Nicole Jordan (3 page)

Thorne felt anguish rip though him. His hands balled into fists, while a cry welled up in his throat, threatening to choke him. Nathaniel was truly gone.

“Whot should we do with the body, guv’nor?”

Thorne couldn’t answer.

He felt Laurence kneel beside him, heard the man’s ragged voice. “His family will have to be told. God…his sister will be devastated.”

Numbly Thorne nodded. Nathaniel had left behind a younger sister and a female cousin, he remembered.

Just now, however, he couldn’t contemplate the future or consider the family Nathaniel had left behind. He couldn’t think of anyone else’s pain, for at the moment, his own grief felt too great to bear.

One

THE ISLE OF CYRENE

MARCH 1815

S
he wished
she could paint him. His nude body was beautiful, set against the backdrop of a turquoise sea.

Feeling her pulse leap, Diana Sheridan stared transfixed at the breathtaking sight as Christopher Thorne rose from the gently foaming waves.

The sun-drenched cove below the bluffs was one of many small bays and inlets secreted along the island’s rugged, picturesque shoreline. The scene would make a magnificent landscape on canvas, Diana well knew. The golden line of sand dotted with palms…the white, rocky promontory stretching to meet the sparkling, endless Mediterranean beyond…dazzled in the sunlight. But it was the man’s virile form glistening with seawater that most captured her attention.

She wet her dry lips.

She had seen Lord Thorne only once from afar, several years ago. If she’d thought him a beautiful man then, she was even more captivated by his physical attributes now. Unable to help herself, Diana studied his body, admiring him from both artistic and feminine perspectives.

She had never seen a completely nude man, nor had she ever painted one. She’d trained in human anatomy and the techniques of oils by duplicating sketchings and paintings by prominent artists and by studying plaster casts of ancient statues. But canvas was still inanimate, and statues had no color, no life.

Not as this man did.

Even the great masters would have relished so vital a subject.

Admittedly she had a measure of talent, yet she wasn’t certain she could do Christopher Thorne justice. If she could capture the vivid feeling of life, the play and ripple of muscle in his lean, lithe body, or the way the sun’s glowing warmth caressed his skin like a lover’s touch—

He looked almost leonine. His streaming wet hair was dark gold in color, while a sprinkling of hair on his powerful chest arrowed down to his groin to widen in a thicker thatch. He moved with the grace of a lion, as well, as he climbed up the narrow beach and flung himself down on a linen towel spread on the sand.

Diana stood riveted, fascinated by his body—his broad shoulders, strong back, slim hips, tight buttocks, athletic flanks….

Her heart was beating far too rapidly, she realized, and her skin had suddenly flushed. Worse, she felt an unmistakable warmth pool between her thighs at the primal sight of him.

“Don’t be a fool,” she suddenly muttered, scolding herself beneath her breath. “You should know better than to allow an attractive man to affect you.”

Perhaps she could blame her flush on the unfamiliar climate. It was barely mid-March, but the golden afternoon was warmer than many summer days in England. And her unsteadiness was no doubt caused by spending several weeks at sea navigating a pitching ship’s deck. She’d arrived on Cyrene with her younger cousin Amy merely two hours ago, and she still hadn’t properly regained her balance.

They’d traveled a great distance in search of Thorne—from London and the cold Atlantic, past the peninsula of Portugal and Spain, around Gibraltar, and another day’s sail beyond the Balearic Islands of Ibiza and Mallorca and Menorca, before finally reaching Cyrene’s sole harbor and colorful little seaport.

When she’d hired a carriage at the town stables and sought out Thorne’s estates, they were taken to a splendid villa perched on the eastern shore of the island. His servants suggested he might be found in the cove beneath the bluffs, at the rear of the villa, so Diana left Amy to enjoy a refreshing tea while she investigated. Upon seeing a man swimming below, Diana had carefully negotiated the steps carved into the rock. But when she reached the beach, she was taken aback to discover him nude.

No doubt she should have expected something so scandalous from Lord Thorne. This was the charmingly wicked nobleman she had heard so much about over the years—both from her cousin Nathaniel and from the scandal sheets. By all reports, Thorne was a rebel: wild and reckless and totally unconventional.

It was no surprise that he was one of England’s most eligible and unattainable catches. He bore the title of viscount, as well as being heir to a dukedom. And his fortune was said to be substantial, even without the prospect of one day inheriting his father’s vast estates.

After seeing him now, however, Diana could understand better why he was considered a devil with women: because he was so sinfully beautiful. But she’d fallen in love with a beautiful face before, a disastrous mistake that had led to her social ruin.

“Confound him, don’t you dare allow his looks to addle your wits,” Diana chastised herself.

Trying to regain control of her senses, she remained in the shadow of the bluff as she debated whether to leave or to make herself known to Thorne.

She needed to speak to him alone, the sooner the better, for he had been awarded guardianship of Nathaniel’s younger sister, Amy. At nineteen, Amy was now an heiress and, as such, was the target of numerous fortune-hunters and rakes bent on seduction.

Nathaniel’s will hadn’t surprised Diana, for Thorne was his longtime friend, and women were rarely appointed legal guardians. Besides, in society’s eyes, her own single state, as well as the scandal in her past, precluded her from making a proper steward for her flighty young cousin.

But a man like Lord Thorne was hardly a suitable guardian either, even if he
had
made Nathaniel a promise to look after his sister.

Diana was very protective of her spoiled but basically lovable younger cousin. At her uncle’s passing several years ago, she’d taken over raising the girl, while her cousin Nathaniel assumed legal guardianship. Yet the responsibility she felt was based as much on affection as on moral duty or the ties of blood. She loved Amy dearly, like a sister or even a daughter. And now she was the only family Amy had left…and Amy was hers.

Since Nathaniel’s shocking death, they’d both spent the past year in mourning for him, quietly living in the country. But such a tranquil life had made Amy highly susceptible to male attention and flattery, and now she fancied herself in love with the handsome fortune-hunter who’d begun to pursue her over the Christmas season.

Diana was determined to prevent the girl from making the same ruinous mistake she had once made. To stop Amy from being so badly hurt, the way she had been.

If it meant dealing with the devilish Lord Thorne, Diana would do it.

She certainly wouldn’t allow his rakish reputation to intimidate her—for the sake of her own pride if nothing else. She’d vowed she was through hiding herself away. No longer would she voluntarily be held back because of her dubious past. Nor would she willingly suffer any more of society’s punishment.

She was starting an entirely new life of independence, Diana reminded herself. Indeed, this was the first test of the first real freedom she’d ever had.

She had never expected to visit such a glorious island as Cyrene. The golden sunlight, the fresh, salty sea breeze, the magnificent vista, all were completely foreign to her. Faith, she’d never been to the seashore before this. Since being orphaned at age seven, she’d spent most of her life at her uncle’s country estate in Derbyshire.

Diana squared her shoulders. She didn’t intend to let any man, wicked or not, beautiful or not, naked or not, drive her back into her shell.

Summoning her courage, she took a deep breath, raised her muslin skirts to keep them from dragging in the sand, and stepped forward into the sunlight.

He knew he was being watched.

A sixth sense alerting him to danger, Thorne glanced covertly at his pile of clothing, assuring himself that the dagger he usually carried was close to hand.

Pretending to keep his eyes shut, he stretched languidly and rolled over onto his back, so that he could glimpse the intruder who was now moving toward him.

The watcher wore skirts.

What the devil was a woman doing down here in his private cove? And a lady, by the looks of her attire.

Irritation was Thorne’s first automatic response. The last genteel female to unexpectedly see him in the buff had tried to trap him into wedlock.

In fact, that lamentable incident was what had driven him to take refuge on Cyrene for the past two months. At a house party in the English countryside in January, a calculating young debutante had sneaked into his bedchamber while he slept and was caught naked with him by her avaricious mother.

Feigning shock, Mama had immediately petitioned his ducal father, insisting that Thorne be forced to marry the girl. Redcliffe contended that he should do the honorable thing and accept his fate, but innocent of seducing the little schemer, Thorne had refused to be dishonorably trapped in marriage. As soon as he concluded his current assignment for the Guardians, he’d sailed for Cyrene to escape their connivances and his father’s hounding.

Highly suspicious now, Thorne peered through his lowered eyelids at the interloper. She had stopped a short distance away—the moment he’d rolled over, in fact—and was staring at him as if fascinated.

If she was a blasted husband-hunter, he would send her packing. And if not…

He couldn’t deny that she was a beauty, with her delicate, fine-boned face, flawless ivory skin, and nicely curved body. Her high-waisted muslin gown of dark blue flattered her slender, shapely figure and firm, high breasts, and sent an immediate shaft of awareness lancing through his loins.

She looked, however, to be a bit older than the usual debs who pursued him, perhaps in her mid-twenties. She wore her rich dark hair pinned up in a simple knot, Thorne noted, and her eyes, which were just as dark and lustrous, held awe and curiosity as she surveyed him.

Deliberately he opened his own eyes fully and locked gazes with her.

The impact made him feel an instantaneous heat—an involuntary physical response that came as a sweet, if unwelcome, shock.

She felt the same sweet shock, he was certain. She had stiffened, looking wary and unsettled now, as if all her feminine instincts were on keen alert. Just as all his male instincts had suddenly roared to vibrant life.

To Thorne’s further irritation, he could feel himself hardening. It was difficult to remain unmoved, though, when a lovely young woman was contemplating his body so intently.

Cursing his swelling erection, Thorne pushed himself up on one elbow. “Do you realize you are trespassing on private land?”

“Your servants said I might find you here.”

Her low, husky voice sent a further charge of heat along his nerve endings. “Did my father send you?” he demanded. “If so, then pray let me inform you that I have no intention of wedding you.”

She blinked at that. “I beg your pardon?”

“The last young lady to see me nude claimed I compromised her and insisted that I wed her. If that is your aim, sweeting, you can turn around at once and take yourself away.”

He watched as her sensual mouth thinned in a wry smile. “I promise you, my lord, you are safe with me. I have no interest in marriage whatsoever.”

Her claim reassured him to a degree, yet Thorne couldn’t let himself relax. “You obviously have an interest in my body.”

Color rose in her cheeks, and she looked flustered to be caught ogling him. “Forgive me. I was contemplating you with an artist’s eye…trying to determine how I would paint you.”

Thorne’s lips curved in a sardonic grin. “Now
that
is a novel tactic no one has ever used on me before.”

Her chin lifted with a trace of defiance. “I am perfectly serious. I am an artist.”

He regarded her for a long moment. “If that’s true, then I suppose I should be flattered by your attention.”

“It
is
true. You would make an admirable subject for a portrait.”

“Is that all? You see me as one of your subjects?” He arched a taunting eyebrow. “You don’t feel the slightest urges beyond the artistic?”

“I regret to disappoint you, but no, my interest in your male anatomy is purely objective.”

“How lowering. I am mortally wounded.”

Her wry smile held genuine humor this time. “I should think you would be pleased. By all reports, you have an army of eager females fawning all over you.”

“A regiment, at the very least,” Thorne drawled, feigning a shudder. “And all with matrimony in mind.”