Suzanne Robinson (16 page)

Suddenly she was lifted and laid on the rug that covered the floor. He rose over her, his face and body blocking out the light, and she opened her mouth to object.

“Shhhh.” He nipped at her lower lip before devouring her mouth once more.

It felt too good, having his body cover hers. All reason, all thoughts of propriety were meaningless when set against the pressure of warm, straining muscles and the smooth-rough texture of a male cheek against her own. When Alexis’s hand pushed at her thigh, she let him shove it aside. The resulting contact of hip against hip and groin against groin fed the burning ache that was driving her insane. The more he did, the more she needed. That was why she had to have his mouth on her neck. It was why she allowed him to free her breasts and touch them. It was why she didn’t scream when he sucked a nipple and tugged at it with his teeth.

Kate heard her own breathing. It was loud and rough. It went with her burning skin. In the grip of her first full arousal, she touched his face and found it hot. The knowledge that he was as frenzied as she stirred her even more. The tingling pain in her loins escalated, and she arched her hips upward. As she moved, Alexis let out a curse and tore at her skirts. With sharp, jerking movements he nearly ripped them in his haste to bare her legs. She felt cool air on her calf and thigh, then something warm covered her knee. It was his hand. She gave a little start as that hand stroked up farther and farther, until it reached the juncture of her thighs.

The feather-light touch there was what broke the spell. It was too much. The feelings were too much. His pumping
hips and sucking mouth were too much. Kate made a small sound of protest. Alexis ignored her. She wriggled, and he pressed his weight down on her, settling his hips directly on hers. She tried to pull her mouth free of his. He let her, immediately shifting to kiss one of her breasts. She gasped for breath while he unfastened his trousers. She uttered a “no” that came out a dry, hoarse whisper that was cut off by his mouth. Panic chilled the throbbing in her loins when he covered her with the hot fullness of his own. The touch of his genitals was the impetus she needed.

Kate tore her mouth free. “No!”

He stared down at her. His face was beaded with sweat, and his gaze almost frenzied. He closed his eyes and arched his back. She felt a burning tumescence slip between the folds of her own flesh. He was going to put himself inside her.

“Alexis, stop,” she whispered.

“No. I can’t. Dear God, I can’t.”

She grasped two handfiils of black hair and pulled hard, so that his head snapped backward. “Yes you can. You have to.”

He growled. He fastened his hands on her wrists, forcing her to release his hair, and lifted his hips from her. The hatred in his face made her heart jerk.

“Damn you to hell,” he said. “You castrating little tease, I ought to—” He stopped, studying her face. His hands loosened their bruising grip on her wrists. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

The staccato hammering of her heart settled down. “No, no.”

In a second Alexis was standing over her. He turned and adjusted his clothing. With his back still turned to her and bracing himself on the arms of the medieval chair, he ordered Kate to cover herself. Confused and feeling as if she were somehow guilty of torture, she complied. When
she was finished, she sat with her legs tucked under her, staring at Alexis’s back as she waited. He remained with his face averted for long minutes. The only sound was his uneven breathing. At last he spoke.

“Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

He faced her with his hands gripping the back of the chair. “Not since I was fifteen have I been so completely unnerved. You twist my guts on a spindle.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said. She ventured a question. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll recover.”

Wetting her lips, she tried not to blush while she tried to explain. “It felt so good. I didn’t know I’d get scared, and I didn’t know I would hurt you.”

Soft, masculine laughter filled the room, but she wasn’t offended. He had lifted his eyes to the ceiling and was shaking his head.

“I realized your ignorance too late. It was my fault. I mistook intellect and poise for sexual experience.”

“I should have known, though.”

He rested his forearms on the back of the chair and smiled at her in disbelief. “How could you know?”

“Patience told me. It was a while ago, but I should have remembered. She said men get so … so—I don’t know what the word is, but she said when they get that way, they hurt terribly. I forgot and I’m sorry. Are you crying?”

She jumped up, rushed over to Alexis, and put her arm around his shoulders. His head was buried in his arms and his body was shaking.

He lifted his head, and she saw that he was laughing again. She grinned back.

“Upon my honor,” he said, “you will have me in Bedlam before the month is out. I feel as if my soul has been stripped out of my body and minced for a pie.”

“That sounds awful.”

He touched the tip of her nose with his finger. “No, I don’t think it is. In fact, I can’t remember when I’ve ever felt so alive.”

“Does that mean you’re not mad at me?”

He kissed her cheek. “Yes, my ignorant wise one.”

She smiled at him, but she couldn’t think of a reply. He’d battened on her weakness, her ignorance of sexuality and sexual love. She wasn’t about to let him know it. She didn’t understand what had just happened, and she was afraid he did. What she needed was a distraction.

“Alexis, you never did let me tell you I changed my mind.”

“About what?” he asked as he fished under the carpet for her discarded book.

“Your sick soldiers. I decided to let them stay in my house. Don’t you think we’d better find an architect and get started making it ready for the men?”

He bounded to her side, his look of triumphant satisfaction giving her pause.

“Thank you, little savage.” He took her hand, opened it, and kissed the palm.

At his touch, Kate forgot his odd reaction to her news and let him escort her from the Clocktower. As they walked out into the barbican, it suddenly occurred to her that Alexis de Granville wasn’t such a snake after all. Though, come to think of it, he did have a wonderfully tight ass.

The de Granville ancestors, the male ones, were probably laughing at him. He’d let her go. Not only had he let her go, he’d escorted her to the library so she could write to her damnable Mr. Poggs. Striding through the great hall, Alexis passed a tapestry showing a warrior smiting helpless Saxons. That savage, Norman Phillipe de Granville, wouldn’t have stopped until he’d rutted the girl five or six times. Hunching his shoulders, Alexis hurried by the tapestry as if he feared to see the black-haired lord sneer at him.

God, he was paying for his idiocy. He was still hard as a helmet, and it was all he could do to reach his sitting room before his control slipped. He slammed the door behind him. His lips pulled back over his teeth in a snarl. Rushing to his desk, he scooped up the books and papers there and hurled them to the floor.

He stood amid the mess, fists working
open and closed, and ground his teeth together while he searched the room for something breakable. He spotted a Greek vase and headed for it. At that point, the unfortunate Meredith knocked and entered, holding an envelope.

“Duck, Meredith!”

Meredith dropped to his hands and knees barely in time to avoid the vase. The pottery crashed and splintered against the wall. Meredith didn’t spare it a glance. He picked himself up, rearranged his cravat, and put himself between Alexis and a glass figurine. Thwarted, Alexis came to a stop with murder seething in his eyes.

Meredith ignored the look and handed him the envelope. “My lord.” When Alexis snarled at him, the valet turned the envelope over so that Alexis could see the handwriting on the address.

Alexis snatched the envelope from him, tore it open, and read the enclosed note. Turning his back on Meredith, he drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long, groaning sigh.

“I shall be riding to Heppleton immediately, Meredith.”

“I have laid out your costume, my lord.”

“Good.” He handed the note and envelope back to his valet. “Burn it as usual. I’ll be along soon.”

Meredith pocketed the note and walked toward the door that led to Alexis’s bedchamber.

Alexis braced his arms on the desk and closed his eyes. “Meredith.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Thank you.”

“Fealty, my lord. There is a responsibility inherent in the position.”

Feeling transparent and a bit like a porcupine with sore quills, Alexis allowed Meredith to get him ready to leave. A day or two could change a person fundamentally, he thought. He should have known that, for Balaclava had
mutilated his soul as well as his mind. However, he felt like a molting parrot after his short acquaintance with Miss Katherine Ann Grey. The note from Carolina proved that to him, for suddenly he couldn’t abide the thought of going to the woman. He had to, though, for it was an obligation. He had a duty to her.

Ophelia had replaced Carolina Beechwith. Not that Carolina had known it. He’d gradually been easing away from her before he’d been sent to the Crimea, but she had refused to take hints. She lived on expectations of a reunion, waiting for a chance to resume what he’d already ended in his own mind. This was the first time since he’d been well that she’d found a chance to see him.

Alexis wasn’t certain how he got there, but he was soon walking toward the portcullis and drawbridge, beyond which a groom waited with his horse. He entered the darkness of the vaulted tunnel formed by the two towers of the gate house. Sunlight at either end made the blackness more complete. Alexis slapped his riding crop against his thigh and glanced up at the murder-holes above his head. He always looked up at them, expecting to see a medieval sergeant ready to pour boiling oil down on him.

Ahead he could see Theseus munching carrots supplied by the groom. Two people rounded the corner and stepped into the passageway. Fulke and Hannah. Lovely. Fulke would decide to take his wife for a stroll on this particular day. Alexis fixed a neutral smile on his face and greeted the two. As he’d expected, Fulke got rid of his wife before she could say a word.

While Hannah retreated in a flutter of ribbons, netting, and lace, Fulke stood still, blocking Alexis’s way out. The spiked teeth of the portcullis hung behind him like the jaws of a beast.

Alexis faced Fulke. “She only exists for you when she’s in your presence, doesn’t she?”

Fulke pulled off his gloves, not bothering to look at his
departing wife. “Who? Hannah? Remember the words of Paul. ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.’ It is for her to interest herself in me, not for me to concern myself with her.”

“Fulke, you are starving her.”

“Forget Hannah. We’ve got on well for a long time, and you’re trying to distract me. Valentine tried to challenge Cardigan this morning.”

Alexis tapped his crop against the side of his boot. “Only tried?”

“I stopped him. You were to keep him away.”

“He was supposed to be at the Dower House.”

“He was stalking the earl,” Fulke said.

“I’ll see to it.” Alexis tried to walk past Fulke, but the older man held out an arm to stop him.

“I know where you’re going. Mrs. Beechwith came back from London without her husband last night.”

“How did you know? I only found out just now.”

“Servants, of course. ‘Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul,’ Alexis.”

“My, you’re preachy today. You’d think you had enough on your hands playing nanny to the Queen’s pet soldier. Or has having to spend twenty minutes with your wife made you bilious?”

Alexis was unprepared for Fulke’s attack. His cousin snatched his riding crop from him and lifted it. The weapon paused high over Alexis’s head. Alexis ignored it in favor of goring Fulke with his eyes.

Fulke let the crop sink down to hang loosely at his side. “You make me forget you’re not a boy anymore. Chastisement will have to come from the Lord, it seems.”

Alexis held out his hand, and Fulke relinquished the crop. The darkness of the tunnel closed in around Alexis as he remembered those first days after his father’s death, when Fulke had tried to comfort him while everyone else was preoccupied with his brain-fevered mother.

“I keep expecting Him to smite me at any moment,” Alexis said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for the Lord’s punishment, even tried to help Him along, but—What are you doing?” Alexis tried to back away, for Fulke had seized his arm in a fierce grip.

“When will you believe me?” Fulke asked. “You were hysterical, but you led me to your father and Thalia. You didn’t hide like one guilty of murder. I’ve told you hundreds of times. You’re not capable of something that unspeakable.”

Shaking his head, Alexis pried his cousin’s hand from his arm. “You don’t know that. If only I could remember. I can’t recall anything before I saw Thalia hit the … and then Father went down under his horse. The next thing I remember is holding him. He was so heavy. The dead are very heavy, Fulke.”

The memory pulled at him, but before he could be swallowed up by it, Fulke touched his cheek.

“My dear boy, I know you better than anyone in this world, and I can assure you that you could no more plan such a crime than you could run a bayonet through a kitten.” He patted Alexis on the shoulder. “You were better when you were in the cavalry.”

“I was either too tired from drills or distracted by the spectacle of other people’s blood.”

“Before they died, you were so different,” Fulke said. “No, listen to me. You don’t remember how it was. Oh, there was fighting. All families quarrel. But you were always thinking of ways to please your parents. I remember you spending the whole of six months’ allowance on a shawl for Juliana.”

“Stop.” Alexis winced at the way his voice boomed in the tunnel. “Don’t you see? No matter what I did, I couldn’t make her love me. She loved Father and had no room in that pea-size heart of hers for me, or for Thalia.”