Twice Tempted (35 page)

In the end, she dropped her head into her arms so she could not see, not be tempted for the thousandth time to look the way he’d gone, her heart in her throat, her hope dying by painful inches, the cold seeping into her heart and then her brain as she waited as uselessly as she had before.

By the time she heard the soft footfalls approach, she was tucked into a tight little ball, the kind that could almost convince a person she was invisible. By the time the footsteps stopped in front of her, she was trembling, old instincts too powerful to quell.

“How far away did you think I’d gotten?” he asked, his voice even with her eyes.

She couldn’t look up. She didn’t want him to see the tears, stupid tears of relief, of gratitude. “Mayfair,” she whispered, hating how tremulous her voice sounded.

He didn’t say another word, just sat beside her and drew her into his lap. And then, still silent, as if he knew that words would be too much, he wrapped himself around her like a blanket, like a nest, bowing his head over hers, his body flooding hers with warmth and strength, his breath infusing her with life until the tears spilled over her lids and down across his arms and her trembling gradually receded.

Even she hadn’t realized how certain she had grown that he wouldn’t return.

“It really is quite ridiculous,” she said with an untidy sniff as she wiped tears with her wrist. “I wouldn’t have ended up in any worse a place than I have been before.”

He stiffened, as if she had hurt him. “Yes, you would have,” he said, his voice unbearably gentle. “You would have been betrayed one too many times.”

She lifted her head and met his gaze, so suddenly close, soft as warm earth, brimming with sweetness.

He lifted a hand and tenderly brushed back her hair. “I had to go to the other end of the block to see if there was a way past the militia. Chuffy seems to have made it out just before the militia covered the whole block. We, however, will have to wait.”

She couldn’t pull her gaze away, certain that if she did she would freeze. “Well,” she said, taking a deep breath, “I would say our choices are here and Mrs. T’s. Here would be colder, but there might have the militia.”

Briefly brushing her jaw with his fingertips, he nodded. “We’ll try here. Let me go down first, just in case the house is occupied.”

Fiona let him help her to her feet. “It isn’t. I checked.”

He stared at her. “You went in while I was gone?”

“No. I can tell from just a peek. It’s a gift.” He was still staring, so she gave him a big smile, exactly the way Thrasher or Lennie would have. “It is what made me such a good snakesman. I could crawl into any house, know if there was danger before I let the burglars in. Not everyone has the talent.”

She was hurting him with such talk; she saw it and couldn’t stop. She needed to prepare him. She needed him to know that when she finally told him the truth, she wouldn’t be exaggerating. She needed him to know that if she stayed, she would ruin him faster than a charge of treason.

Not just yet, though. She was too much of a coward. When he lifted those soul-deep eyes to her, she couldn’t batter at him anymore. He knew the world; she could tell he did. But he didn’t know her world, and maybe that was better.

“Food?” she prompted.

“No matter how good your instincts,” Alex said, peeking into the same dormer window Fiona had checked, “I will go first. They’re undoubtedly searching the empty houses for us.”

Which was when Fiona was struck by inspiration. She looked down at her dull dress and the duller figure concealed beneath. She looked at Alex’s rough-hewn exterior and thought how handsome he would be in a uniform.

“They won’t be looking for two soldiers,” she said.

Which was how they ended up back at Mrs. Tolliver’s. The officious little constable could still be heard droning on about something a few stories below, and militia still surrounded the building. But Lennie had been correct. Evidently no one had done more than a quick check of the attics. So Alex locked them from inside and leaned a chair under the handle just to be sure. And they went hunting through the treasure trove within for costumes.

And found a bed. And not the bed one should find in an attic, dusty and tattered and shoved in a corner out of the way. The kind of bed someone retired to for comfort and quiet, piled with thick comforters and flower-colored pillows. Wide and soft and silent when a woman sat on it, just because it was there and she was tired, and she was sad, and she was frightened.

And she wanted comfort.

Standing there in the deep shadows surrounded by an army of someone’s imagination, she saw that bed and suddenly forgot about food, about rescue and salvation. She actually shivered, as if she had just touched lightning. Her breath caught and her breasts tightened, and suddenly from nowhere she could see herself entwined with Alex in this bed, sweat-sheened and exhausted, murmuring, stroking, soothing after another furious joining. Ravenous for more. Certain in those moments that nothing mattered but what happened in that room.

She knew better, of course. But no logic could ease her sudden need.

She was turning away, hoping to regain her senses, when she caught sight of Alex’s gaze on her. In that instant, her decision was made. The raw need in his eyes flayed her. The bleak hunger that echoed in her belly. It wouldn’t be pretty. There would be nothing to write odes about, good or bad. But for this moment, they needed each other. And for this moment, they had been given just enough space to make it happen.

Never taking his gaze from her, he held out his hand. Never saying a word, she took it. For a very long moment, they stood just that way, hand in hand, the silence stretching into shreds.

“Come along,” he said finally, his voice raspy. “Surely we can find some kind of comfort here.”

It was as if he’d heard her. He wasn’t speaking of mattresses or pillows; she knew it. Her body certainly knew it, his voice setting off a harmonic tremor that should have sounded like wind instruments. “Well,” she said, “we do have a bit of time to waste.”

And she knew he could hear the wanting in her voice as well. They were locked in a room born of make-believe, caught in the eye of a storm, and for that moment, nothing made as much sense as what they were about to do.

“This wasn’t how I wanted to make love to you again,” he whispered, cupping her face. “I wanted to give you roses and champagne and featherbeds.”

“Next time,” she said with a tremulous smile. “For now, this is perfect.”

They both smiled at that because of course it wasn’t, except that they were coming together again at last, here in the anonymity of a strange room, veiled in the night and bared by their need. They disrobed each other, the chill somehow disappearing as they shed layers, and laughter rising when Alex discovered the camouflage Fiona had worn, wrapped like a mummy until her breasts ached and padded enough that if she fell on her behind she would bounce. He unwrapped her, making it a sensual pas de deux, his face infused with heat as he watched her pale breasts slowly appear. She turned on her toes, smiling for him, arms out, head back, wishing with all her heart that this were her life, laughter and discovery and wonder. They lay coats down beneath them and pulled the patchwork blanket over them, and for a long time simply explored.

Oddly, this was when they felt the luxury of time. This was when they stroked heating skin and tasted hollows and angles and soft, tender flesh. This was when Fiona delighted herself on the soft curling hair that crossed Alex’s chest and then arrowed south. It was when Alex measured her feet and traced every inch of her legs, from ankle to inner thigh, his touch reverent and thorough. This was when they laughed and smiled and teased, here in the poor darkness while the rest of the world waited.

“What is all over your face?” he demanded, wiping at it with his thumb. “You’re yellow.”

She giggled, which just made her breasts brush against the soft hair on his chest and pull her toes tight. “Mrs. T,” she admitted. “Stage makeup. She said it would help me go unnoticed.”

“She was right.”

Fiona inhaled the scent of his skin. “You smell like a workman.”

He pulled back a bit. “Is that bad?”

She smiled up at him. “Not on you. Not now. Honest work never smells bad on a man.”

His own smile was wry. “None of my work is honest, Fee.”

“Of course it is. If not honest, certainly honorable.”

That stilled his hand. “I thought of giving you to murderers.”

She stroked his stubbled cheek. “Of course you did. Your father was desperately ill. You wouldn’t have left me there, though.”

She hoped. But she didn’t press. She had more important things to think about, like how delicious his breath felt against her skin.

He looked down on her, his eyes deep and solemn. She smiled, hoping for a response. But he didn’t smile back. He frowned, and she could have sworn she saw a gleam in his eyes. “How could I ever be worthy of you?”

She blinked, openmouthed. “Of
me
? You feel you aren’t worthy of
me
? Are you mad? Didn’t you hear me tell you that I stole to survive? Coal and food and handkerchiefs and on occasion coins. I lied and I cheated and…”

She got no further because he brought his mouth down on hers with a force that took her breath. “You,” he whispered between long, furious kisses, “are…perfect.”

And when he drove into her, filling her almost beyond bearing, she almost believed it. When he murmured endearments and praise and encouragement, and when he let his hands praise her all on their own, his sweat-slick body arching taut above hers, his gaze locked into hers, his mouth relentlessly seeking, soothing, supping, she thought that very possibly she deserved the desire that wound through her body. Perhaps it wasn’t wrong for him to waste this attention on a scrubby Scottish brat. Just maybe she was worthy of a good man’s love.

And then, so suddenly it swept every coherent thought before it, her body seemed to explode into fireworks, into lightning and colors, coursing through her, seizing her like madness, every inch of her on fire, freezing, singing, until she wept and, for the first time in her life, was surprised to know that there were tears of joy.

And even that joy wasn’t the sharpest, clearest, sweetest. That joy happened when right after her, Alex called her name, his hands tight around her, his mouth on hers, pumping, pumping until he had emptied himself into her and collapsed, languid and boneless, in her arms.

*  *  *

She should tell him, she thought a while later. He had told her the truth. He had risked sharing terrible secrets, secrets that could see him hanged, even though his wife had been the traitor. He had bared himself, body and soul, and entrusted both in her hands. Couldn’t she do the same?

She looked to where her hand lay splayed across his strong, broad chest, and thought of the past few hours. And she thought, no, not now. This isn’t the place. This is a place of dreams and possibilities and pretend. There would be a perfect time to tell him. A time when she would have the leisure to explain the whole so the light in his eyes didn’t go cold. So he understood, even though most days, she didn’t.

There would be a time.

She couldn’t seem to find it, though. Not when they rested, curled in each other’s arms, sharing heartbeats and silence. Not when Alex turned to her twice more, each more trenchant and delicious than before. Not when she turned to him, because she knew their time was disappearing and she couldn’t bear even the space of a sheet between them.

Not when they managed to finally sneak out of the far house in the early hours of the morning and stroll nonchalantly up to Upper Brook Street, a Hussar officer and his faithful batman, nodding to late revelers and waving to the Charlie as they passed his box. Not when they came upon the duke’s town house, corpse white against the uniform line of redbrick town houses, where they suspected watchers waited in the deepest shadows.

“Binkley,” Alex roared, weaving just enough to betray a man desperately trying to hold his balance against a surfeit of gin, “are we close to the barracks?”

“Nowhere’s near, sir,” Fiona answered him with a gentle shove to the shoulder to keep him from toppling. “Nearer Mr. Wickersham’s drop.”

Alex shook his head, only Fiona seeing the mad twinkle in his eye. “Not stayin’ with Wickersham. Farts somethin’ fierce. Melted me best brass buttons back in Badajoz.” Suddenly he barked and slapped his knee, almost toppling again. “Say that fast, Binkley! Dare ya!”

Which left the watchers smiling and the Charlie chuckling as he set out on rounds, his lamp lifted high. And which left Alex and Fiona unmolested as they strolled down the street where they snuck around to the mews behind.

The time to tell Alex the truth wasn’t right when they cased the house, nor when they found the house locked tighter than a nun’s knees, or when Fiona brushed Alex aside and used her wicked little stiletto to jimmy open the back window. Not even when they crept through a house so similar to the Yorkshire mansion, with its white marble and priceless artifacts and stiff, pale furniture placed at precise angles, that Fiona’s stomach rolled sickeningly and she kept listening for the sound of her grandfather’s precise footsteps.

The time to confess would be soon, Fiona thought, her heart climbing into her throat with each step. She felt its approach like a storm closing on the horizon, so dreaded that she couldn’t even remember how they had reached the dining room and the Gainsborough portrait of her proud, hawk-nosed grandmother, which Alex drew aside to reveal a wall safe.

“The dining room,” Fiona mused with a nod. “Who would think to look here? Hope it’s not a Bramah lock. Those are the very devil to get into.”

Alex turned around, a set of lock picks in his hands. “Is this another of your skills?”

“No. This is specialist’s work. I nicked handkerchiefs and ribbons. Stuff I could carry easily.” She shook her head. “I never really thought I’d make use of those talents again.”

“Well, this is your last time.”

She pointed to the picks. “I see you know your way around a burglary.”