White Regency 03 - White Knight (29 page)

Grace lay in the darkness of her
bedchamber, curled brokenly at the edge of the bed with only the moonlight to
hold her. Her window was opened slightly and she could hear the sounds of the
loch breaking on the shore beneath the castle while the dancing went on in the
great hall below. Laughter and merriment continued to abound. Once someone had
called out, asking for the laird and his lady. When neither of them appeared,
someone else suggested that they had perhaps retired abovestairs for a bit of
merrymaking of their own. This had elicited a new round of toasts to the
continuity of such a happy union.

It had also elicited a new bout of tears
from Grace that even now dampened her pillow.

She felt the brush of a sudden chill
against her legs and turned, realizing someone had just entered her room.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

It was Christian, his voice taut with
discontent.

“I wasn’t asleep.”

She watched as he came into the room,
approaching her tentatively. “Grace, I need to explain.” His eyes
were hooded in the moonlight. “There are things you know nothing about,
things about me and my past—”

He fell silent, struggling with his words.
Grace made to rise from the bed, but he held up a hand to stop her.

“Grace, do you know why I married
you?” He answered before she could frame a response. “I married you
because I had to, yes, because of an agreement I made with my grandfather. It
was not for the reasons you may think. It had nothing to do with money or any
of the other reasons. It
was part of a debt I owed him made many years ago, a pact I made with the devil
that he is.”

He paused, gathering his thoughts. Grace
simply waited, knowing there was more.

“Do you know how my father
died?”

“Mrs. Stone said something to me the
night we were at Westover about an illness.”

Christian shook his head. “That is
what my grandfather told everyone. It was a brilliant excuse. No one ever
suspected the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Grace, my father did not die because
of any sickness, real or imagined. My father was killed defending the honor of
my mother against the man he’d learned she had been having a clandestine
liaison with.” He stopped for a moment and when he spoke again, his voice
was ragged with emotion. “The man whose child she likely carried.”

The full meaning of his words reached her
a moment later. “Eleanor?”

“Yes.” He finally stood before
her now. “To this day she does not know that we do not share the same
father. After my father was killed, I promised my grandfather I would do
anything he asked of me if he would never reveal the truth of her
conception.”

“But she is his granddaughter.”

“No, Grace, to his thinking, she was
not conceived of my father. Eleanor is simply the illegitimate daughter of my
mother, who my grandfather never cared for because my father had chosen her to
be his wife against his wishes. After my father was killed, my grandfather was
ready to leave my mother penniless and banished from the family. She would have
been ostracized by society and Eleanor would have been labeled a bastard. She
would never have known the advantage of that same world that had created
her.”

“But what does that have to do with
agreeing to wed me?”

“It was my grandfather’s condition, a
part of it. In return, he would guarantee his silence and allow my mother and
Eleanor the protection and financial support
of the Westover name. They were to live in London in a
residence separate from my grandfather. He would provide Eleanor with a season
and a dowry so that she might marry well. No one would ever know that Eleanor
had not been conceived legitimately.”

Grace’s thoughts turned to Eleanor, and to
how willing she had been at the Knighton ball to accept Grace as her sister.
How tragic it would have been had she been punished for the circumstances of
her conception. “But what of Eleanor’s true father? Wouldn’t he have known
the truth?”

Christian closed his eyes, his throat
working with emotion against the demons that consumed him. Suddenly he was
putting words to what had happened while Grace listened on in silence.

“He awoke me before dawn. I can still
remember the light from my grandfather’s candle stinging my eyes as he shook me
from the warmth of my bed. He tossed me a pair of breeches and told me to come
with him, that I was about to enter a man’s world. I barely had enough time to
pull on my coat before he was pulling from my chamber and dragging me along the
dark hallways at Westover Hall. He said nothing more of what was happening, and
I knew enough of my grandfather’s temper to keep silent.

“My father was waiting at the bottom
of the stairs, dressed all in black, looking scarcely at all like the man I had
called father for nine years. He told my grandfather he shouldn’t have brought
me. I will never forget his eyes, fixed with a look I only later realized was
insanity.

My grandfather refused to listen to him,
saying something about how I would learn the lesson my father should have
learned long ago. My father had simply shrugged, turning to walk outside. We
followed, climbing into the carriage that already awaited on the drive. No one
spoke during the short ride, not even when we stopped at a misty moor where my father
had often taken me hunting. The sun was just barely starting to rise and I saw
a horse there with a lone figure standing beside it. It was then I realized
that my father was going to fight a duel.

“I stood watching as my grandfather
and my father walked to meet the other man. A pistol box was presented and
weapons chosen while my grandfather recited the rules of honor.” Christian
scoffed.
“Honor.
There is nothing at all honorable about two men
agreeing to kill each other.

“The weapons were primed and checked
and places were taken. Ten paces were measured out before each man then turned
to face the other. In the beating of a heart, a single shot was fired. I saw my
father drop into the tall grass. I saw the other man lower his arm to his side
beneath the cloud of smoke from his pistol. I ran for my father, crying out
when I saw the blood seeping from a wound in his chest. His eyes were already
fixed in death and I heard the slow, rasping sound of his last breath leaving
his body.”

Grace reached for his hand, tears flooding
her eyes. “Oh, Christian, I am so sorry.”

He took a deep breath. “A short time
later, the other man came forward to make sure he had killed my father. He even
nudged him with the toe of his boot. I lost all awareness of myself. I remember
taking up my father’s gun. It was still cocked and primed. I stood and pulled
back on the trigger. I discharged his shot. I heard a second shot fire. I
watched the man who had killed my father fall to his knees. I looked and saw my
grandfather then beside me, smoke rising from the pistol he held. Together, we
had committed murder.”

If Christian looked at Grace and expected
to find disgust for what he had just revealed to her, he was mistaken. Instead
tears of compassion were running down her cheeks. She stood from the bed and
placed the palm of her hand against his face. Christian closed his eyes,
fighting against his own emotions, and took her wrist and kissed it softly. His
other hand he gently placed against her belly where even now his child grew.

He whispered against her hand. “No
one ever knew the truth.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “My
grandfather paid the local physician to swear that my father had died of a
sudden illness. He paid some men to dispose of the other man’s body so that his
family would never know what became of him. No one ever
knew the truth. Except
my grandfather. In order to prevent him from seeing through his threat to my
mother and Eleanor, he made me promise my life to him. From that day on, my one
sole purpose became that of procreating the next Westover heir. And when a son
was born, it would be his.” “His?”

Christian’s eyes stung with the tears he
had refused to shed for so long. “Grace, he made me vow to give him my
son. I thought I could prevent it by never marrying. But then he found you. I
thought I could keep him from it by making it a marriage in name only. All I
had to do was share your bed once, that night at Westover Hall. I had to take
your virginity, but that didn’t mean I had to sire a child. I thought I could
do it, but my grandfather got the better of me. He had chosen well, because no
matter how I tried, I could not resist you. Every time I came to you, I would
lose my resolve. I couldn’t control it, and I would hate myself afterward
because I feared you would become pregnant. Do you understand now why I reacted
the way I did at hearing that you carried our child? All I could think was that
my grandfather had won, that no matter how I had vowed to myself that I would
not give him an heir, in the end, I still had.”

Grace touched her hand softly against the
ties of his
sark
. “He will only win, Christian,
if you allow him to. If
we
allow him to.”

Christian swallowed back his emotions.
“I know that now, Grace. It took facing him tonight to come to that
realization. As I stood in the darkness of that courtyard, even as I hated him
so deeply, all I could think about was all I had done to keep you from reaching
me. From the very moment when you came tumbling into my life, you changed
everything I had known. I wanted only to keep you from knowing the darkness of
my world. I was too blinded by my hatred for my grandfather to see that by
keeping you apart from me, I was only preserving that darkness. I should have
welcomed you, but instead I hurt you. I blamed my grandfather for the misery I
faced each day in the mirror when instead I should have realized that in
forcing me to marry you, he had given
me the greatest gift I could ever receive.” He
touched her softly on her cheek. “He gave me you.”

Grace looked at Christian, her heartbeat
racing.

“You make me a better man, Grace. You
gave me your love when I gave nothing in return except anger and pain. I will
forever regret having not realized it sooner.”

She shook her head, placing her fingers
against his lips. “Do not speak of it.”

Christian covered her hand with his and
kissed her fingertips softly, watching her. “I want to love you, Grace. I
need to love you.”

Grace blinked away her tears and said on a
gentle whisper. “Then love me, Christian. Love me now.”

Her words echoed through his consciousness
like the whisper on the Scottish wind. Christian closed his eyes, lifting her
up and burying his face against her neck. Gently he lowered her to the bed
beneath him, her golden hair spilling about her shoulders in soft waves,
inviting his fingers to thread through the silken tresses.

Christian took her face into his hands and
lowered his mouth to kiss her, taking her tenderly against him. He felt her
arms go around his waist, felt her hands run down over the length of him to his
legs, her touch filling him with her willing warmth. He felt her fingers slide
beneath the fabric of his kilt, running upward over the backs of his thighs. A
jolt of desire rocked him as she cupped his buttocks in her hands and he moaned
into her mouth, feeling the pressure of her softness against his sex. He felt
the fire that had consumed him every time he’d come to her before ignite like
wildfire and pulled his mouth away from hers, fighting to maintain his control.

He would not hurry this. They had all
night. This time he would give Grace a woman’s pleasure. He would show her
lovemaking in its truest sense, without pain, without chaos. Tonight he would
watch her as she found her release and he would know the reality of an earthly
heaven.

Slowly Christian guided Grace back against
the pillows, taking up the blouse she wore and helping her to slip it over her
head. Her breasts were white in the moonlight and the sight of her nakedness
set his heart
to
pounding, as he took in the perfect roundness of her breasts, the smoothness of
her belly that would soon swell with his child. He unhitched the fastening of
her skirt and slid the fabric down to her toes.

Christian stood at the side of the bed,
just staring at Grace in the firelight, awestruck that she was his, that she
would give him the gift of her love again after all that had taken place
between them. He didn’t deserve her, but he thanked God for her. Christian
reached over his head, pulling off his shirt. He watched her eyes study his
body in the moonlight and felt his sex harden in response as she fixed her eyes
upon where it pushed at the fabric of his kilt. He released the buckle at his
side and let the woolen fabric fall to his feet.

Grace reached for him, beckoning to him as
he stood naked at the side of the bed. It was all the invitation Christian
needed. He slid onto the mattress beside her, pulling her soft warmth against
the length of him. He took her mouth again, tasting her with his tongue as he
took the weight of her breast into his palm, feeling the softness of her skin,
working his fingers over her nipple, teasing it to hardness as she murmured
into his mouth. He traced his fingers downward over her belly to the down froth
of curls that marked her most passionate place. Lifting her slightly, he urged
her legs gently apart. He touched her softly and felt the moistness of her
slick against him.