Margo Maguire (25 page)

Chapter 25

C
hristina closed the safe just as Gavin entered the study. He shut the door behind him.

“Gavin!” she cried, happy and relieved to see him.

He pulled off his gloves and dropped them on a chair, and Christina noted a curious light in his eyes.

“Is there anything more about the baron? Have they—”

“No,” he said, coming toward her. He always walked with purpose, but now his gait seemed predatory.

Christina wanted naught but to feel his arms around her, but he’d kept his distance ever since their return to London. It was as though their affair had never occurred.

“They do not think he did it?” she asked, unsure of his purpose. “Or they have not been able to question him?”

“No, they have not found him. But when they do, they’ll believe it soon enough.”

She bit down on her lip, wishing things did not have to change between them. Not yet.

She went to the safe and took out the money she had just placed there. “Here are the packages of banknotes. There were too many for just one . . .”

He took them from her and set them on the desk behind her.

“Is s-something . . .” She swallowed. She did not understand the gleam in his eye—whether he was angry or annoyed, or perhaps frustrated with Baron Chetwood’s evasion of the authorities. “Gavin?”

“Did you enjoy your visit with Everhart today?”

“Everhart? What has he to do with anything?”

He stepped very close and started to unfasten the buttons of her bodice.

Christina flushed with desire, with relief. He wanted her as she wanted him.

He opened her gown, his fingers trailing deftly down the bodice, causing her heart to beat furiously in her chest.

He touched his lips to her neck, slipping her gown from her shoulders, causing her to shiver, but not with cold. She had missed him desperately the night before, and most of the day.

Christina reached up and pushed his coat off his broad frame, then pulled at his neck cloth, wanting him as bare as she. A moment later, she slid her hands up inside his shirt and felt the firm, warm flesh of his chest against her palms.

He moved suddenly, his breath harsh against her neck as he lifted her onto the desk and parted her legs to stand between them.

There was an urgency to his movements, an intensity that gave rise to a scorching heat in the core of her being. She wanted him closer.

Christina touched his hard, flat nipples and he kissed her mouth, pressing his body against hers, demanding a degree of contact they could not accomplish there in her father’s study, and certainly not while clothed.

He moved suddenly and dragged her skirts out of the way, and then he was hard against her, and struggling with the fastenings of his trews.

Yes!
He was exactly what she wanted.

Her heart thudded in her chest. Neither the inappropriateness of the setting nor the hard wood of the desk thwarted her desire. “Now, Gavin. Quickly!”

She needed him desperately. Needed to feel him inside her, wanted to feel the familiar, exquisite connection of their bodies and souls.

Suddenly he was there, his powerful thrust making her shudder with pure bliss. He was so much a part of her, she could not imagine letting go.

“More,” she whispered, clasping her hands over the edge of the desk to hold on as he moved.

He indulged her, watching her intently, his eyes a hazy blue in the dim light of the study.

She would have wished for a bed, would have pressed kisses across the thick muscles of his chest and licked his hard nipples. She’d have gone down on her knees and plundered him with her mouth as she’d done once before, arousing him in a fiery, explosion of sensuality.

But he put his hands on her, opening her, creating a flurry of sensation, a battery of flexing pleasure that pulled him in so deeply, Christina could not breathe. Gavin became her universe. Her very existence depended upon him as her body tensed and contracted around him.

He suddenly shuddered with his own climax and caught her lips with his own, his kiss madly intoxicating. She clasped him to her, unwilling to lose their intimate contact . . .

Even though it terrified her. Their union was not what it had been only a few days ago. It had become something more, just as her emotions had grown and expanded. She had allowed herself to become vulnerable to a man who needed—wanted—only to deposit her at the home of her despicable old grandfather. And then he would be done with her.

To her horror, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them quickly away, before he could have any inkling of her distress. Somehow, when he withdrew from her and helped her off the desk, she was relatively composed.

She turned her back and fastened her bodice, assuming he was righting his own clothes.

“You’ll want to take the money—”

“I will.”

She had not expected him to say anything more. But his reticence—though she had not minded it a few days ago—rankled now. She picked up the packages and turned to face him. “Take them. I’m sure you’ll want to go early to All Hallows tomorrow.”

The right side of his brow dipped over his eye, as it often seemed to do when something troubled him.

“Christina, this . . . I—”

A loud crash and shouts of alarm erupted at the front of the house, interrupting whatever Gavin was about to say, and he made a quick exit from the room.

“Stay here,” he ordered.

But Christina had always had trouble following orders.

G
avin heard footsteps racing toward the front door from every direction in the house. He did not know how he managed to move after his fiery encounter with Christina, but he made it to the foyer as one of the new footmen wrestled with a strange young man, leaving the front door ajar.

The intruder was a competent fighter, and nearly managed to overpower the footman, but when Gavin lent his assistance, the fellow found himself outweighed and overwhelmed. They had nearly subdued him when he heard Christina cry out.

“
Lang!
”

Gavin could not believe his ears, not even when Christina fell to her knees beside him. He had no intention of releasing the intruder.

“Get them off me, Tina! Christ almighty!” the young man growled. Clearly, it wasn’t Chetwood, but he was too shabbily dressed to be a Jameson brother. But
Tina
? Who but a brother would address Lady Fairhaven so informally?

“Stop, Gavin!” Christina cried. “It’s my brother! It’s Lang!”

Hancock and Edgar arrived in the foyer at that moment, and their shouts of surprise at seeing Lieutenant Jameson gave Gavin good reason to drop the fist he had been about to plow into the young man’s face.

“Gavin!” Christina cried again.

The new footman pushed himself up to his feet, and Gavin helped Jameson stand. Then he caught sight of someone hovering just outside the door. A young woman, holding a ragged bundle.

“Good Christ, what is going on here?” Jameson demanded. “Cannot a man come into his father’s house without being molested by strangers?”

Christina threw herself into her brother’s arms, and the sight of her tears tugged at something deep inside Gavin. He knew she was feeling relief and joy, but when he thought of the agony Jameson had put her through, he wanted to lay that good, solid punch right into the young whelp’s jaw.

“Where have you been?” Christina cried.

Jameson extricated himself from her arms and went to the door, drawing the horrified young woman inside. “It is a very long story,” Jameson growled as he cast a dangerous look in Gavin’s direction, “and I do not intend to tell it while standing here in the entrance hall, surrounded by brutish strangers.”

Christina wrung her hands together, seemingly at a loss for words. “Of course you don’t understand. So much has happened, not the least of which . . .”

Jameson bent down and picked up his key. Gavin surmised he must have been entering the house of his own accord when the new footman realized someone was breaking in. Gavin was surprised the young man hadn’t just knocked like every other nobleman he’d ever known.

Christina’s brother put his key into his waistcoat pocket just as a screeching sound emanated from the bundle in the young woman’s arms.

Lieutenant Jameson put a protective arm around the young woman, ignoring the pitiful wail. “Shall we go inside? I could use about a gallon of Father’s whiskey.”

“Lang!” Christina protested. She stopped him from taking another step and pulled away the top flap of the bundle held by the young woman. “There is an infant in here!”

Jameson’s female companion looked frightened and ill at ease, not to mention pale and drawn.

“I am Lang’s sister, Christina Warner,” she said to the woman. “And you are . . . ?”

Jameson gave a shake of his head, as though he still could not believe all that had happened. “Tina, this is my wife, Eva Jameson. In her arms is my son, Geoffrey.”

C
hristina felt the blood leave her head, then Gavin’s arm sliding around her waist to steady her. She did not think she’d ever appreciated him more than at that moment. Gavin was absolutely dependable, especially when she was in need.

Gavin apologized for the misunderstanding in the foyer and introduced himself to Lang, who shook his hand. Their clash was apparently forgotten.

But Christina was still in shock. Her brother was not dead. He was with her there at home, alive and well. And he had a wife and son. It was all too much to comprehend.

“Lang! We thought you were dead!” She raised her hand to her brother’s cheek and touched it, hardly able to believe he was standing before her.

“Well, I’m not, am I?” Lang replied curtly, obviously still incensed by the attack on his person when he entered the house.

“Let’s go into the small parlor, shall we?” Gavin said, calmly taking charge once again. “I’m sure everyone has questions.”

And answers, Christina hoped.

Once she was seated across from Lang and his wife—
his wife!
—Gavin poured her a generous draught of sherry, and a glass of whiskey for Lang.

“I think brandy for your wife, Jameson?”

Eva sat close to Lang on the narrow settee. She looked small and pale, and though Christina did not mean to be unkind, she thought Lang’s wife appeared sickly. Lang gave a nod of agreement to Gavin’s suggestion of brandy.

The little bairn did not seem much healthier than his mother. Christina guessed he was not far past newly born. He’d given out that one harsh cry, then only a few small whimpers afterward. Surely newborns were lustier than this.

“Where is everyone?” Lang demanded.

Christina looked at him in disbelief. “No,” she said, suddenly feeling incredibly angry. “The question is:
Where have you been, Lang?
”

Her brother frowned at her. She’d seen him behave in this very same manner every time he’d been called to task for one infraction or another. Annoyed and defensive.

“Oh no,” she said ignoring her glass of sherry. She settled her fists onto her hips and faced him squarely. “
You
are the one at fault here, not the family for being absent when you happened to turn up.”

He at least had the grace to appear slightly abashed. “As I said, it’s a long story, Tina.”

“And I will soon hear it, dear brother, but clearly, your wife and child are exhausted.” She swallowed her questions, clenching her jaws almost painfully. As much as she wanted to hear Lang’s reasons for putting their family through agony, there were priorities.

“There is an infant crib in the attic,” she said to Eva, keeping her voice calm and as cordial as possible when speaking to her sister-in-law. “We’ll have it brought down to Lang’s room, then you and the child can go up and rest.”

She looked at her brother, still furious with him, but very concerned. Something was decidedly amiss.

Gavin went to the door. “I’ll summon the housekeeper and send Trevor for a doctor.”

Lang slipped his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Aye. If you would.”

“Take your family up to your bedroom, then,” Christina said. She would hear his story later, after Eva and the bairn were settled.

Lang stood and took the bairn from his wife. “What are
you
so angry about?” he asked, his tone harsh. “I wrote to tell you all where I was. But no one ever replied.”

His statement took her aback, and she pressed one hand against the center of her chest, frowning. “You wrote? We never received a thing from you.”

“I sent a letter to Father. Sent it here, to Sunderland House. And another one to Commodore Hammond on
The Defender.”

“Your letter never arrived here.”

“
What?
”

“Oh Lang,” she said as her throat thickened with joy as well as sorrow. Thank heavens all their worry had been for naught. She embraced him tightly for a moment, taking care not to squeeze her nephew, so relieved she could barely breathe.

“Your letter must have got lost in the mail,” she said, releasing him and turning back the blanket to look at the infant’s tiny face.

“I didn’t send them by the mail,” Lang snapped. “Didn’t trust it with such a crucial message.”

“Well, what—”

“I gave them both to an old friend of yours to be sure they were delivered.”

His words stunned her. “Oh no, you do not mean . . . Was it Viscount Brundle?”

“Aye,” Lang said. “I’d seen him earlier, in Plymouth. Norris and I had stopped for a drink in a dockside tavern after we picked up our letters. Norris had . . .” He cast a quick glance at Gavin. “Norris met up with a young lady . . .”

Christina’s heart sank. Lieutenant Norris had not mentioned anything about a woman, at least not that Christina had heard.

“So you split up,” Gavin said.

Lang nodded. “I’d had a letter from Eva and needed to get to her as quickly as possible. Brundle offered me one of his horses so I could ride to Tavistock.” He set his jaw and looked directly at Christina. “She was in dire need. I had to go.”

Christina’s throat clogged with tears. “Your letter never came.” And Brundle had not mentioned it when he’d called earlier in the day. The scoundrel.