Cates, Kimberly (25 page)

A shiver of lightning-hot sensation shot through Juliet, setting every inch of her skin tingling with a soul-rending need. She could almost see him, the night weaving shadowy fingers through his hair, the moonlight gilding his warrior's face as he watched her sleep. It was an image of indescribable intimacy, but it brought no stinging surge of shame.

The sweep of those ebony eyes, stormy with desperate yearning, laid siege to every belief she'd ever had. And she trembled, not in genteel horror or virginal terror at the earthy emotions rampant on Adam's face, but rather, with a raw excitement and a fierce compulsion to bury herself in his arms, to press her lips against the hair-roughened skin of his chest, to see where such a rash action might lead them.

Heat stung her cheeks as she realized what her papa would think of such behavior. But Papa wasn't here. And she was so very alone. Alone, except for this reluctant warrior, with his scarred hands and his wary eyes and rough-edged confessions.

She stood for long moments, trembling on the edge of a chasm, knowing the choice was hers. She could flee back to the house and embrace her hurt, her sense of betrayal, or she could step off the edge of this precipice of emotion, tumbling to what might be her own destruction, or the miraculous haven of Adam's powerful arms.

She'd seen the ruin a man could wreak in a woman's life, especially a man as dangerous as Adam Slade—a man who, from the moment he'd arrived, had told her he wanted nothing more than to walk away.

Once he did, she'd be left with a broken heart—the kind she'd seen reflected so many times in the faces of her angels. But until this instant she hadn't realized that there could be only one thing worse than being left behind by Adam Slade. That was never having known his passion at all.

She felt the simple fantasies of the girl she had been slip away, a woman's more complicated dreams shivering to life in their place. And she closed the space between her and Adam Slade, knowing there were no happily-ever-afters written in the stars, knowing that once she ventured forth she could never retreat back to her ivory tower of innocence. Knowing that it would leave her forever changed.

Mustering a boldness she hadn't even known she possessed, she pressed her lips to the thunderous beat of his heart, tasting the salty satin of his chest for the first time. A guttural cry tore from Adam's chest.

He manacled her wrists with his hands, trying to force her away. "Thunder in heaven, Juliet! Stop! I'm not made of stone!"

"I want to know everything you're made of, Adam. Bone and sinew, midnight eyes and a velvety mouth." Her fingertips strayed up to trace his lower lip with awe. "Who could have guessed that a man's mouth could be so tender?"

Adam jerked away. "I'll hurt you, blast it! The instant I'm able, I'm going to walk away from this place. Walk away from you. You deserve a good man, angel. One with a clean whole heart, like my brother. Who can give you dreams instead of nightmares and heartbreak."

"I choose you, Adam. Don't you see, I finally understand. All those years, some part of me blamed Jenny for running off with the squire's son. Blamed even poor Elise for some part of her fate. I didn't know then that your heart chooses for you, and that once it does, there can be no going back, no matter what the pain."

"You don't know what you're asking, Juliet," Adam ground out, his big hands trembling.

"I'm asking you to make love to me, Adam. Please." She buried her face against his chest, her heart beating with the wildness of a caged lark's wings.

For long moments he stood, rigid. Then he pulled away. "Now I understand why I stumbled across your father on that accursed Irish road. This is God's revenge for all those years I laughed with the devil."

Juliet shook her head, confused, a little hurt. "Is it so awful that I told you what was in my heart?"

"Awful?" Adam gave a harsh laugh. "It's pure torture." Blast, he'd been so damned careful not to catch a bout of Gavin's infernal heroism, knowing that the stuff was more virulent than the accursed plague.

Who would have guessed that his scruples would make an appearance now? It was a damned inconvenient time to play the hero.

"Do you know what hell is, angel?" he asked. "It's listening to your voice, watching your lips tremble, so dewy-moist with wanting, hearing you offer everything to me, heaven after all these years. Yet knowing that I can never... never have you."

"But you can! Adam, you can! Even if you won't stay forever I'll accept that. But I—"

He held his hands out to her in the moonshine. "Do you have any idea the kind of horrors these hands have performed? I've killed so many men I'll never be able to wash the blood from my conscience. I've sold my sword, my skill to men I should have been helping to destroy instead of protecting. And each time I did, I sold another piece of my soul."

"No! There is goodness in you. Papa knew it. And I can sense it, too."

"Maybe there is. At least enough to know it's too late for me. I won't defile you, Juliet. Go back to your bed and your stitchery and your impossible dreams."

His gaze locked with hers, and he winced at the pain in her lovely features. He turned away. He could feel her gaze against his back, silent, sad.

"I... understand now," she said softly after a moment, taking a step away from him.

Hell, he knew she'd never understand in a thousand years. He sure as blazes didn't! He'd never wanted any woman the way he wanted Juliet Grafton-Moore now, naked beneath him, bathing him in innocence, resurrecting the unbroken pieces of his soul. Most miraculous of all,
she
wanted
him,
an angel offering up everything she was to a battered warrior who didn't know what the hell to do with his life now that the drums were silent.

He'd spent a lifetime taking what he wanted, devil take the consequences. Why didn't he just gather the infernal woman up in his arms and put an end to this misery? But he kept his fists knotted at his sides, his whole body shaking with the effort not to reach for her.

"I understand why you attempted to mount the gallows in your brother's place," she said in that low voice that fed a thousand fires of passion. "Why you can't stay here at Angel's Fall no matter how much you want to. It would ruin your plans if you were to love me, live the rest of your life being cared for and cherished and—"

"Cherished?" He uttered a harsh laugh. "You might as well attempt to
cherish
a tiger. You'd end up in the same condition. Torn to ribbons by the very paws you want to hold you."

"How can you be so certain? Or are you afraid, Adam? As long as you were fighting on some insane battlefield, you could ignore the truth. That it takes far more courage to live than to die a glorious death. Because if you live, you risk failing the people you love."

Adam's fists knotted, nails digging into his palms. Damn her—damn her for lancing open wounds he'd hidden forever, secrets he'd buried in the darkest corners of his soul. Damn her for knowing the truth.

But could she really comprehend all the ugliness inside him? How many people he'd failed? His mother, his sisters, Gavin. And for what? His father's approval? That pride-filled smile that meant so little in comparison to his mother's humiliation, his sisters' lost futures, Gavin's banishment? How much pain had he caused because he hadn't had the courage to confront his own father with the agonizing truth?

Adam struggled to wall up his feelings, bury them as he had so many times before. He had to get away from Juliet before she dredged the last secrets from his soul, for if she did, there would be no place left to hide.

"Under these circumstances, there is only one thing to do," he said. "I strike my colors. Surrender the field."

"You what?"

He turned toward her, just in time to see her stricken face go white as wax. "I'm leaving Angel's Fall first thing in the morning."

"But what about the threats?" she stammered. "You gave your word of honor—"

"I intend to keep it. I will hire someone to take my place. I don't know why I didn't think of that solution before, by God's blood. I've enough coin to muster a blasted army if I want to. Set a round-the-clock guard at every entrance of Angel's Fall for however long is necessary."

She drew herself up to her full height, a radiant guardian angel girding her wings for battle. "This is our home. I won't have it turned into an armed camp."

"It might as well be! You're damned well under attack!" He swore as she spun around, marching toward the house with her shawl trailing behind her.

"Blast it, Juliet!" Adam raged, storming after her. "What are you going to do? Stand your ground here, like a stubborn little idiot, until someone pulls the blasted house down on your head?"

"Yes!"

"Why,
damn it to hell? Tell me the truth this time, not a pack of pretty fairy tales."

She whirled to face him, the moonlight snagging, silver in the tears that filled those passionate blue eyes. "When Papa died, I lost everything—even the house where I grew up. Everything, from Papa's favorite chair to his library of books belonged to the parish of Northwillow. I could take away nothing... nothing but the memory of him, the little sermons he'd preach to me, his dreams of healing... healing everyone—his parishioners, Mama, and my brother and sister... and me, when I was forever so sickly."

"Juliet, I know you're grieving."

"I'm done grieving. I'm looking for the higher meaning in all this—trying to make something good come of all the pain I caused. I spent my whole life hiding from the rough edges of life, but they found me anyway. I helped Jenny run away with the squire's son who claimed to love her. But he left her alone, penniless, swelling with his child."

Adam's jaw clenched, and he knew that his own mother might have suffered a similar fate if his father had chosen to abandon her, that he might have been vulnerable as Jenny's child, lost to the cruel winds of fortune in a world that scorned the helpless.

"Then," Juliet continued in a voice that tore at his heart, "when it was already too late, Papa went to find Jenny. We thought... the squire had lands in Ireland. And his son had promised Jenny that he would take her there. Papa never blamed me, only vowed he would find her... bring her back to Northwillow. But Jenny was in London. She died in childbirth, abandoned, alone. Both Papa and Jenny died because of me."

"Juliet, don't be absurd. They made their own choices."

"Like your brother did when he rode off to join Bonnie Prince Charlie?"

Adam recoiled as if she'd struck him. "Damn it, it's not the same thing!"

"Isn't it? I had the power to stop Jenny from running away, but I didn't. I begged Papa to find her, to mend the hideous mistake I had made. He would have sacrificed his own soul to ease my pain. In the end, he gave his life."

"He wouldn't want you to take such insane risks in an effort to appease your conscience. He wanted to shield you from danger, not put you in the center of a whirlwind."

"Why am I even trying to explain. You'd never understand my reasons for staying here. You have a family who loves you, who waits for you to visit them."

"I haven't seen them in years."

"Because you're a stubborn, blind, bull-headed idiot! If I had anyone who waited for me, who loved me, I'd run to them with all my heart. But I don't have anyone, Adam. They're dead. All dead."

Adam's throat went raw. "I'd exchange my life for your father's if I could. Give him back to you."

"Of course you would," Juliet retorted with a scornful wave of her hand. "That would be just one more grand and glorious gesture. But you can't bring him back to life. No one can. Even so, I discovered something here at Angel's Fall. There are other women like me. Maybe I don't have a father or mother, sisters or brothers to love me, but neither do Elise or Millicent or even Isabelle. They're my family now. You want to know why I won't leave Angel's Fall? Without them, I'd be alone."

The anguished words drove hilt-deep into Adam's chest.
Alone...
did any other soul that breathed understand the bleakness of that word so well? But he had chosen that barrenness of his own free will, while Juliet had had her father's love stolen from her on a desolate Irish road.

"Juliet." Just her name, torn from his throat on the jagged edges of a myriad of lost possibilities.

"Go, Adam. I'll still have this." She waved her hand toward the ivy-covered walls of Angel's Fall. "I absolve you of your vow to my father, free you of responsibility for me. Ride away and don't look back. After all, that's what you're best at."

Only one other person on God's earth had the power to wound him so deeply. Adam tried to hide the gash she'd carved in his soul. He couldn't look at her... let her see...

See what? Every vulnerability that lay beneath Adam Slade's mocking laughter, harsh cynicism? That somewhere, buried in the warrior he became, was a boy who had dreamed of being like William the Conqueror, obliterating the stain of his bastardy by deeds so glorious they would blind the world to the circumstances of his birth?

She started to walk away, and Adam knew in that instant he didn't give a damn what anyone else thought now—he only cared about this woman, this angel, who knew all the ugliness inside him, yet had laid her healing hands upon his scarred soul and told him that she loved him.

Was that the last thing Lucifer had seen as he fell from heaven? The hand of an angel reaching out to him? A second chance after so many mistakes. He only had to have the courage to take it.

"Juliet," he breathed her name, and it broke upon his lips, a sound of worship, of the first faint ribbon-hues of hope. "Juliet, don't."

"Don't what, Adam?"

"Don't be alone any longer. My hands are scarred with too many sins to count. But if you want them to touch you, I swear, they will shelter you, protect you, until the heavens fall." He held out his large hand, ashamed of its roughness, fearing just the brush of his fingertips might bruise her.

She hesitated for what seemed an eternity, her eyes wide and soft in the moonlight, shadowed with the hurts life had dealt her. Then, ever so slowly, she reached out her hand, slipping her fingers into his.