no doubt failed in his new employer's case even as Roxanne felt she'd run away from her lessons.

‘He never did approve of Uncle Granger teaching me to judge a fine wine,' Roxanne recalled. ‘I believe Mereson thinks proper ladies ought to restrict themselves to lemonade or ratafia when not drinking tea.'

‘Not even for you, Miss Courland…' he said and she had to tell herself he didn't mean she was special to him at all; it was just a figure of speech.

‘Since I can't stand either, you were quite right to
order wine for me, even if Stella might not approve of it, either.'

‘She might not indeed, but, as she's not here and we are, I suggest we simply don't tell her.'

Now why did she almost hear a certain feral satisfaction behind that comment, as if getting her alone was just what he'd set out to achieve this morning? Best not to think about that just now, she decided, and concentrated on enjoying being back in her old haunts without the pressure of constantly wondering how much longer she could keep them up as they deserved.

‘I suppose it was for the best,' she finally acknowledged absently, rather surprised to find she'd actually said it out loud, when only last week she'd rather have been horsewhipped than admit as much even to herself.

‘What was that, Roxanne?' he asked, as if he knew perfectly well what she meant, but could hardly believe his ears.

‘That you bought the estate when David never cared for it very much.'

‘And you cared too much?'

‘Maybe. When I was a child I certainly used to wish I'd been born the boy who could inherit it all one day, but I wasn't the first born whatever my sex and so would have missed out on it anyway.'

‘I'm glad you were born a girl, even if you're not,' he told her and his smile was so reminiscent of the earlier, brilliantly hopeful Lieutenant Afforde she'd first met that she laughed delightedly. ‘Do that again and I shall take full advantage of the fact that we're standing under a tree full of mistletoe, despite the fact that Mereson might come upon us at any moment,' he warned her, still
with that joyful wolfishness in his brilliant gaze, as if he'd shed a decade of care all of a sudden and intended to enjoy whatever delights the day might bring with boyish recklessness.

‘It would be a shame to waste it,' she amazed herself by replying and chuckled when he looked more startled, before taking her at her word and pulling her closer so he could kiss her very seriously indeed.

It was the kiss she'd dreamt of for so long, before she put aside such fantasies and got on with her life and he became the disillusioned man she sensed under his armour of rakish indifference to the world. His mouth was firm and teasing on hers and she felt every part of her soften towards him as she reached up and wrapped her hands around his strong neck to pull him even closer. Nobody could accuse him of taking advantage of her when she was very obviously enjoying his mouth on hers, his hard muscled body so close she could feel him breathe and loved the fact that his mighty chest rose and fell faster than usual against hers.

‘Mmm,' he murmured against her shamelessly wanting mouth, as if the very taste of her was driving him distracted and his tongue flickered delight along their softened junction until she opened and welcomed him with a sigh they both understood better than words.

Shivers of unimaginable warmth shook her as he began a sensuous dance of exploration, and sensual curiosity begged her to discover more than she'd dreamt possible in her youthful fantasies. Raising herself further on tiptoe, she insinuated herself even closer to his mighty torso and stretched her curves against his angles, as if testing them for the best fit.

When he settled his hands on the small of her back
and it seemed as if he might use them to hold her away, she gave a protesting quiver and so he soothed them over her waist instead and then a little lower and something inside her flamed into wanting life as her old feelings for him burst into maturity without waiting for her mind to catch up. Her enthusiasm for this lovely intimacy must have tried him harder than he'd expected, for Roxanne felt as if some last restraint had snapped when he lifted her off her feet long enough to settle her on one of the exposed roots of the old tree and arrange her willing body against the hoary bark of its broad trunk so she didn't have to reach so high, and he had access to even more of her. She was in such a haze of warmth and need she hadn't even the wits left to spare to feel triumphant when he ceased exploring the sleek muscles of her slender back and busied himself with the tiny buttons of her riding jacket instead.

Frustrated by the fine lawn of her blouse and the even finer silk of the shift underneath, he did his best with what was for now and first encouraged her shamelessly peaked nipples by running a long, strong, questing finger to explore each one under the gossamer stuff. Throbbing fire bloomed at her centre and she gasped, lips damp and lush from kissing, so he spared his gaze from what his hands were learning and settled his mouth back against the sheer temptation of them instead. What hope was there of rational thought triumphing over such open masculine appreciation? she managed to ask herself distractedly, then went back to working on pure sensation when he tweaked those pebbled nipples he'd been appreciating so gratifyingly and revelled in the sweet, hot need that racked her.

How heady to feel the tremor of need that shook
through her so delightfully echoed by his reverential hands as he cupped her breasts and seemed to find them so perfect that he relinquished her mouth and settled his lips about her nipples to send her to yet another level of arousal as the soft silk between his mouth and her breast seemed to melt to nothing under his questing tongue. Damp and delightful on her sensitised skin, he then left one breast for the other, as if trying to decide where to feast most satisfyingly, and that clutch of heat and light at the joining of her legs flooded with a welcome she half-wanted to clench her thighs against, and half to open them and glory in whatever he could offer to relieve the heady pressure building there.

She whimpered with the unaccustomed drag and the sweet heaviness of that wanting and saw him raise his head and look down at her with a question in his eyes. Unable to deny how eager she was for his attention, and feeling like a reckless maiden risking all with her eager young lover, she just looked back, helpless with wanting, racked with a desire she didn't even fully understand and silently pleaded for more.

He gazed back at her as if trying to decide if he could let them go further. Impatient with his scruples, she bridged the gap between them and rubbed her sensitised breasts against his heavily muscled torso and thought she heard him gasp with an arousal that shadowed her own, so she shyly reached out her hands to find out more. Rubbing her slender palm under his waistcoat, she felt the fine lawn of his shirt over warm, supple skin, muscle and man, then found her goal and allowed herself a tweak similar to the one he had given her prouder nipples. He caught his breath and moaned, so she did it again and daringly leaned up and placed her
mouth over the one it could find under all that masculine camouflage.