Kitabı oku: «The Wild Wellingham Brothers», sayfa 11
‘So you saved your virginity for some quick and meaningless affair? You expect me to believe that?”
When he came forward she meant to deny him, meant to hold up her head and plead the wrongness of it, but she couldn’t. Instead her fingers fitted into his and she laid her head against his chest, feeling the careful touch of his thumb on her bare skin as it traced a line around the wings of her butterfly.
‘Did it hurt?’
‘No.’ She smiled at the ridiculousness of the question in the whole face of what was between them.
‘I want you, Emma. Now. Here. Tonight.’ A breathless entreaty that set off an aching throb inside and took away denials.
‘Just tonight, Asher. After this—’ His finger rubbed across her lips and stopped the lies that were forming. And then she forgot everything that she had meant to say as the heat of his body seared into the answering warmth of her own.
She could barely look at him in the morning in the face of what they had shared until the dawn. Lord, even the thought of it drew a blush with the wetness of his seed on her thighs.
His seed. His lips against her and the promise of more in his eyes.
I love you.
She had said it again when her fingers had threaded through his hair and the clenching throb of her sex had made her arch away from the unfamiliar softness of the mattress, and again when he had held her afterwards. Neither of them had slept even as the dawn broke against the windows and flooded the room with the light of day.
A perfect, balanced if-only love to remember when she was old and grey. The one moment to make every other subsequent second bearable.
When he left, she was glad that he went without giving her words that could bind them, badly, into a future.
Chapter Eleven
Asher parried with his sword, quickly, against the thrust of Jack’s blade and brought the buttoned point to an unprotected throat.
‘Touché.’
Even his voice sounded stronger and with the sun on his face and the image of Emma entwined around him he felt…unassailable, invulnerable, absolute, all feelings he had not known since…when? It was Emma Seaton’s lack of need, her strength of purpose and an underlying will that bent to no one that made him like this.
‘More practice, I think, Jack, if an ill man can beat you…’
‘Hardly ill. You look better than I’ve seen you look in a long time.’
Asher turned away as guilt sliced into him. There were days now when he barely remembered the past, days when what had happened was blurrier, less real. All that seemed true now was centred about Emma and her laughing turquoise eyes.
‘I’m going back to Falder tomorrow.’ He gestured to his arm, freed now from its bandage.
‘Because you think they could try again?’
‘If they do, I’ll be ready this time—no one could surprise me there.’ He slashed his blade through the air as if to underline intent.
‘I’ll see to my affairs and come up and join you before the end of the week.’
‘I am not certain as to the safety of it.’
‘You think it’s that dangerous?’
‘I do.’
‘It’s Emma Seaton, isn’t it? All this has happened since she came. And now she’s here under your wing? And her aunt, too, I’ve heard. Take care, Asher, for there are whispers.’ A question lay in the air between them.
‘Whispers?’
‘Some say she is a fortune-hunter who targeted the largest fortune in London with her well-timed faint.’
‘And what do you say, Jack?’
‘I’d say, if she makes you happy who gives a damn about anyone else; besides, I like her too. She’s different.’
After Jack had gone he stood in the gardens at the back of the house and lit a cheroot, pulling on it gratefully after the afternoon of exercise.
He had bedded Emma every night since shortly after the attack, and every night she had told him that she loved him.
My God. Loved him. If he had any guts he would have given her the words back. But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he knew exactly who she was.
He screwed the sapphire ring on his finger around and around and made himself think.
She loved him, but she would not marry him. Why? When they arrived back at Falder, he would get the truth from her for London and the smaller house here hemmed them into properness.
Apart from the night time!
Grinding out the burning end of the cheroot beneath his feet, he wished he could go to her now and smiled as he looked at his timepiece. Four o’clock in the afternoon. For years he had dreaded the dark and now he welcomed it. Just another change she had fashioned in him. Another way she had made him different.
They lay on the covers, the fire in the grate sending flickering shadows across the walls and tingeing Asher’s body with the soft glow of orange. His back was to her and her fingers traced the marks that stood up in knotted pearly welts.
She noticed how the skin on his forearm tightened at the contact and chanced a question.
‘I saw marks like these once in Jamaica?’
She felt his interest.
‘The man who sported them had seemingly lost his mind in a pirates’ colony on Turks Island off the Silver Bank Passage. The law never took his ramblings seriously and so nothing was done, but I heard a few years later that the ship of an English lord had levelled the place clean away, blown it from the face of this earth with every last person standing in it, as revenge for what he had suffered there.’
‘A fine tale,’ he replied evenly.
‘Your tale?’ she questioned just as smoothly.
‘I am a duke of the realm, Emma.’
‘You are a man who keeps a blade hidden in the folds of his sleeve. I saw it at the Bishop’s party and wondered why you should have a need of it here?’
‘I had thought it well concealed.’ His voice held the hint of respect. ‘And besides…’ His finger brushed over the puckered skin on her thigh. ‘There are times when the childhood that you profess to does not quite add up. The mark of a sword and an indigo tattoo, flame-scarred hands and an excellence in the Chinese art of acupuncture. Truth be known, your secrets are probably every bit as heady as my own.’
She laughed to ease the tension, feeling his observations permeate the space between them. A hollow sort of sound that had his eyebrows rising.
‘I said to you once before that I could protect you—’
Before he could finish she placed her finger across the smooth and full line of his lips.
‘And I said to you once that there is nothing that you need to protect me from.’
He rolled on top of her so that she felt the hardening ridge of his manhood against the juncture of her legs.
‘All my life I have been around women who have needed…protecting. My mother, Lucy, Melanie. But you…you are different…stronger…’
Their eyes were at a level and the truth was suddenly important.
‘I cannot marry you, Asher.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…because I cannot.’
‘And yet you can be my mistress?’
She nodded before she could stop herself.
‘Every night you tell me you love me. And sometimes when you sleep you speak in your dreams and you say it again.’
A single tear slipped from her eye and trailed its way down her cheek.
‘If you would trust me.’ He whispered it into the quiet of the night beneath the swathe of heavy curls under her right ear and she turned away, her fingers skimming across the dark red scar on his forearm. Still healing. A reminder of how fragile life really was and how easily it could be taken away.
If she lost him…
If she caused any of his family harm…
No, she would travel to Falder for the map and then she would be gone. It was the only honourable thing to do.
Chapter Twelve
The birdsong had only just started in the trees beside Carisbrook House when they left London. Robins, sparrows and finches, vying each other for the one perfect note. A quiet refrain, Emerald thought, compared with the ear-splitting cries of the birds back home in Jamaica.
Miriam, Lucy, Taris, Asher and herself sat in the second coach. In the first coach, full of the Wellingham servants, Toro sat on top with the driver. Emerald had seen the outline of the weapon concealed beneath his jacket as she had come down the steps to the street; she guessed that Azziz on their coach would be as well armed. It pleased her that Asher was taking the threat of the McIlverrays seriously and was allowing little chance of attack.
Feeling the warmth of him next to her, she looked across as he pulled the lush and ample furs over her knees. Today he was preoccupied, the brown in his eyes sharper than it usually was and blood from an ill-taken shave seen on his jawline.
‘Are you warm enough?’ He addressed the query to them all and refrained from catching her eye. She frowned. When he had come to her room last night, he had been slick with heat and want and need, but today the shadow of uncertainty lay between them, unspoken questions and impossible answers. Easier indeed to lose oneself in the promise of flesh, the darkness adding another layer of distance.
Lord, the whispered memories of night were like a shout in this confined space. Looking down, she saw the knuckles of his hand between them whitened to the bone. He felt it too, then? How could he not? She coughed to clear her throat and hoped that he did not hear the racing beat of her heart.
It was colder out of London, and the drizzle from yesterday had turned into a hard beating rain, the windows already fogged up from their breaths.
Emerald tried to see outside across the shoulders of her aunt and wished that she had made certain she was by the window. She had three knives concealed on her person and would have strapped her sword through her belt if she could have. But how? The shape of it could hardly be explained and this way her silent weapons held an element of surprise.
‘You seem well recovered, Miriam.’ Lucy leaned forward to speak more on the topic and Emerald used the moment to question Asher.
‘How long do you expect us to take till Wickford?’ she asked. The town was the first stopover point, a place where the horses could be rested and watered and where there was a fair lunch served.
‘Three to four hours in this weather,’ he returned. ‘More if the front to the west passes over us.’ He rubbed at his arm as he spoke, giving her the impression that it was paining him. But she did not dare voice her concern with the others sitting so close.
‘I noticed that Azziz and Toro were armed?’
He did look at her then. ‘I can protect you, Emma. Do not worry.’
She almost laughed.
Worry.
My God.
She hoped he would not see the quick burst of temper. She had instructed Toro to make certain the inhabitants of the first carriage were safe before returning to help the second carriage should anything go amiss in their travels; although she could see that he did not care for the idea, she was sure that he would do as she had asked. Lord, this was all her fault and she prayed to God that they would need none of it and would journey to the Carisbrook property without mishap.
It was mid-afternoon when she noticed Asher turning in his seat to get a proper view of the land outside. Miriam was asleep, her gentle snores filling the silence of the coach. Taris dozed also and Lucy was reading a book. A romance about pirates, Emerald determined from the title and smiled at the cover.
Visions of the Mariposa came to mind, but she shook the memory back, into the folds of time. Here in England the image was unsettling. A few short weeks had given her a taste of what her life could have been like and for just a second she was overcome with the loss of it all.
Asher’s hand slapping against the roof shocked her back to reality.
‘Riders to the left,’ he shouted, ‘and they don’t look friendly.’ When he flipped open the catch of the window, light rain and wind slashed in, but he was already crouched across the seat, prying open the wooden box beneath the feet of his brother.
Three flintlock pistols lay nestled in a leather case and his fingers grasped the one nearest to him.
‘Asher?’ Taris’s voice was flat and Lucy’s book slid to the floor as she caught sight of the armoury.
‘Get back against the seat. All of you.’ He gave little notice to his family’s fright as he opened up the door and lent out, his body arching against the force of wind and motion, the violent burst of gunfire loud even against the rushing noise of hooves and wheels and speed.
Lucy began to cry, and Miriam to cough and then the world as they knew it turned over, for the carriage, already hard-pressed in its escape, caught an edge and veered into nothingness, the screams of the women eerie in the slow-motioned silence.
Emerald came to on a bank not far from the carriage, the wheels still spinning against a muted sky. She put her hand to her head to feel the hurt there. Bright blood stained her fingers and she winced as they explored a cut across her temple. Asher was some five hundred yards away from the carriage drawing the riders towards him. She heard him shouting something about the map and urging them to follow him before he disappeared into the undergrowth. Leading the McIlverrays away. From them.
Miriam and Lucy were huddled nearby and Azziz and Taris both out cold against a small embankment. Crawling across to them, she checked their pulses. Fast but steady.
Shots further off had her scrambling up and she grabbed her aunt’s arm and entwined it around Lucy’s.
‘Run to the woods. Don’t stop until you are far in and then dig down into the undergrowth and stay still.’ When the girl didn’t answer, Emerald shook her. ‘I’ll cover you from behind.’ Lucy was sobbing in fright. Miriam said nothing, but the wide horrified stare of her eyes told another story.
Taking Azziz’s blade, Emerald began to run, egging the two others on as she did so, the cool greenness of the forest dulling panic, and when a number of shots rang out across the glade she tried to pinpoint movement. Where was Asher now she thought? Where the hell had he gone?
Miriam seemed greatly recovered as she joined them and she instructed her aunt to take Lucinda further into the grove, though Asher’s sister took hold of her arm as she finished speaking. ‘No. You mustn’t go. There is nothing any of us can do. Highwaymen are not to be—’ She clapped her fingers to her mouth as a man broke cover not twenty yards from where they stood, the gun at his hip pointed at them, and murder in his eyes.
With absolutely no trace of hesitation Emerald whipped her knife from the soft folds of her boot and sent it rifling through space, the small thud as it connected with the newcomer’s head almost ludicrous in proportion to the damage.
Two gawping faces confronted her as she turned, but she had no time for questions. Stripping the second knife from a hidden pocket, she cut the band of her heavy skirt and stepped from it. The thinner petticoat beneath would at least afford her a bit of freedom.
‘Get into the forest. Miriam, make sure you don’t come out unless you hear me calling. I’ll cover your tracks.’ Taking a branch from the nearest tree beneath the line of overhang so that it would not be seen, she pushed her aunt in the direction she wanted them to go before erasing the trail of their footsteps. It was all that she could do. Now she must find Asher and help him—if Toro had done as she asked and gone on, Asher would be alone in his battle with the McIlverrays.
‘Lord help him,’ she whispered under her breath as she circled back, the sum of years of tutelage having her automatically masking sound and her eyes keenly following the track that the single retainer had taken.
Asher felt the sharp sting of sweat obscure his vision and blinked to clear the blurriness. There were a number of men just behind him; as they came into a river valley, one gestured to the right. His heart sank. God knew how many he couldn’t see, but, if he let them past, Emma and Taris and Lucy were less then a quarter of a mile back. And helpless. He’d checked Emma’s pulse before he’d left her and his fingers had brushed across the gash at her temple. It was deep and his brother and Azziz were completely unconscious. His only help gone.
It was up to him.
Everybody was dependent on him.
Laying his pistol on the grass, he discarded his hat and filled it with damp leaves before jamming it through the sharp point of an oak sapling he’d cut. The shape and form of a head. It was just a little ruse, but it might work.
No. It had to work, he corrected himself as he jammed the stick into the earth and circled to the right. He still had time, for the group were talking to one another and laughing.
Easy prey.
He just had to take them off one by one until there was a manageable number. With four flints in his pocket and another two in the barrel he couldn’t afford to waste ammunition on a miss. Fitting a polished river stone into his hand his eyes focused.
Closer. Closer. Steady. The stone arced across the sky noiselessly and the chosen man fell hard. One down. He could not think about who else lurked in the deeper woods. The horses stopped and the more urgent sound of voices reached him on the wind. He could see that they scanned the valley for movement; turning, he lobbed another stone into the air to land in a rush of noise on the broad leaves of a sturdy bush.
It was enough. The hat from this distance gave an illusion of movement and the remaining men rushed forward. When he sighted them again, it was from slightly behind.
Perfect.
He brought the gun from his pocket and fired. Another man fell. And then another. Reloading, he sat to wait it out. Three more men left, though a scream of anger echoed through the trees, bringing with it the worrying sound of others.
More of the enemy materialised from the forest and he drew his sword, discarding the pistol in favour of blade as he backed up the embankment with careful steps and on to a ledge of thick brush. If they wanted to take him, he wouldn’t make it easy. Here the horses could not follow and with him on foot the odds became more even.
Six men.
He had taken more.
Time slowed and focused. An easy balance and quiet waiting.
‘Come on, come on,’ he whispered and hoped he could kill a good number of them before they got to him.
Emerald saw him from above first, and even through her sheer terror and from this distance she recognised the style of his swordsmanship. My God, she thought as she scrambled down the incline, no wonder he killed my father, no wonder he cut a swathe through the men on the Mariposa like no others before him.
His was not an English style of fighting, but a foreign one. A style learnt not in the polite fencing salons of London, but in the world’s godforsaken places, where fair play shattered in the face of sheer and brutal force.
She could barely look away. Already he had downed two men, but the others were circling closer and one held a gun.
They hadn’t shot him! Hope blossomed. They wanted him alive as a pathway to the treasure. She shouted as a slice of steel creased the folds of the fabric on his jacket and red blood oozed through.
Asher heard the cry from one side and the flash of white petticoats had him turning.
Emma? With a sword in hand and a dirty bandana wrapped around the bright gilt of her curls? Memory turned, and against the dull grey sky he suddenly remembered what she must always have known.
‘You!’ He could barely believe it.
The girl from the Mariposa. Emma Seaton? He blinked twice just to make sure the image was real. And the turquoise eyes that looked back at him were dark in anguish.
A slash of steel to his right centered his focus and he waited to see whether she would raise her sword against him too. God. Could he kill her? For the first time in all his life he was afraid.
‘You’ll be wanting the map no doubt, Emerald.’ The man nearest to him spoke, gesturing to those beside him to cease for the moment.
Emerald? Asher glanced sideways. Emerald? What sort of a name was that? Fragmented shards of memory clicked into place.
Emerald!
Emerald Sandford?
‘The Duke has Beau’s map hidden at Falder, Karl. If you kill him, you’ll lose it.’ Her voice was hard, distant, indifferent, as if the taking of his life was a meagre thing against the possession of what they both sought. In the pale light of a rapidly approaching dusk, the blood at her temple ran dark red, and the pallor of her skin made her look immeasurably older than the twenty-one years he knew her to have.
‘You lie.’ The older man opposite took up his sword and brought it down, fast. Quick reactions saved the blade from eating into her leg as she parried.
‘If I had the map, do you think I’d still be here in England?’
With little effort she pushed his blade back and stood like one without a care in the world.
Like father, like daughter.
How easily they ruined lives. How little they thought of the consequence.
Pure untrammelled rage ripped through Asher.
Melanie. His brother. The aching remains of his right hand and the years they had stolen. Lunging forward, he scattered the circle, another man crumpling under the wicked sharpness of steel and all hell broke loose. In the moment of chaos he felt the small tickling whisper of a voice as Emma edged around behind him.
‘Hate me later. I can help you now.’
With a well-timed quickness she plunged her blade through the closest renegade and turned to meet the next one and she fought as if a sword had been born in her hand. He frowned at the thought. Lord, it probably had been. The quick report of a gun close up made him stiffen, the smell of powder acrid in the air. In one movement he pulled his knife from his boot and hurled it before the man could reload, pleased when the blade easily found its target.
He kept her at his back, their paired position creating a circle of safety, the thrust and counter-thrust of the two men left easily beaten back. He heard the rasping of her breath and the quick noise of steel against steel. And then a lightly worded curse. She was tiring. He could see it in the way she held her blade. Parrying no longer, but defending. Why?
Gritting his teeth, he finished the fight. Quickly.
When silence again filtered through the clearing, Emerald found in her the strength to look up. And wished that she had not. Asher was furious and the clamp of his hand hurt the top of her arm. She swayed and would have fallen had he not steadied her. The sting in her side left her breathless and she didn’t dare to look down to see the damage. Not yet. Not now.
He was sweating and in the last yellow light of the fading day the fury in his eyes glittered. ‘You are the damn pirate’s daughter? Beau Sandford’s daughter? It was you on the ship…?’
‘You have remembered?’
‘Damned right I have.’
‘I tried to make it up to you. Here and in London. In the bedroom. It was the only way I knew how.’
Even words were hard to say. Beneath the fabric of her jacket she felt the steady drip of blood. She looked down surreptitiously to make certain the white of her petticoat was not stained with red. If she could just be alone, she could remedy it. With the last surge of energy she pulled her arm away.
‘My God.’ Censure coated his curse. ‘You saw our bedding as some sort of a sacrifice?’
‘A payment. For my father. For me. We wronged you.’
‘Wronged me? Lord, Emerald.’ He rolled the name again around on his tongue. ‘Emerald. Is that what I should call you now?’
‘Some people call me Emmie.’
‘But never Emma?’ She shook her head as he waited.
‘So everything was a lie?’ The swollen flesh at the top of his lip creased into a humourless smile, and she refrained in the face of his anger to tell him the whole of it.
A lie?
To lie in the moonlight together and watch the way the light played off the hardened angle of his body. To feel his lips against her own, melding all that had once been into what now was.
Just a lie?
If he felt even a fiftieth of what she did for him, he could never have asked the question. Tears sprung to her eyes.
‘Everything.’
One word and it was finished. She almost welcomed it when he turned away, for she could not see the hatred in his beautiful velvet eyes.
Laying her arm hard against her side, she followed him through the forest, pausing at this tree and that one to recatch her breath. He did not wait for her, did not look around to see her progress and for that small anger she was glad. Everything ached and the dizzy rush of blood in her ears was becoming louder. Lord, if the bullet had pierced her stomach…She shook her head, refusing to think about it, and was pleased when she saw Azziz standing against the upturned bulk of the carriage, his fingers rubbing the knot of a gash on the back of his head. Taris stood beside him, looking dazed.
‘Where’s Lucy and Miriam?’ Asher’s voice was hard as he looked around the clearing, and Emerald replied as Azziz stayed silent.
‘In the woods. I told them to hide there.’ She half-turned so that the right side of her body was hidden from him.
‘Which way?’
‘Over there.’ It hurt to even lift her arm and point, the dragging red-hot pain worsened by movement. Let him go and find the others. Let him go soon before she was sick, before the whirling lightness overtook everything.
When he didn’t move, she looked up.
‘God.’ he said roughly. ‘My God,’ he repeated and stormed towards her. ‘What the hell has happened to you?’
His hand was warm against the cold of her own and she curled her fingers into his and held on. Anger she could deal with. Pity undid her. She felt the hot run of tears on her cheeks and hid her head against his jacket.
‘Lord, Emma.’ He used her old name, a small mistake as he pulled back her coat and his fingers were gentle against the wound, even as the roiling blackness claimed her and she fell into his arms.
