Fanning the Flame (18 page)

He shook his head at the memory, plunged ahead, a flow once started that could not be stopped. "There was fighting nearly every day. But it wasn't till nearly three weeks later that the main battle began."

Not until the night twelve thousand French soldiers left Fort Aboukir in secret and attacked British forces. If he closed his eyes he could still hear the rumble of cannon, the whine of gunfire, the thud of lead balls slamming into the bodies of the men. He recalled a soldier on his left, standing one moment, falling over like a toppled tree the next, beneath the heavy weight of a cannonball careening across the earth.

"The grapeshot was murderous," he said, his voice devoid of emotion, the pain locked carefully behind the protective wall of his mind. "Everywhere I looked, I saw men being blown apart and horses screaming in pain, falling beneath a deadly barrage of hot, tearing metal. A group of French cavalry swept down on the Ninetieth Foot, a regiment of infantry. In a matter of minutes, a thousand fighting men were reduced to six hundred. Those that survived cheered at the even higher losses of the French. Men who had fallen out of their saddles dangled from the stirrups, beaten to death as their terrified horses raced madly back and forth along the line."

Adam swallowed. "My brigade made a sweeping charge from the left and engaged the enemy with sabers. I remember a young lieutenant. I could see how frightened he was by the erratic movements of his blade. He swung at a French cavalry officer, missed and slashed into his horse. The poor animal reared over backward and crushed the lieutenant beneath the weight of its body." He ran a shaking hand over his face, telling himself to stop, but the words just kept spewing out.

"There were thirty-five hundred casualties that night. I can still see them lying on the battlefield, their blood soaking into the sand for as far as the eye could see. So many men. God, we lost so many good men."

So lost was he in the memories, he might have gone on if he hadn't heard the soft little mewling sounds Jillian was making beside him. Forcing the awful memories away, he turned to see her fist pressed over her mouth and her cheeks streaked with tears.

"God, I'm sorry." Leaning over, he pulled her into his arms. "I don't know why I told you that. I shouldn't have. It isn't something a woman should ever have to hear."

She simply held on, her arms around his neck, holding him as if she could somehow help him erase what he had seen. It made a lump rise in his throat.

"I'm glad you told me. No one should have to keep such terrible memories locked up inside them."

He only shook his head. Outside the window the sky was getting lighter. He needed to get her out of there before it was too late. She reached toward him, smoothed her hand over the scar across his ribs.

"Is that where you got this? At Aboukir?"

He nodded. "A saber cut. Lucky for me it wasn't too deep."

"There's another scar on your thigh. I noticed it last night."

"Nothing so heroic. A practice maneuver went wrong while I was training some new men."

"And the one along your jaw?"

His mouth thinned, tightened. "A personal matter. Nothing to do with the war." She ran a finger along the thin line, then rested her hand against his cheek. He felt the soft brush of her lips against his, inhaled a delicate, lingering trace of her perfume mingled with the musky scent of sex, and all rational thought flew out of his head.

He knew what she was offering and in that moment he needed to be inside her more than he needed to breathe. He was already hard and throbbing. He eased her beneath him, parted her legs with his knee, and slid himself into her welcoming heat. He tried to take her slowly, to make sure she reached her peak, but in the end he couldn't hold back. He pounded into her, driving hard, her soft cries muted by his kisses.

His release came swift and hard and left him a little bit shaken. He didn't apologize for his roughness when he eased himself off her, just reached out and caught her hand, linked his fingers with hers and carried them to his lips. The next time they made love, he would make it up to her, see her pleasured as she should have been this morning.

The next time they made love.

Though his growing need for her worried him a little, Adam thought about the pleasures he had only begun to show her. Once he cleared her name, he would set her up in a small but elegant town house where he could visit her often. He had never kept a mistress, never wanted even that small degree of commitment. But Jillian was different and he meant to enjoy her. Surely something would break soon on her case and once it did, he would tell her, ease some of her worry about the future.

With that thought in mind, Adam climbed out of bed.

Jillian took chocolate and toast in her bedchamber that morning, unwilling to face the earl after what had happened last night. She could still hear the pain in his voice as he described the battle that raged in his nightmares, but mostly she thought of the hours they had spent making love.

She told herself she wasn't sorry, and in most ways she wasn't. She had given herself to him freely and the night had been incredible.

But Adam was an earl and even if she were proved innocent of Lord Fenwick's murder, he had no plans for marriage and he wouldn't choose her if he did. What they shared would be a brief affair at best.

As Jillian descended the carved wooden staircase and crossed the paneled entry, the thought sat like a lead weight on her chest.

"Good mornin', Miss."

"Good morning, Reggie."

"Lord Blackwood left word for ye. He wants ye to join him in the greenhouse."

Her stomach contracted. Sweet God, she didn't want to face him—not yet.

She took a steadying breath. "I don't believe I know where the greenhouse is."

"I'm sure ye've seen it. 'Tis that big domed buildin' behind the trees at the back of the garden. That's where the major—I mean, his lordship— raises his orchidaceous plants."

Orchidaceous plants?

"Thank you, Reggie." As Lord Blackwood often did, Jillian found herself calling the servants by their given names. She was beginning to like the informality that made them seem less like employees and more like friends.

Leaving Reggie to his butlering tasks, she made her way to the rear of the house, thinking of the earl, more nervous by the minute but also intrigued. She couldn't imagine the dark, masculine earl in a room full of orchids. The image was a lure in itself.

As she walked toward the greenhouse, she caught a glimpse of the nearby dower house, a reminder of the promise she had made to the countess, Adam's mother, but after what had happened with the lady's son last night, Jillian wasn't ready to face her.

Instead, she continued along the path until the greenhouse appeared in the distance, a two-story structure built of the same smooth stone as the house. Paned windows formed the walls, supporting an oblong, dome-shaped roof fashioned of large glass panels. The panels were set in copper frames gone green with age, giving the place a whimsical appearance.

Jillian took a breath to steady her nerves and walked into the warm, humid interior, catching the scent of rich, black peat and the lighter, more delicate fragrance of orange blossoms. Passing a row of miniature citrus trees, she caught a flash of white and black and spotted the earl's full-sleeved shirt and dark breeches.

Damp with sweat, the shirt clung to the muscles between his shoulder blades and Jillian remembered running her hands over those muscles last night. She remembered his lean, naked body pressing her down in the deep feather bed, and her mouth went dry. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, exposing the long sinews in his forearms. Dark hands covered with earth moved gracefully as he bent over to repot one of his orchidaceous plants.

In contrast to the delicate ruffled white flower, he looked impossibly dark and male, and Jillian felt a shivery sensation in the pit of her stomach. Silently, she noted his unhurried movements, the gentleness with which he handled the orchid, and remembered the care he had taken with her last night.

He must have sensed her presence, there by a row of purple iris, for he turned, set the orchid aside, and slowly rose to his feet—a considerable height by anyone's standards. Washing his hands in a nearby bucket of water, he dried them on a linen towel, then started walking toward her.

Jillian forced her own feet forward. There was nothing in his features that said what he was thinking, and her heart set up a nervous clatter. Perhaps he regretted last night. Perhaps his already uncertain opinion of her had changed for the worse. Her footsteps slowed. Suddenly she wished she were anywhere but there.

"Good morning." His smile was slow and so sensuous her insides turned to butter.

"Good morning, my lord."

"I thought you might enjoy the orchids. I find peace here when it seems to elude me everywhere else. I've been meaning to show you." His gaze ran over her, an intimate perusal that made her think of the things he had done to her last night. "Other matters kept intruding."

Other matters? Like murder and prison—or making love to her for hours on end? But she saw no censure in his features, only a trace of the heat she had seen in his eyes last night.

Jillian moistened her lips, more than a little disconcerted. "I-I'm afraid I don't know much about orchids. In truth, I've seen very few of them."

"Then showing them to you will be my pleasure."

There was an almost imperceptible pause on the final word and her stomach swept up.
Pleasure.
Adam Hawthorne knew the true meaning of the word. It terrified her to realize how badly she wanted him to make love to her again.

Adam seemed unaware of her thoughts.

He took her hand and began to lead her down a row of variegated white-and-purple orchids, pausing in front of a pot that contained smaller cream-colored, smooth-petaled orchids with burgundy spots growing from a long, single stem.

"Cymbidium ensifolium. They're from China. They go back nearly three thousand years." He led her down another row. "These are from South America." Astonishingly bright yellow. "Oncidium, they're called." He pointed to a group of magnificent broad-petaled purple plants. "These are called Orchis mascula. Shakespeare wrote about them." There were orange ones, pink ones, lavender, and white; star shapes, triangles, and hearts, all of them exquisitely lovely.

"They're beautiful." But as she watched Adam gazing at them with pride and an odd sort of tenderness, she couldn't take her eyes off his face. She forced her attention back to the plant. "Difficult to grow, I imagine."

His smile turned brilliant and it transformed his features. "And therein lies the challenge. No one knows much about raising them. A friend of mine from the army brought some plants back from the West Indies. That's how I got interested in the first place."

"Rather like your interest in Egyptian antiquities."

"Yes." His gaze flicked over her and she knew he was thinking of Egypt and the dream that had brought her into his room last night. "Aboukir was a nightmare. It still is. But afterward . . . I don't know . . . there is something compelling about Egypt, the power and majesty of a culture that lasted for thousands of years."

Returning his attention to the orchids, he paused beside a basket filled with moss. "I keep a coal fire burning under this section of the greenhouse, and warm air vented in. We pump water into the room in open trenches to keep enough moisture in the air. I've been thinking of writing a paper on it for the London Horticultural Society."

One of her eyebrows went up. "The London Horticultural Society? Why, Major Hawthorne, who would have guessed?"

"You're laughing at me," he said, but he looked faintly amused.

"It doesn't exactly fit your image. You're supposed to be mysterious and dangerous."
Then again,
she thought, assessing the hard, handsome lines of his face,
dangerous is exactly what he is.

Adam's eyes locked with hers. He caught her wrist and drew her toward him. "You have no idea, Miss Whitney, just how dangerous I can be." Lean hands framed her face. "But I intend to show you." He tilted her head back, his mouth came down over hers, and a wave of heat washed through her.

"I'd like to make love to you right here," he whispered against her ear. "I'd like to lay you down among the orchids. I'd like to unbutton your dress and peel it away, to fill my hands with those lovely pale breasts."

Jillian moaned as his long fingers slid over the bodice of her gown, purposely grazing her nipple.

Firm lips moved to the side of her neck. "I'd like to lift your skirts and—"

"Carter? Carter, is that you?"

Adam swore softly at the sound of the countess' voice. Jillian flushed, and both of them stepped away at the same instant his mother poked her head around a row of orchids.

"Carter?"

"It's me, Mother, Adam."

"Adam!" She always seemed surprised—and overjoyed. Jillian thought that perhaps it was because her second son had been gone for so long in the army.

She continued walking toward them. "I thought I might find you out here among your lovely flowers." She was wearing a simple beige muslin gown, her hair pulled back in a tidy gray bun. She looked more like a governess than a countess.