chapter Twelve
He was unbelievable. One minute he was kissing her with a passion that curled her toes inside her boots. The next he was treating her as if she was a child.
‘I do not appreciate your tone of voice, my lord,’ she said stiffly. ‘Or your threats. Indeed, I find myself heartily irritated by them. And by you. I am not your ward. I am not anyone’s ward. And what I do is my own concern. Now, if you will excuse me, I will return to my room.’ She held out her hand for the key.
It was somewhat difficult to be haughty in a red robe covered in green and yellow dragons, but she thought she’d pulled it off tolerably well.
‘Sit!’ he snarled.
She jumped.
He spun away, raking his fingers through the hair at his temples. Clearly he was very close to losing his temper. It was the first time she’d seen him so close to losing control of his emotions. She eyed him just as warily as she had eyed his stallion earlier that evening, but she wasn’t going to let him scare her. She was finished with being terrified.
‘The key, if you please, my lord.’
Slowly he turned to face her. His eyes blazed fury. His fists opened and closed at his sides and he took a deep shuddering breath.
‘We cannot go on like this,’ he said with soft menace. ‘I learned young that losing my temper only makes a bad situation worse, but you drive me to the brink of madness, to the point where I have no control.’ He took another deep breath. ‘So here it is, one last time. Please, Miss Wilding. Would you do me the very great honour of sitting down so we can talk like reasonable adults?’
What woman could resist a plea like that from such a man? Not Mary, even if she ought to. While his words were cool, his eyes were hot. The same heat she felt in her belly.
Slowly she sank to sit on the sofa, the heat from the fire warming one side of her body and face.
He bent over the flames and ladled out two mugs of the steaming aromatic liquid, the scent of cinnamon, cloves and oranges intensifying.
‘Drink this,’ he said, handing her one of the cups. ‘It will warm you.’
He brought his own cup and sat beside her on the sofa. She had not expected that. She sipped at the steaming brew. It was delicious. ‘What is it?’
‘A hot toddy. A favourite with miners after a day in the damp and the cold. It is also known as punch.’
His words reminded her of the damp and the cold in the tin mine. She shivered.
He reached over and brought the cup to her lips again. ‘Drink it all.’
She took another sip and another and soon it was all gone and her head felt a little muzzy.
He took the cup from her hand. ‘How is that?’ he asked.
He was right, she did feel warmer, inside and out. Relaxed. Her teeth were no longer clamped together to stop their chattering and her shoulders were not tight. ‘Much better, thank you.’
He set the mug on the floor, then he reached out and touched her jaw with the tips of his fingers, urging her with that gentle touch to turn her face towards him. She did not resist, but she kept her gaze on her hands now lightly clasped in her lap.
‘Look at me, Mary,’ he whispered.
She forced her gaze up to his face. He dipped his head and took her mouth, sweetly, gently, his tightly controlled passion vibrating in the inch of air between their bodies.
He tasted of cinnamon and sweet oranges and night-time snow. A heady combination, when she was already feeling a little dizzy. His hand linked with hers in her lap, a strangely intrusive sensation, his wide fingers pushing hers apart, touching the sensitive skin in between her fingers. It made her breathe faster. It made her feel languid. Or was it the drink?
Did she care?
She was tired of running. Tired of being pulled hither and yon by her desires warring with her mind. Just once she wanted to experience the delights between a man and a woman.
It didn’t mean anything, she knew it in her heart. He was simply seducing her into staying. He wanted to use her for his own purposes. Why should she not do the same? She had no doubt as to his experience as a lover. His touch told her he knew exactly how to make a woman’s body hum with delight. She would never marry. So what did it really matter, this virtue, this strict adherence to the rules?
And if she was going to die, perish the thought, should she not have experienced something of the delights between a man and a woman? Discover for herself the joys lauded by poets and romance novels. Not that there was love involved on his part, but there could be great pleasure, according to Sally. He had given her pleasure, already. And she knew, instinctively, there had to be more.
She turned her body, to enable her better access to his mouth, to return his kiss, to twine her free hand around his neck, and kissed him back with all the art she had learned these past few days. The warm slide of tongue against tongue. The movement of lips that stirred her blood and tightened her core and made a rumble of approval rise up from deep in his chest. She liked that she had the power to move him as he moved her, that he was not completely unaffected by her touch. When she speared her fingers through his silky hair, he hissed in a breath. When she withdrew her tongue from his mouth and he followed with his, she captured it with her teeth and he groaned in the back of his throat.
She was also aware of his hand leaving hers and trailing a path up her arm to her shoulder. Aware of its stealthy path to the edge of the robe. Aware of the way he slowly eased it off her shoulder.
Aware with a sense of heart-pounding anticipation.
Each velvet stroke of his fingertips set a new inch of skin on fire. It felt delicious. Wicked. Wanton. And right. So very right. And when he pushed her back into the corner of the sofa, his chest pressing down on hers, his fingers teasing the rise of her breast, she closed her eyes and let the thrills ripple through her body.
Slowly, he broke their kiss, but his mouth didn’t stop working its magic. He blazed a path of hot wet kisses across her cheek. His moist warm breath in her ear sent prickles of pleasure racing across her skin. Painful and delightful at one and the same time. She gasped.
He swirled his tongue around the edge of her ear, then nibbled her earlobe. When had her ear become such a centre of delight? Dazed by the sheer unexpectedness of the sensations searing through her body with each touch of his tongue, she lay immobile, breathing hard, waiting for what would come next.
He kissed his way down her throat, lingering to trace the hollow of her throat before moving on to the flesh at the edge of her robe, the swell of her breast.
Shocked to her very soul, she put up a hand to cover herself. He caught her fingers with his and kissed them one by one, until he reached her middle finger and closed his mouth around it, sucking on it.
Darkness edged her vision as something pulled tight inside her. An ache of unbearable sweetness.
‘Bane,’ she gasped, terrified and fascinated all at once.
Releasing her finger from its hot wet prison, he looked up at her, his eyes alight with fire and a sort of softness she didn’t understand. His eyelids looked heavy. His mouth full and sensuous. He looked beautiful.
‘Mary,’ he whispered. ‘Sweetling.’ The word made her heart swell too large for her chest.
As he gazed at her, he gently rubbed her fingertip against the peak of her breast, inside the robe, where only the linen of her chemise protected her. The nipple hardened and furled into a tight little nub. It stood at attention. Not with cold, but with longing to be touched.
More thrills chased their way down to her belly. She felt that strange little pulse between her thighs and the jolt of pleasure it caused.
She moaned.
He pressed his lips to the place her finger had touched, kissing and nipping and laving with his tongue. The ache at her core intensified and she writhed beneath him, opening her thighs to cradle his body, seeking the pressure that would relieve the terrible unbearable need.
He unlaced the ribbon at the neck of her chemise and pulled down first one side, then the other to expose her breasts to his gaze. She could only see the top of his head, but she knew what he’d done by the feel of the air and his breath on her skin. By the tightness across her ribs. She tried to cover herself with her hands, but he grasped them in one of his and held them over her head, lifting his upper body to look down into her face.
‘Would you deny me such bounteous beauty, my dearest?’ he breathed and his expression held such a look of awe as he gazed down at her exposed flesh, at the mounds of her full bosom and at the tightly furled rosy peaks at their tips, she could deny him nothing.
She managed to shake her head and he gave a rough sort of laugh.
‘Oh, Mary. You are every bit as delicious as my imagination said you were.’
‘And wicked,’ she mumbled as her face turned scarlet.
‘How can anything so good be wicked?’ he said, but his raspy voice was full of wicked seduction and passion. But it was his eyes that gave her pause. They were alive with something more than lust. There was tenderness and...affection. A warmth she had given up hoping to see in anyone’s eyes.
She expected her girls to respect her, but she knew she could not command their affection.
But if her heart felt something stronger towards him, a deeper emotion she could not seem to freeze out of existence, there was no reason for him to know. Tonight was just about desire.
She pulled her hands free of his grip and flung her arms around his neck. She kissed his chin, his nose, his cheekbone with a rush of joy. He welcomed her kisses with a smile of such unusual sweetness it made her heart lurch. She had never felt quite so happy. And tears burned the backs of her eyes. His face wobbled out of focus.
His smile fled. ‘Crying, sweetling?’
‘Happy tears,’ she said.
His laugh sounded a little startled.
Too much emotion for a man of his iron control, no doubt. ‘It is nothing. Kiss me, Bane. Make me warm.’
His lips met hers and they sank into the heat of passion, his hands wandering her body, the silk of the robe sliding over her skin in a sensual dance. He undid the tie around her waist and it fell open, revealing her skin through her chemise, bathed in firelight.
And when he slid off the sofa to kneel beside her, this time she let him look his fill. Like a wanton woman. She watched his expression as his gaze roved over her from head to heel. A searing glance full of carnal longings. It sent her blood scorching through her veins.
Her thighs fell open at the gentle pressure of his hand. He stroked and kissed the inner bend of her knee, the delicate flesh high on the inside of her thigh and she closed her eyes and let the marvellous feelings wash away all thoughts from her mind. Thought had no place in this miracle of physical delight.
His touch left her. She forced her heavy-lidded eyes open and watched him strip off his shirt. She gaped at the magnificent breadth of him. The wide shoulders, the defined muscles of his chest with a dusting of crisp black curls around his nipples. The ridge of muscles across his abdomen.
So many muscles. So much unforgiving strength.
It would not matter how hard she fought physically, she could never overcome such power. If she wanted to win, she would have to use her wits.
Right now, she had no thought of their struggle. Just the enjoyment of watching this virile male display his beauty. His hands went to the waistband of his pantaloons where they clung to firm, narrow hips and flanks. He paused.
She looked up at his face and realised he was awaiting her permission. Heat rushed through her body. She gave a quick nod and looked away. Looked at the back of the sofa, at the curtains covering the window, listening to the sound of him stripping off every stitch of clothing.
He gave a soft laugh. ‘Coward.’
He picked her up and lay her down in front of the hearth. At her look of surprise, he smiled. ‘I don’t want you getting cold and that bed seems to sit in a draught.’
She glanced over at the bed and realised that beside the headboard was a sconce similar to the one in her room. Did it also open into a tunnel? For a moment, she tried to recall the map in the book, but when he lay down beside her, one heavy thigh across hers, his mouth plying her with kisses, the thought drifted away. Later. She would think about it later. For now, it was his hands and his mouth and the feel of his warm skin against hers that had all her attention.
The man was a master at seduction. He knew where to touch her, how to make her squirm and gasp. In moments, she was lost in a haze of desire, arching her hips into the thigh pressing down on her mons, moaning at the way his tongue toyed with her breast, making them tingle and ache. And all the while, inside her, there was a growing tension. At first it was an ache. Then it felt like the sweetest pain.
There, where his hand stroked her woman’s flesh, delving gently between the hot damp folds. He rubbed and caressed until she cried out in frustration. He slipped one finger inside her, then another.
‘So hot,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘So tight and wet and ready.’
‘Yes,’ she breathed in wonder at the erotic touch on her most secret place that only seemed to make the tension increase to unbearable proportions.
‘Do you like this, Mary?’ he breathed in her ear, swirling his tongue in that sensitive place, nuzzling into her neck, kissing and sucking until she wasn’t sure which touch was driving her more mad. ‘This story between us.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes,’ she said louder when he didn’t respond.
‘Do you want to find out what happens in the end?’
‘Yes.’ Of course she did. How could she not? He started withdrawing his fingers and she closed her legs tight, trapping his hand and felt an astonishing rush of pleasure. She moaned at the deliciousness of it.
He muttered something under his breath. ‘Relax, sweeting. Let me come over you.’
The words made no sense, but he pressed with his knee, pushing her thighs apart, then when she parted her legs he settled his hips between them, his chest rising above her like the torso of a god, bronzed in firelight, his face strained with some sort of effort.
She glanced down between them and saw that the hard ridge of flesh pressing into her mons was his male member, thick and aroused, its head gleaming darkly where the firelight caught it.
She sucked in a breath.
He didn’t move.
The restless inside her, the needs he’d stoked, rose up to claw at her insides.
‘Bane,’ she pleaded. ‘The end of the story.’
‘It comes at a price,’ he whispered harshly. ‘Marriage.’
‘What?’ She shook her head, thinking to clear her hearing.
‘A promise of marriage, or this ends now. I won’t ruin you, Mary.’
‘You can’t ruin a schoolteacher,’ she protested, trying to think.
He rocked his hips and sent another pulse of pleasuring ripping up from her belly. She writhed, trying to bring him closer, to ease the torment.
‘If you want this, you will promise to be my wife,’ he said softly. ‘Agree. Or we are done here.’ He started to move, lifting himself away with a grimace of pain, but there was no doubting the inflexibility of his decision.
‘Yes,’ she breathed. And the rush of happiness was almost as painful as his sensual torture. She would have her children, her home and her husband. She wouldn’t have love. Not from him. But she had never expected love at all. And her children would love her. And she would love them. And cherish them.
‘I didn’t hear you,’ he said, his breathing harsh and ragged.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s no going back,’ he warned. ‘No changing your mind in the morning. You will be my wife.’
‘Yes,’ she said, proudly, more confident than she had been in years. ‘Yes, I will be your wife.’
‘Thank God,’ he breathed and his arm shook as he held himself up on one hand as the other reached between them and guided his hot flesh into her. Large, intrusive, pushing and stretching, while his face contorted with effort as if he was holding back. And then she felt it. Something stopping him. Her maidenhead.
‘This might hurt,’ he warned gently.
She wanted to laugh at the thought of the pain she’d endured these past few weeks. How could this be that bad? She nodded instead.
He thrust forwards slowly with a low groan and held still.
A pinch of pain caught the breath in her throat. She froze. He froze. They stared at each other, not daring to move.
But the pain soon faded to a memory and all she could feel was him inside her body, large, hot, pulsing.
It felt good. She shifted her hips and felt a stab of pleasure.
He groaned and rocked inside her, small little movements at first, matching the pulse that beat inside them both. It felt delicious. Deliriously so. But not nearly enough.
And then he was kissing her mouth, suckling on her breasts and the tightening that had relaxed started all over again. Worse than before. His hips drew back and plunged forwards, the rhythm steady at first, then increasingly wild, and she could see darkness at the edge of her vision. Blackness beckoned.
A fall into the void.
Terrified, she resisted, her muscles clenching tight as her body strained towards it and her mind pulled her back.
‘Let go, Mary,’ he whispered in her ear. A devil tempting her into the abyss. ‘Let it happen,’ he said. ‘You will be fine. I promise.’
He reached between them and pressed and circled on that tiny nub buried deep within her folds above their joining. Too much pleasure. Too much sweet pain. She could not hold on.
And she let the darkness take her.
Flew apart. Shattered. And it wasn’t dark. It was brilliant with blinding light. And she was falling into bliss.
In a state of languid floating, she felt him tense. Heard his soft deep cry and cushioned his shudders with the cradle of her body. Gave him the same gift he had given her.
His lips found hers and he held himself on trembling arms. Kissing her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids. ‘So grand, lass,’ he said in accented tones. ‘So damned grand.’
He collapsed at her side, curling around her protectively.
Awed, she stared at the man who would soon be her husband. Handsome. Strong. Terrifying. She’d agreed to wed him based on instinct rather than intellect. He’d forced her to say yes. Even so, a sense of gladness filled her heart. It wasn’t a love match. And it was better that way. Less chance for hurt. But they would each gain much of what they wanted from the arrangement.
As long as he gave her children, she could be happy. On that thought, bliss claimed her and she drifted on what felt like warm currents, only to awake a few minutes later being carried.
He lay her down on his bed.
She started to sit up. ‘I can’t stay here. The servants will find me in the morning.’
‘We won’t be the first couple to anticipate our wedding vows.’ The hot, dark look he sent her way as he pressed her back down on the pillows sparked yet another round of desire. She tried to resist its allure, the pull he exerted on her body and use her mind.
‘Betsy will be worried.’
He slipped beneath the sheets and pulled her into his embrace, drawing her head to rest on his shoulder, her hand to drape over his chest. His heart was a strong steady beat in her ear, his skin warm, the scent of him, all dark tones in her nostrils. And her traitorous body warmed.
He kissed the top of her head. ‘And what was she to be, when she discovered you gone in the morning?’
‘That was different.’
‘How?’
‘Because I wouldn’t have to face her.’
He chuffed a small laugh. It was an endearing sound. Amusement without mockery. ‘The servants know what goes on. They won’t comment, I can assure you. And you are not going back to your room. Not with so many avenues for you to escape me again. I won’t take that risk.’
Risk. The word was like a cold rock dropped on her chest. She gulped in air. She was taking a risk, staying here with him. ‘About what happened at the mine...’
He lifted his head to look down at her. ‘It’s over, Mary. There’ll be no more running away. You belong to me now. You swore it and I will not permit you to go back on your word.’
Something he had said didn’t make sense. Idly, she placed the flat of her hand on his chest, felt the rough hair and the solid muscle beneath. Heard his quick inward breath as he sank back into the pillows. ‘Don’t do too much of that, sweetheart. I don’t think you will be ready for me again tonight, and, as demonstrated, I don’t have a great deal of control when it comes to you.’
Nor she when it came to him it seemed. But... Her brain tumbled like a well-oiled lock. ‘I didn’t run away at the mine.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Mary. I found you on the road, remember?’ The rasp was back in his voice.
She rolled on her side, pushing away, so she could see his face, watch his reaction. ‘I’m telling the truth.’
He raised himself up on his elbow and pushed the hair back from her face, staring down into her eyes. ‘And I am basing my judgement on experience, sweet. You tried to buy a ticket in St Ives. You walked the path on the cliff. And then there’s tonight. Why would the afternoon at the mine be any different?’
‘Because I say so.’ The look of doubt on his face stirred anger in her breast. ‘If I am to trust you, surely you must also trust me.’
He opened his mouth to argue.
‘I do not deny those other occasions, but... Oh, what is the use?’
She flopped over on her back and stared up at the canopy. He would never trust her. And she would never trust him. Because she knew what she’d heard. You stupid little fool. His words. Even if it wasn’t his voice. People sounded different under different emotions. It could have been him. Yet what could she say? Accuse him of trying to kill her now, when they seemed to have agreed to a truce? With their wedding in the offing there was no need for him to be rid of her. He’d have his title and his wealth.
He leaned over her, turning her face towards him. ‘All right. Tell me.’
She looked up into his eyes, at the frown, at the jaw already set in uncompromising lines, and knew that, having started down this path, she could not now back away. She had to say something. Come close to the truth, see his reaction.
‘I went exploring and got lost.’
The frown deepened. ‘How could you get lost?’
‘I spoke to one of the boys, working further along one of the tunnels. Then I followed what I thought was candlelight.’
His expression lightened. ‘And ended up outside?’
She nodded. ‘I thought to go back to the entrance.’
‘On the road you were heading downhill. Away from the mine.’ He let go a deep sigh. ‘As I said. It’s over. Let us move forwards from here.’ He looked so disappointed she wanted to cry.
‘Someone pushed me down one of the old shafts,’ she blurted out.
He sat bolt upright. ‘What?’
Well, that certainly had his attention. She looked down at where his fist was bunching the sheets. ‘Someone shoved me from behind.’ Much as he had shoved her that day on the cliff, now she thought about it.
‘Are you telling me the truth?’
She looked straight into his eyes, held his gaze steady with her own. ‘That is what happened. That’s why I was heading away from the mine.’ The fear from that day rose up and tightened her throat. ‘I was lucky. My bonnet strings tangled with the ladder. I was able to climb out.’
‘Your bonnet?’
He sounded incredulous. He would sound that way if he was the one who had pushed her. ‘Too bad for you I didn’t die,’ she said. ‘It would have solved all your problems.’
‘Too bad indeed,’ he said drily. ‘You tell a wild story, Miss Wilding. I am surprised you aren’t blaming your disappearance on sightings of a ghost or some sort of hobgoblin.’
‘A human hand pushed me, not a ghost.’ You little fool.
He glared at her, his mouth a thin straight line. ‘Clearly I should not have let you go to the mine. You are not to be trusted to behave like a sensible woman and stay with your party.’
‘Interesting that you were not searching the tunnels, but rather were leaving for home.’ There, she had as good as voiced her suspicions.
He frowned, his gaze searching her face. ‘I found you on the road.’
‘Bad luck for you, I suppose,’ she muttered and was surprised when he flinched. It seemed she’d struck a nerve. ‘Just like the near miss at the cliff and the lucky escape from the barrel. Marriage must seem a great deal more certain at this point.’
The words hung between them like a sword waiting to strike a death blow.
His face turned to granite. His gaze moved from hers and fixed off in the distance. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were the grey of a winter storm. ‘Your powers of deduction are truly astounding.’
No denial. No claims of innocence. All her longing for one person in her life who would care about her balled into one hard lump in her throat. A burning painful blockage that no matter how hard she swallowed would not go back where it belonged in the deep reaches of her soul.
Perhaps if he would just pretend to care, it would not feel quite so bad. She forced a bitter smile. ‘Even women are capable of logic when it stares them in the face.’ The husky quality in her voice, the grief she hoped he would not recognise, came as a shock. Not even Sally’s betrayal had left her with such a feeling of desolation.
‘If your logic leads you to the understanding that marriage to me is your best chance of survival, then I am glad.’
She could not control the tremor that rocked her deep in her bones. The threat in his voice was unmistakable.