Kitabı oku: «Her Dearest Sin», sayfa 3
“I think I should like to be amazed,” she said promptly, realizing how much she was enjoying this.
There was no need to guard her tongue or to watch her back. She was simply a woman engaging in light flirtation with a gentleman who seemed skilled in the art.
“Carrying dispatches on the battlefield. Scouting. Procuring provisions when need be. Dancing.”
“Dancing?” she repeated, allowing her own amusement at what seemed to be a ridiculous non sequitur.
“Oh, quite the most important requirement in a staff officer, I assure you.”
Like his laugh, like the heady sense of freedom the darkness provided, his teasing was exciting.
“The ability to dance?” she mocked.
“And to be enormously charming while doing so.”
“I’m sure you excel at all of them,” she said.
“Would you care to put that to the test?”
“Here?”
“Or inside, if you prefer.”
“Not inside,” she said, the laughter wiped from her voice.
“Then…”
With the word, he threw the cigarillo away. Her eyes followed the glowing arc of its short flight, and when they came back, he was holding out his hand. It was close enough that she could see it, despite the darkness that obscured his face. Hesitating only long enough to draw a fortifying breath, she placed her fingers over his.
Even through the supple kid gloves she wore, she could feel its strength. A horseman’s hand, she thought, remembering the muscled contours of the Englishmen’s bodies, their strength more revealed than concealed by the superb cut of their clothing.
His fingers were perfectly steady, although she was aware that hers betrayed a small vibration. Anxiety or excitement? she wondered.
Then, as he moved, drawing her with him into the center of the arbor walkway, she decided it made no difference. One dance in the concealing darkness. And she was determined to make the most of it.
He turned to face her, bowing from the waist. She dropped a deep curtsy in return, and then, once more, they faced one another.
Here, away from the shadow of the trees, she could almost see his face. And her heart began to beat too quickly.
In perfect time to the measures drifting out from the ballroom, he began to lead her through the seguidilla. And she found that what he had told her was nothing but the truth. Despite the fact that the dance had never, so far as she was aware, traveled beyond her native country, his performance of the steps she had learned in childhood was faultless.
Under the spell of their perfection and the music, she began to relax again, perhaps even relishing the sense of danger in what they were doing. From that exhilaration or from the exertion of the dance, the blood in her veins began to flow more quickly, making her feel more alive than she had felt in months.
They moved together in exquisite union. His ability to anticipate the familiar rhythms of the ancient dance seemed no less than hers. She, who had been bred to feel them.
And then, as she made a turn, her eyes inadvertently found the lights of the palace. Someone was standing on the balcony, looking out into the garden. Without being able to discern anything beyond the shape and size of the figure, she knew in an instant who was there.
Like some faceless nemesis, her guardian was peering out into the shrouded darkness beneath the trees. And he was looking for her. Her fingers fell away from those of her partner, as her feet came to an abrupt stop, disrupting the pattern of the dance.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
The tone was probably no different than that of a normal conversation. To her, the question, and especially its masculine intonation, seemed magnified in the nighttime stillness. Loud enough for Julián to hear?
“I have to go,” she said.
She began to turn, and his fingers closed around her wrist. Her attempt to flee was effectively halted, not only by his hold, but by her shock that he would dare detain her.
She twisted her arm, trying to wrench it free. Instead, his fingers tightened over the bone of her wrist, gripping hard enough to be painful.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, twisting her arm again. “Please let me go.”
His hold was implacable, his determination seemingly unmoved by her plea. Heart hammering, she wondered what she could say that would make him release her before Julián found them.
As she tried to decide, her eyes again sought the figure of her guardian. He had left his position beside the balustrade and had started down the steps that led into the garden.
She wondered briefly, ridiculously, if the Englishman might be armed. But of course, no one would dare bring a weapon into the royal palace, certainly not a representative of a foreign government.
He was therefore defenseless. And Julián…
“You don’t understand,” she said, panic coloring her voice. “He’s coming.”
“Who’s coming?” he asked. His tone betrayed nothing except a calm curiosity.
“My guardian. Please. He can’t find me here with you.”
“Of course,” he said agreeably.
Rather than releasing her, he used the hand he had wrapped around her wrist to draw her into the shadows. Back under the obscuring canopy of trees they had forsaken to indulge in that dangerously exposed dance.
What had she been thinking to allow this? And the answer, when she was forced to acknowledge it, did not begin to excuse what she had done. If anything…
“You don’t understand,” she said again, still struggling to free her wrist.
“You don’t want your guardian to find you in a dark garden with a man. Believe me, even we English can understand that concern.”
“Then let me go,” she demanded, her fear producing a rush of anger.
She raised her free hand, trying to pry apart his restraining fingers. It was no use. His hold, tight enough that the fingers of the hand it controlled were beginning to grow numb, didn’t loosen.
“If he finds me here with you, he’ll kill you,” she warned. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, ragged in the darkness.
“He may certainly try,” he agreed, his voice too soft.
His other hand fastened around the one she had been using to pry at his fingers. As it did, he shoved her back against the trunk of one of the trees that lined the walkway. Positioning her arms at her sides and still gripping her wrists, he held her there.
Before she could protest, his body was pressed tightly against hers, the wall of his chest painfully flattening her breasts. She had time to turn her face, so that her check lay against his shoulder rather than be crushed under it.
His heart was under her ear. Despite his calm refusal to heed her warnings, it was beating as rapidly as hers.
“Shh,” he said.
In unthinking response to that command, she listened, straining to hear above the pulse of his blood.
“Pilar?”
Julián’s voice. But of course, she had known it was he since she had seen that figure on the balcony.
“Shh,” the Englishman warned again, the sibilance no louder than the sound of his heartbeat.
Because she had no choice, she obeyed, holding her breath so that nothing would betray their presence to the man who was hunting her. She could hear his footsteps now. Too near and far too dangerous.
Their bodies hidden from the walkway by the trunk of the tree, the Englishman released her hands. Terrified to breathe with Julián so close, much less to move, she closed her eyes, her lips trembling in a silent prayer.
The Englishman leaned back slightly, far enough that her sense of being held captive eased. She drew a careful breath, wishing she could warn him to stillness, but Julián was too close to risk even a whisper.
Then, unexpectedly, the Englishman’s palms encircled her face. He tilted it upward with pressure from his thumbs, which were beneath her chin. Startled, her eyes opened in time to watch his mouth descend toward hers.
She was too shocked to close her lips, so that his tongue had invaded before she realized his intent. His breath mingled with hers, the smoky warmth of the cigarillo pleasant.
She didn’t dare protest. Not with those footsteps coming closer and closer to where their bodies, entwined like lovers, were sheltered by the tree.
That was a lesson she had learned too well. Julián did not listen to explanations. He wouldn’t now. He would kill the man whose mouth was fastened over hers, his lips ravishing them expertly.
All she could hope was that the darkness would not betray them. And that what had happened before…
His mouth lifted, allowing her to draw another breath. During the past few seconds, she had forgotten how necessary that was to life. She had forgotten everything but her fear and the feel of this man’s lips moving over hers.
Warm and firm and knowing. So knowing.
Belatedly she realized the footsteps that had terrorized her were fading. Julián was returning to the lights and the crowded ballroom, while they…
Their breathing—his as ragged as hers—was still mingled. Just as his body was still intimately pressed against hers.
As the danger that Julián would discover them lessened, she gradually became conscious of other things. Sensations she had not been aware of before. The muscles of the Englishman’s chest moving against the tightening nipples of her breasts as he breathed. The strength of his erection, obvious through the silk of his knee breeches, which offered no more barrier between their bodies than the thin silk of her gown. And of long callused fingers that trembled as they touched her face.
“Why?” she whispered, finally daring that one word. “Why would you take this risk?”
“All life is risk,” he said. “Nothing makes it sweeter.”
“You risked death for a kiss?” she accused, her anger with his recklessness building again, now that the immediate danger had passed.
She raised her hands and forced his wrists apart, freeing her face. She put her palms against his chest, trying to push him away, but he refused to move.
With each passing second she had become more aware of the intimacy of their position. And for the first time, her fear of his intent was almost as great as her concern for his safety.
“Aren’t your kisses worth dying for, señorita?” he mocked.
“You’re a fool,” she said, pushing more strongly against his chest.
Suddenly his hands closed over her wrists once more, and he pulled her roughly away from the tree. Then, maintaining his hold with only his right hand, he began to drag her along behind him. Again she twisted and turned her captured arm, finally using her free hand to strike at his shoulder. He ignored the repeated blows.
“If I had a weapon, I swear I would kill you,” she said.
“Steal one,” he suggested. “You seem to be very good at that.”
At that same moment she realized he had been dragging her toward the palace rather than away from it. She stopped the barrage of ineffectual blows, trying to make sense of both that destination and his words.
By the time she had realized they were too reminiscent of that terrible reality to be coincidental, he had already accomplished what he had brought her so dangerously near the palace to do. The light from the torches on the balcony above them flickered over his face, revealing the scar Julián had slashed there almost a year ago.
“We meet again, señorita,” he said. “And this time, I believe the advantage is mine.”
Chapter Two
There was a definite satisfaction in watching the slow dilation of her eyes as she recognized him, Sebastian decided. It was not enough to make up for what she had done, but it was something.
“Who are you?” she whispered, her tongue moistening lips that had not seemed dry as they responded to his kiss only seconds before.
Kissing her had been a mistake. One he freely admitted. He had never been able to determine in his own mind what he would do if he found this girl. After the sensation of her mouth trembling beneath his, carrying out any of the punishments he’d devised during the past eleven months would be an impossibility.
“Sebastian Sinclair, señorita. I would add ‘at your service,’ but considering what happened the last time I attempted that…”
He deliberately let the sentence trail. Her eyes again traced the line of the scar, and he felt the muscles of his stomach tighten as he was forced to endure their scrutiny.
“I never meant that to happen,” she said.
“His name,” Sebastian demanded.
Her eyes found his, searching them.
“No,” she whispered.
“Someone will tell me.”
“Let them. Then, if you aren’t a fool, you’ll hear the name and let it disappear from your memory. What he did—”
“Requires retribution,” he interrupted softly.
“If you attack him, you’ll disgrace your king, and Julián will still kill you.”
“Julián?”
“Colonel Julián Delgado.” Despite her avowal that she wouldn’t tell him, she enunciated the name deliberately, almost defiantly, as if it had weight and substance. “A man more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
“A man,” Sebastian mocked. “Nothing more and nothing less. He’ll bleed and then he will die. Like any other man.
He fought to control the same rage he had had to conquer when he’d seen her making her way across the ballroom. He had followed her out into the darkness because, once he had found her, this confrontation was inevitable.
He had sworn he would know the name of the man who had disfigured him. Now that he did…
“He isn’t a man,” she said, the words low enough that for a moment he believed he must have misheard them.
The silence, broken only by the music from the palace above them, expanded as he considered what she had said. And, far more troubling, the tone in which she had said it.
“Then…what is he?” he asked, touched, in spite of his long-held anger, by an almost superstitious dread.
A sudden noise from the balcony above their heads caused them both to turn. Three men, one carrying a torch, were descending the steps that led out into the garden. The flame streamed behind them like a banner. At the sight, the girl shrank back into the shadows of the building, drawing Sebastian with her.
“You mustn’t be found here. Not with me.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Sebastian said.
He wasn’t, despite that almost preternatural chill her characterization had created. Finding this man was something he had thought about every day since the bastard had laid open his cheek.
“You should be,” she said. “If nothing else, be afraid of what he will do to me if he finds you here.”
“Whatever tenderness I once harbored for damsels in distress was destroyed the day you allowed him to do this,” he said, touching his cheek with the tips of his finger. He could feel the rough texture of the scar beneath them.
“I allowed?”
“Your intervention made it possible.”
“My intervention allowed you to escape with your life.” She corrected his version of those events vehemently.
“Your intervention allowed him to escape.”
His eyes tracked the path of the torch as it was carried through the garden. Although what he had told her was true—he wasn’t afraid of the man she called Julián—he also wasn’t stupid enough to be caught off guard by him.
Occasionally the searchers would call her name, but they were careful to keep their voices low so that the sound wouldn’t carry to the palace. Apparently, her guardian had no desire to call attention to her disappearance.
“Whatever you choose to believe about that day…” she began.
The pause brought his eyes back to her face, long enough to realize that hers were again examining the scar.
“Whatever I believe?” he prompted caustically.
“You must never doubt that Julián would have had no compunction about killing you. To him, you are far less important than the stallion you shot.”
“And what are you to him?”
“He is my guardian. And soon…soon he will become my fiancé.”
For some reason, the word created a sickness in the pit of his stomach. Almost the same reaction he had felt that day by the river when he’d considered the possibility that the horseman might be her husband.
“Do you love him?”
“What a child you are,” she said, her voice touched with the same bitterness he had heard then.
“Does he love you?”
She turned her head, watching the flame from the torch move in and out among the trees.
“Marriages like ours seldom have their basis in love. Nor do they in England,” she added.
“So his actions that day were the result of…jealousy?” he asked. “Pride of possession?”
“Does it matter?”
“I find that it matters a great deal to me.”
“He’s a proud man. I had humiliated him by running away. At first, he believed you’d helped me.”
“At first?”
“If he had really believed that, he would have killed you no matter what I said.”
“And I have you to thank for convincing him otherwise? Are you expecting my gratitude?” he mocked.
“I’m expecting you will continue to play whatever game you are playing until he finds us here and kills you. Other than that, I assure you I have very little expectation of anything.”
The bitterness was there again, more open than before. Despite the anger he had cherished toward this girl during those long months, something about her claim touched a nearly forgotten chord of chivalry.
The same emotion he’d felt the first time he had encountered her, he reminded himself. It had proven to be misplaced.
“No one can force you to marry him,” he found himself saying, despite the too-clear remembrance of the last time he had attempted to intervene on her behalf. And of the price he had paid, a price he would carry to his grave, for that attempt.
She laughed, the sound abruptly cut off. She turned, again watching the flame stream through the darkness.
“You are a child,” she said again, her voice carefully lowered. “And now, you and I will return separately to the palace, and we will act as if none of what happened tonight has occurred. If you see me or Julián again while you are in Madrid, I would advise you to pretend that you don’t.”
Before he could react, she slipped past him. Staying within the shadows cast by the building, she made her way to the foot of the stairs leading up to the balcony. As she stepped onto the bottom one, she turned her head, looking back to where he was standing, hidden by the shadows. One hand on the balustrade, she hesitated, her face illuminated by the flambeaux above her.
Their light glinted off the track of tears on her cheek. Then, lifting the hem of her gown, she began to climb, eventually disappearing from his sight.
“You’re sure it was the same girl,” Harry asked when they had finally achieved the privacy of the coach and could talk openly.
Sebastian had returned to the ballroom only a short time after the torchbearer and his helpers had left the garden, but he hadn’t seen the girl again. His eyes had searched the perspiring mob gathered under the glow of a thousand candles, but neither of the faces he sought had been among them.
“The instant I saw her.”
“It’s been nearly a year,” the viscount reminded him hopefully.
“I’m not likely to have forgotten either of them. Besides, she didn’t bother to deny it.”
He hadn’t told Harry the whole. There was no reason to repeat everything that had been said—and done—during those few moments he and the girl had spent together in the garden.
Sebastian couldn’t explain to his own satisfaction why he had kissed her. He was unwilling to try to produce an answer to his friend’s inevitable questions about his motives in doing so.
“It wasn’t the girl who cut your face, Sin,” Harry reminded him. “Actually, from what you said—”
“She knocked my pistol aside. If she hadn’t—”
“If she hadn’t,” Wetherly interrupted reasonably, “we would more than likely have found you dead with a ball in your back.”
“And you believe I prefer this?” Sebastian asked savagely, touching the mark on his face.
The resulting silence lasted long enough that he knew with regret there could no longer be any pretense after tonight that he didn’t care about the scar. Of course, this was Harry, who knew him well enough to understand the purpose behind that long charade.
“It was checkmate,” Sebastian said stubbornly, trying to cling to his anger, “until she interfered. He could have ordered them to shoot me, but I would still have taken the whoreson to hell with me.”
“Let it go, Sin,” Harry advised gently. “Pursuing him won’t change what happened. It won’t change anything at all. You must know how Wellington will feel about your carrying out some personal vendetta while we’re here. Especially with the delicacy of his mission.”
“Which everyone knows is doomed to failure. I know his name, Harry. I can hunt the bastard down and—
“And do what?” Wetherly interrupted. “Kill him? What will that change?”
“At least it will free her,” Sebastian said.
And it was only when he heard the words spoken aloud that he realized their implications. As did the viscount, of course.
“Bloody hell, Sin. Is that what this is about?” Harry asked incredulously. “You’re still playing knight errant?”
“I knew then there was something wrong. She was running away because she’s terrified of him. I saw it in her eyes when that bastard sent his horse down the incline. But still she stood up to him. And then tonight…it was as if she were someone completely different. All the life and fire and spirit had been sucked out of her. And she was even more terrified of him.”
“I’m not saying she isn’t, Sin, but…he’s her guardian. Soon to be her fiancé. They have some peculiar notions here about the sanctity of that pledge. My God, man, if they’re betrothed, she’s as good as married to him. Nothing you do can change that.”
“If they’re betrothed. They aren’t. Besides, she’s only marrying him because he’s threatening her. She as much as told me that he’s holding something over her head.”
“Her family, maybe. If it’s an arranged match, they would suffer if she cried off.”
“They deserve to suffer if they’re forcing her to marry a man she’s afraid of.”
“That’s nothing to you. Let it go. There’s not a thing you can do for her. Best for everyone concerned if you forget any of this ever happened.”
“Except I’m reminded every time I look into a mirror,” Sebastian said, his voice intense.
“Did she ask you to intervene?”
She hadn’t, of course. Her advice had been the same as Harry’s. The same Wellington would give, if Sebastian were to lay the situation before the duke.
They were guests in a foreign country, one whose customs were very different from their own. Even in England, women were compelled to marry against their wishes. Some of them managed to make a success of their arranged matches, and the others, he supposed, eventually learned to be content with their lot. He had never before thought about the role of a woman bound in marriage to a man she not only didn’t love but was frightened of.
He isn’t a man.
For some reason the words and the bitterness with which they had been uttered echoed in his brain. There were so many possible connotations for them he couldn’t possibly know what she had meant.
All he knew was that she wasn’t in love with the man to whom she was about to be betrothed. And that he was her guardian and she was afraid of him.
“Sin?”
“She didn’t ask,” he admitted shortly. “She didn’t ask me to do anything.”
There was a small silence, unbroken except for the sound of the carriage wheels on the cobblestone street.
“Leave it,” Harry urged again, his voice serious as it rarely was. “For all our sakes. This isn’t the time or the place for your damned heroics. Besides, if she don’t want rescuing—”
“Then I suppose I must leave her to her fate.”
“Exactly,” Harry said, obviously missing the sarcasm. He sounded relieved that Sebastian had been so easily persuaded to see reason. “Not really our affair, you know.”
It wasn’t. And it was always possible that in dwelling on what he thought he had seen in her eyes, Sebastian was simply looking for an excuse to seek out the man who had marked his face, despite the delicacy of their mission. A reason for doing so that would carry more weight with his conscience and his commander than his thirst for revenge.
Besides, Harry was right about Wellington’s probable reaction. Dare’s, too, he supposed. Considering the distance between them, his brother’s disapproval seemed less meaningful than it had while he was growing up.
Of course, despite Dare’s carefully cultivated cynicism, he and Ian had been the ones who had taught him the values by which he had lived his life. Honor. Love of country. Courage in battle and in sport. And a willingness to offer his strength and his skills in defense of those who were unable to defend themselves.
You have only yourselves to blame, he mentally apprised his absent brothers. And then, in spite of the depths of his genuine, almost murderous rage, his lips curved into a small, secret smile at the thought of their probable reactions to that assertion.
“I told you,” Pilar said, drawing her hairbrush slowly through the entire length of the strand of hair she held. As she did, she held her guardian’s eyes in the mirror above the dressing table, assessing the depth of his rage.
She had dismissed her maid as soon as Julián opened the door to her chamber. She had understood very well what was about to happen. There was no need to try to delay the inevitable.
“Tell me again,” he demanded.
“My head was aching from the heat and the crowd and the music,” she went on. “I sought out an anteroom for a few minutes of peace and quiet. Someplace where the smell of a hundred perspiring bodies covered in stale scent wouldn’t sicken me.”
“But you didn’t think to inform me.”
“You were attending the king. I thought it best not to disturb you.”
He caught the hairbrush on its downward stroke and wrenched it from her hand. In the same movement, he put the fingers of his other hand on her shoulder, pulling her upper body around so that she was facing him.
His thumb and forefinger fastened around her chin, lifting her face to him. And then, the brush raised menacingly in his right hand, he looked down into her eyes for a long, silent moment.
She concentrated on letting nothing of what she was feeling be reflected in her eyes or in her expression. No fear. And no defiance.
She had learned that the best—indeed, the safest—way to deal with Julián, no matter his mood, was to present him with a facade of absolute calm. She made no further attempt, therefore, to convince him that what she had told him was the truth.
“Where were you?” he asked again.
“I have told you where I was,” she said evenly. “And I have told you why I had taken refuge there. Do you wish to hear the explanation again?”
“What I wish to hear is the truth.”
He did not raise his voice, but after all these months in his control, she could no longer be lulled by the fact that he might appear to be reasonable.
He wasn’t. There was nothing at all reasonable about his anger.
She eased a breath, swallowing carefully before she opened her mouth again. “The heat and the stench in the ballroom—”
He released her chin, and then, without releasing her eyes, he hurled the hairbrush at the mirror. Not heavy enough to shatter the glass, it fell onto the dressing table, overturning several of the pots and bottles arrayed there.
One of them was a perfume, the same scent she had worn to the palace tonight. As the smell permeated the heavy air, he paced away from her, his angry stride carrying him halfway across the room before he turned.
“Was your English friend there tonight?”
Her heart leapt into her throat, beating strongly enough that she prayed he wouldn’t see it pulse beneath the thin silk of her robe de chambre.
“Was he one of those bastards with Wellington?” he demanded.
He doesn’t know, she realized in relief. If he had seen the English soldier whose face he’d ruined, the tenor of this questioning would have been very different.
If Julián had known with certainty that man had been in attendance at the ball, he would not have waited until they’d reached the house. He would have dragged her from the carriage as soon as they had left the lights of the palace behind. This confrontation would have taken place in the street and not in the privacy of her bedroom.
“My…friend?” she repeated as if puzzled by the reference.
“The gallant Englishman you met by the river.”
“You think…you think that a common soldier would be invited to the king’s reception?”
She was pleased with the tone of her disclaimer. Disbelieving. Holding almost a note of ridicule.
“Hardly a common soldier,” he said, closing the distance he had opened between them.
At his approach, her heart began to pound again. She knew it would be disastrous to let her fear gain control. Julián delighted in making people afraid. Then he delighted in using that fear to destroy them.
That was something she had sworn on her father’s grave she would never let him do to her. With the thought of her father, it seemed that she could smell the acrid richness of the cigarillo the Englishman had been smoking in the garden.
The taste of it was suddenly on her tongue and her lips, along with the memory of his kiss. No one had ever kissed her like that before. No one had ever kissed her at all except Julián. And his kisses were nothing like the Englishman’s.
“What is it?” Julián asked, his voice sharpening with suspicion.
He crossed the few feet that separated them and caught her chin in his fingers again, gripping hard enough that she flinched from the pain.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded.
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