Secrets of Surrender (18 page)

His hand left her thighs and began unbuttoning his breeches. A petulant moan snuck out of her before she could stop it. She pushed his hands away and worked on the buttons herself. She swooned from the feel of his touch stroking her again.

She fumbled with his garment while he touched her more deliberately. His head bent to her neck and her ear. His finger probed carefully. “Do you want it like that, Rose?”

She could not respond. She could not speak. It was all she could do to stay upright. She grabbed at his garments clumsily, blindly, pushing them down his hips while the light touches on her breast and between her thighs left her whimpering.

“Or like this?” His hand slipped around her hip to touch her from the front. One long, slow, incredible stroke caused a quake of pleasure to shake through her.

She knew that he could see how helpless he made her. She clung to his shoulders, hanging on him for support.

He released one of her hands, kissed it, then moved it lower on his body. A small slice of rationality returned, enough for her to comprehend what he was doing, what he wanted. Too lost to care, too far gone to know embarrassment, she let him close her fingers around his phallus.

Another devilish stroke with his other hand made it easier for her. Pleasure streaked up through her body in a rippling tide, and in response she caressed him as he did her.

Whatever restraint he still maintained cracked then. He kissed her with new savagery. She felt the tension all through him, in his stance and his kiss and even in the way he touched her. Deliberate now. Determined to command her total surrender.

Pride lost its meaning. She swayed on her knees, arching into his dominating kisses, moaning from the want.

He moved her, but not the way she expected. He turned her so her back faced him and his hands caressed her breasts freely. She leaned into him, arching her back. Her nipples rose high, tight and hard, begging for more, for anything, for everything.

He moved her again, bending her body until she knelt low on the edge of the bed with her legs bent beneath her body. A stunning erotic shiver trembled low in her loins.

He lifted her hips. She waited, breathless, so excited that she could not bear it. Her body throbbed, waiting, expecting. She pictured what he saw, her bottom rising to him and that hidden flesh exposed. The scandalous image only excited her more.

He did not take her at once. He let her wait, hovering on that point of madness. He caressed her bottom, firmly kneading the swells of her flesh, looking at her, she was sure. He watched her submissive surrender and her desperation.

He touched her again and she cried out. It was different this time. She was exposed and open and she knew that he watched, knew that he saw her naked body. She dipped her back lower and raised her bottom more.

She was begging soon. Begging and moaning and smothering her cries in the bedclothes. Finally he entered her in a long, deliberate, slow thrust. Beneath her moan of relief she thought that she heard his as well.

She lost herself after that. She experienced only the torturous pleasure of need and the violent crescendo of fulfillment.

“Did you come here to see Cottington before he dies?” Rose rested in Kyle’s arms beneath the bedclothes. It had been some while since he lifted her limp body and moved her here, situating her so that she lay tight against him while he sat with his body resting on the headboard. The candle still cast a glow over their mutual contentment.

“That was one reason. I will try tomorrow.”

“Try? Does he not receive you now?”

“He does not know that I have called. His secretary and physician do not tell him about visitors, unless they choose to. That is how it is now with him.”

She thought that it was probably how it had always been. An earl usually had people who made sure he was not disturbed unless he wanted to be. Now that Cottington was ill, someone else was deciding when he wanted to be, not him. That was all that had changed.

“If he cannot see you now, perhaps in the spring, when you had planned to come, he can.”

“I do not think that he will be alive in the spring.”

She realized that he had heard the earl was dying. That was why he had come north right now.

“It will be very sad if you cannot say good-bye, after all he has done for you. Surely his secretary knows that.”

“To his secretary I am the boy from Teeslow.” His mouth pressed her hair in a distracted kiss. “It is not only saying good-bye. I need to see if he still has his mind about him. I would like to ask one final favor, for the miners.”

“Is it about reopening that tunnel?”

“Yes. Some think to stop it, in ways that will only get their heads broken.”

“It could work, if they all—”

“It won’t be all of them. There are families who lost men in that cave-in who will want the tunnel opened again, so they can bury their dead.”

“You said that your father died in an accident. It was that one, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “I would like to bury him too. But I know that tunnel will never be safe unless things are done differently. Its walls move.”

“It is solid rock. Rock does not move.”

“The earth is a living thing, Rose. Before I build I have to make sure the ground is stable. That mine is not in stable ground, and that tunnel was the worst. I knew it as a boy. I could see it.”

She sat up and faced him. An echo of the night’s earlier trembles fluttered in her when she looked at him. A woman cannot allow a man to do such things without accepting a certain disadvantage with him in the future. She sensed that she had ceded him mastery of her in other ways too, ways that were between them now, encouraging those flutters.

“How long did you work in the mine, Kyle?”

“I first went down when I was eight. Children carry coal out in baskets. Usually they are nine or ten when they start, but I was big for my age. But not as big as a man. So I could see what the men never saw because it was right above their bowed heads. There were cracks above and near the top of the walls. I could see them shift over the months. I told my father. He and the others saw no danger because they had not been watching and had not seen the changes. Then one day—it all came down. Ten men were buried alive on the other side of a new wall.”

“And they were just left there?”

“They are never left if it can be helped. Men began digging. More rock fell and another man was gone. There was no more digging after that. A service was held. Prayers were said. And two days later the men went back into the pit. Except the families of the men lost. They waited a week. By then the men would be dead for certain. Lack of air or water would do it by then.”

She pictured him, holding vigil with his aunt and uncle. She saw the child imagining the father behind that wall of rock, maybe still alive but beyond help.

“I told the men we should dig from above. Bore a hole down so there would be air until we figured out how to get them out. No one listened to a child, least of all the men who supervised for the owners. I know now it could work. An engineer could do it. I could do it now, if ever such a cave-in occurs in a lateral tunnel.”

Yes, he probably could, even if the ground would not permit it. He would do it with his bare hands, she guessed, if that was what it took. If he set his mind to it, rock and ground would not stop him.

He had told her the story and answered her questions. She could tell that his mind had moved on to other things. He had left that candle burning for a reason.

He took her arm and drew her toward him. He sat up and positioned her so she faced him, with her legs wrapping his hips.

He watched his hands curve around her breasts and his thumbs brush their large dark nipples. “I saw you well enough in the dark, or my mind did at least. I like this better.”

In other words, he did not want any more ladylike snuffing of lamps and candles at night. She did not mind. She could see him too this way. However, it would take some time before she did not experience some shyness when he looked at her body like this.

He lifted her and moved his leg so she sat on it, bringing her higher. His tongue and teeth began arousing her breast with leisurely, devastating flicks and nips.

Their position allowed her to caress him freely too. She stroked over his shoulders. “I think that you should take me with you when you go to Kirtonlow to try to see Cottington.”

His fingers replaced his mouth, freeing the latter to reply. “No.”

She wondered if he did not want her to see him turned away.

“If I come with you, the secretary will not refuse us.”

“Yes, he will, and I’ll not have you insulted.”

“It is much harder to dismiss a lady, Kyle. We will let him know that he dare not do so, that the earl will be most displeased if he tries.”

“No.”

Her hand wandered low between their bodies in a quest to open his mind. She closed her fingers around his hard shaft and teased the tip with her thumb. “You married me for my blood, Kyle. You should let me open doors if I can.”

His smile could not hide the sensual storm her caresses created. “Rose, are you using feminine wiles to make me pliable?”

She glanced down at what her hand was doing. “I appear to be having the opposite effect. There is nothing pliable about you right now. Except ever so slightly, right here.” She gave a gentle squeeze at the tip.

His hands cupped her bottom and lifted her slightly. She knew what to do without instruction because it seemed natural and necessary. She shifted and settled so that she could guide him into her.

The first touch of penetration caused a shock of pleasure through her whole body. The sensation captivated her and stole her breath. She did not move to take him in farther but remained like that, barely joined, so that the delicious shudders would not stop.

He allowed it even though desire tensed through him so violently that his jaw clenched and his teeth bared. She lowered a little so that she felt him a bit more.

“You are going to kill me, Rose.” He grasped her hips. “You can torture me for hours another night, but now—” He drew her closer, lowering her until they were snugly together.

He guided her after that, his strong hands easing her hips into a rhythm of absorption and release that she controlled. She discovered new pleasures with subtle shifts and pressures on her body. She closed her eyes and tensed around him again and again.

Then he filled her more, and so deeply that she gasped. She opened her eyes and looked into his and could not look away again. She did not see him move, but she felt him filling her, thrusting and claiming while the depths of his gaze invited her to drown in sapphire fathoms. He held her hips firmly immobile at the end. No longer free, she surrendered to the way he ravished her body and soul.

Her violent climax was almost painful in its intensity. She collapsed on him. Her face pressed to his chest, bound to him by his strong embrace while her body slowly relinquished the last shivers of bliss.

“When will you leave for Kirtonlow Hall tomorrow?” she asked when their breaths and hearts had calmed.

A stretching arm. A billowing sheet. He drew the bedclothes up and tucked them around her. “Noon, I think.”

“I want to go with you. I will be ready at noon.”

She waited for his “no.” It did not come. Instead, his embrace adjusted around her, wrapping her closely. His breath warmed her temple with a kiss.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

T
he bleakness of the hills disappeared five miles away from Kirtonlow Hall and the landscape became more lush by the minute. The house loomed tall and broad, overlooking a large pond that reflected its gray stone in silver water.

As their carriage turned along the drive, Rose examined Kyle and herself. His cravat creased perfectly. His coat sat perfectly on his shoulders. Even the chain of his watch glowed in a perfect arc of links. A fashion plate would not be more precise in its correctness.

She had worn the best garments she had brought, a newly commissioned lavender carriage ensemble with a mantlet lined and trimmed in gray squirrel. It had joined her wardrobe on this journey for the most practical of reasons, but its current style and discreet luxury would serve a different purpose today. This officious secretary would never know the fur had been salvaged from one of her old garments that had gone hopelessly out of style.

Kyle’s card was taken away. Eventually steps were heard, this time two sets. The servant clicked his way down the staircase with a short, bald man in tow.

“Well, well. At least Conway will turn me away himself this time,” Kyle muttered. “You were correct. He dare not dismiss a lady without explanation.”

Mr. Conway approached with an ingratiating smile. “Mr. Bradwell. Mrs. Bradwell. I regret that the earl is too ill to have visitors. His condition is far worse, it saddens me to say, than when you called the last time, Mr. Bradwell. I will, of course, bring him any message that you may have, although it is not clear that he understands all that is said to him.”

“My message is for his ears alone, competent or not, however they be now,” Kyle said. “Since he is failing, I must insist on seeing him.”

Mr. Conway’s smile thinned.

“I also have a message that must be given directly,” Rose said. “Lord Easterbrook charged me quite specifically with personally communicating his exact words to Lord Cottington.”

“Lord Easterbrook!”

“He is my relative through marriage. I visit his London house regularly and he condescends to include my husband and myself in his circle.”

Mr. Conway frowned unhappily at this news.

“I fear Easterbrook’s anger if I return to London and report that I failed him. You appear a faithful servant, Mr. Conway, and I know that you seek only to ensure your master’s comfort, but I doubt that I will be able to keep your name out of my sad story. As you may have heard, Easterbrook is somewhat eccentric. One never knows what he will do if he favors or disfavors someone.”

Conway’s eyes blinked hard at the implied threat. Rose smiled as sweetly as she could. Kyle remained passive, but she detected deep sparks in his eyes that said he found her speech stunning.

Conway chewed his lip while he masticated his thoughts. “Madam, forgive me. I was unaware of your relationship to the marquess. However, Lord Norbury has insisted his father not be agitated by visitors.”

“Agitated? Does your presence agitate him, my good man?”

“Of course not. He knows me so well that—”

“Then Mr. Bradwell’s presence will not, either. He knows my husband as well as he knows you. Better, I daresay. I will pay Easterbrook’s respects and leave them alone at once, so as to avoid any agitation. As for Lord Norbury, if he is not in residence he need never know of this visit unless you inform him, and need never waste his time judging whether we qualified as agitating visitors under the terms of his command.”

She let her expression and pose show that she assumed she would be accommodated. Mr. Conway seemed relieved by the excuses her performance gave him.

“Under the circumstances—yes, I will bring you to him. In the case of visitors like yourselves, the issue of agitation is negligible. Please follow me, Madam. Sir.”

They paraded after Mr. Conway as he led the way to the grand staircase. Kyle took her arm and angled his head close to hers.

“I had no idea that you carried a message from Easterbrook,” he muttered. “You should have told me.”

“I am certain he would want me to give this fellow peer his greetings and express his hope that Cottington recovers.”

“In Easterbrook’s closest circle, are we?”

“It is not clear he has any circle besides his family. I do visit Henrietta. He does have great affection for Alexia. I do not think I was exactly untruthful.”

“You were not exactly untruthful. And you were magnificent.”

“You should receive some benefits from this marriage. My relations are the only dowry that I brought to you.”

He squeezed her hand. “Your beneficial relations are the last things on my mind this morning.”

The insinuation warmed her. Echoes of the night’s soul-shaking trembles spoke in their quiet, devastating ways. She focused on Mr. Conway’s back to maintain her bearings, but she noticed nothing else except the masculine mystery at her side. Images flashed, wonderful, shocking ones, of the various ways he had eased her into erotic intimacy.

Her last few paces to the earl’s chamber proved unsteady. Suddenly Mr. Conway’s face appeared in her eyes.

“Please wait here. I must announce you and ensure that he feels capable of the visit. If he does not, we must try again tomorrow.”

Conway entered the chamber alone, but returned quickly. He opened the white paneled door and stood aside.

The earl sat in a large, green-patterned chair next to a roaring fire. Blankets covered legs propped on a footrest. Age and illness had diminished any resemblance he might have to his son, except perhaps a similar vanity.

The earl’s white hair had been perfectly groomed and his face cleanly shaven. Despite his infirmity his valet had turned him out in an expertly creased cravat and a colorful silk waistcoat. Rose expected that the parts hidden by the blanket were equally presentable on a day when this man had no expectations of leaving this chair.

Eyes far more shrewd than Norbury’s examined them. A smile broke on his pallid face. It formed only on one side of his mouth. The rest remained flaccid, a victim of his apoplexies.

“Well, come forward, Bradwell. Bring that wife of yours here so I can see her.” Illness had not affected the tone of command, even if it slurred the words’ pronunciations.

Kyle guided Rose forward and made formal introductions. The earl eyed her from head to toe.

“Conway there says that you have a message for me, Mrs. Bradwell. From Easterbrook.”

“Indeed I do. The marquess sends his best wishes to you, and his fervent hope for your quick recovery.”

“Does he now? I haven’t seen Easterbrook in some years. Not since shortly after he returned from that journey to God knows where, so odd and different. I have not visited London much. How generous of him to remember me and send this kind regard.”

His tone was sardonic, and his eyes too knowing. She tried not to flush at the evidence that he had so easily seen through her ruse.

“You can carry my message back to the marquess in turn, Mrs. Bradwell. Will you do that for an old, dying man?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Tell him that he shirks his duties most shamefully. Tell him I said it is time he got out in the world and stopped indulging his bent for eccentricity. Tell him he must marry and sire an heir, and take his place in the government. That family has too much intelligence to waste it, and his life is not his own to live as he likes and that is the damned truth of it.”

“I will communicate your sentiments, I promise.”

“Sentiments, hell. Word for word, that is how you will do it, not prettied up the way women speak.” A strangled chuckle snuck out. “Wait until I’m dead, though. If he is angry he can take it out on my son, not me.”

“If I am to wait until you are gone, I am sure it will be a long while before I must take up this duty. If you will excuse me now, I will leave my husband to speak with you alone.”

Cottington watched Rose leave the chamber. Then he gestured to his secretary. “Go now. If you are needed, Mr. Bradwell here will come for you.”

As soon as Conway left, the earl gave another order. “There’s brandy in that cupboard over there. Pour me some, Kyle, and for yourself too, if you want. They won’t let me have any. I’m supposed to face death stone sober, to their way of thinking.”

Kyle found the brandy and glasses and poured them each a finger. The earl sipped his like it was nectar. “Hell of a thing, to be treated like a child. It is better now than a fortnight ago. For a week I needed servants to deal with even matters of the most basic hygiene.”

“It sounds as if you are recovering, then.”

“I’ll be dead by summer, if not long before. I don’t need a physician to tell me. I can feel it. It is strange, how one just
knows.
” He set down the glass and used a handkerchief to wipe the spirits that had leaked out the bad side of his mouth. “She is beautiful, your wife. Pretty enough to make the rest not matter so much, I suppose. Her brother and whatnot.”

“As for the whatnot, thank you for the wedding gift.”

The earl chortled. “My son will be furious about that. Better if you had not been in the middle this time. Bad luck that. Better if it had not been you who two times now forced him to face his dishonorable behavior.”

Despite the laugh, a deep sorrow showed in the earl’s eyes. He blinked it away. Norbury was only one more disappointment in a life that, like all lives, probably held many.

“So, you came all the way up here to say good-bye, did you? I am glad that you did.”

“That is why I came, but I find that I also bear a petition, one I did not know I would hold until I arrived in Teeslow.”

“There is nought that I can do for anyone much anymore.”

Kyle told him about the mine. The earl listened with a sober expression.

“It was a rich deposit there,” he said. “They wanted to go back in a few years ago but I told them no. I had already sold most of it to the others, but my voice still carried. Being an earl is useful sometimes. My son will not stop it like I did. I will write anyway, and use my influence, but once I die…”

Once he died the hunger for profit would win in a weighing where men’s lives were cheaply valued.

“Even if it is delayed some months, it may give everyone time to calm,” Kyle said. “Tempers are high among the colliers. One strong voice, one leader, and there will be trouble.”

The earl sighed and closed his eyes. His lids remained down so long that it appeared he had drifted to sleep. Kyle had just decided to slip away when the earl spoke again.

“We’ll not see each other again, Mr. Bradwell. If you have any questions to ask, now is the time for them.” The eyes opened and pierced in his direction. “You do have questions, don’t you?”

Kyle had several questions. The most recent one could not be asked, however. No matter that it sat in a corner of his mind. He could not ask this dying man if his only son had been even more dishonorable as a boy than as a man.

“I do have a question.”

“Out with it then.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why what?”

“All of it. Why?”

“Ah.
That
why.” The earl thought it over. “Part impulse. Part instinct.” That smile, half-formed. “For one thing, I knew that if you stayed in Teeslow, the colliers would have their one voice and one leader in a few years, after you reached manhood.”

Kyle studied him, wondering if he was serious. In all the years they had exchanged generosity and gratitude, it had never entered his mind that the earl had ulterior motives. That was mostly because he could not conceive of any way the largesse could ever benefit an earl.

“Hell, it wasn’t just that. You were wasted there. I saw it at once. Saw it in your eyes and determination. You came here that day, all polished and cleaned up, and I saw the man you would be. I’d heard about you before, see. I’d been told about this child who said we should bore down to that tunnel when it caved.”

“It would have worked.”

“Damned if I believe if it would or not. That a child had thought of it and dared to propose it—you were presented to me that day after you thrashed my son, and the memory of the manager laughing about that child’s boldness entered my head from God knows where. I knew that child had been you. Just knew it, but I checked anyway.”

He wiped his mouth of the drool that formed with talking. “Then, that business with my son. There you were again, daring what most grown men would not. So, in part I did it so you would not be wasted. And in part so you would not grow into a man who might lead them.” He paused. “And, I admit, in part to punish my son by favoring the boy who had beat him. Not that it helped much. As you know better than most, his disgraceful behavior toward women continues to this day.”

So there it was. Most of it Kyle had already known. The generosity had not been entirely charitable in its motivations, but then few human acts or decisions ever were.

The earl’s whole face sagged. The damage appeared to invade the good side from the bad.

“You are tired and should rest. I will go now. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

Before Kyle could walk away, the earl stretched one hand in his direction. Kyle took it in his own, feeling for the first time the grasp of this man as a friend.