Sweet Madness: A Veiled Seduction Novel (18 page)

He
would
remember this moment, but it would be the woman at his side that he would hold on to, much as he was doing right now. He tore his eyes from the painting and looked at her. Darling, darling Pen. Her hand felt so right in his. He couldn’t shake the certainty that if he just never let her go, she would heal him, much as Stratford claimed his wife had done for him.

Was it wrong of him to hope for that? Hope that Penelope would want to stay with him? It had to be, of course, but it was only because of her faith in his chances that he had any hope at all. Even if it was wrong, he couldn’t squelch the desire. It burned within him.

It also must have shown in his face because Pen suddenly colored and gently tugged her hand from his.

“Th-this is just a first step toward recovery, of course,” she said, stepping away to fiddle with her brushes. “The mind is intricate and complex. It is unlikely this is the only harmful association you’ve made. Sometimes it is simple to make the connection. For example, one man I worked with experienced vivid daytime terrors anytime he smelled gunpowder or heard a loud booming noise, which are obvious reminders of the battlefields. Needless to say, he no longer goes out on the hunt.”

Gabriel nodded. “Neither do I.”

“Yes. But it can also be something innocuous and not nearly so clear, like the taste of a certain food. Another man would go into tremors upon taking a bite of mutton. Only after we explored this thoroughly did we realize he’d been eating mutton stew when the Portuguese attacked at Fuentes de Oñoro. He lost his leg in that battle, so you can imagine what his mind associated with a harmless bite of meat.”

“Has he gone off the lamb, then?” Gabriel asked curiously.

She looked up from her task of cleaning brushes and smiled. “No, actually. You see, he quite
liked
lamb and refused to give it up. Once he knew why he reacted the way he did, he fought through it. It took some time, but now it doesn’t seem to bother him at all.”

“Amazing,” he murmured. And it was. To think, if he could reverse the bothersome effects the wars had wrought in him, he might reclaim his life.
Or have it given back to him.
His eyes roamed over Penelope’s lovely face. “You’re a wonder, Pen. However did you think to even
try
these methods?”

Her nose scrunched, and she shook her head, setting the brushes back on the table. “I’m no wonder,” she said. “I haven’t a brilliant mind at all. Association theory just seemed to make sense to me when I first heard of it. But honestly, I hardly comprehend half of what I read on the subject, and I disagree with half of what I do understand.” She sighed, her mouth opening, then closing, as if she were searching for words. “Perhaps it is the very simplicity of my mind that led me down this path. I just tried to take the logical next steps, combining the theories with what
I
observed and I stumbled into some successes.”

He huffed. “You are hardly simpleminded. I’ve known from the first day we met that you are highly intuitive,” he said. “And the ability to turn that intuition into results . . . that
is
brilliant, Pen.”

Her brow furrowed. “Well.” She took a deep breath and crossed behind him so that he had to turn to follow her movements. She settled into a pace. “We’ve discovered what could be behind your vertigo in the ballrooms. But we still have much work to do.”

He let her change the subject. “As I said,” she went on, “we’ll look for hidden associations that might explain the more bothersome symptoms first. I’d also like to explore what is behind your fear of tight spaces.” She stopped pacing to look at him, tapping the thumb of her closed fist against her bottom lip. “I’m betting that the week you cannot remember after Waterloo has something to do with it. Perhaps if we can unbury those memories, you will no longer suffer that.”

“That would be welcome,” he agreed. “Very welcome. However . . .” A fist of unease balled just below his sternum as it always did when he thought of the madness looming just out of his periphery, waiting to strike. “I fear we are ignoring the larger problem.”

“Your episodes.”

He nodded.

“My
hope
,” she said as she resumed her pace, “is that they are not caused by madness at all, but rather from the cumulative effect of unhealthy associations. If we can slay the minor demons, perhaps we’ll find the larger beast not to be so terrible.”

Oh God, let it be. Fear and hope twisted and twined inside of him—hope she was right, fear she was not—in a delicate balance of emotion. “Have you ever found that to be the case?”

Penelope didn’t wince, but he sensed her check the gesture. “As I’ve said, I’ve not seen episodes like yours before.”

The apology was clear in her voice.

For a moment, the balance in his heart shifted to fear, but he refused to let it take root, damn it. Working with Penelope these past few days, he felt he’d accomplished more than months at Vickering Place and years on his own before then. Even if their time together led to nothing, it felt like he was finally
doing
something tangible toward his own recovery. It gave him back a measure of control, illusionary though it might be.

As Penelope moved to finish cleaning her brushes, Gabriel walked back to stand in front the ballroom scene. It was quite good, he decided. Rather than clean, crisp lines, the strokes gave more of an impression than anything else. He wondered if that was Penelope’s preferred style or if it was done because she’d been painting so quickly. Either way, it was clear she was very talented.

He knew she and Michael had met in the park. Each of them had been painting landscapes, and as he’d packed up to go, Michael had stopped to look over Penelope’s shoulder.

That painting she’d been working on had hung over the mantel in their London townhome.

But this painting, she’d done for him, Gabriel.

“May I keep this?” he asked.

She turned her head and shot him a quizzical glance.

“As a reminder. That the fear is not real,” he explained using her words.

She smiled at him. “Of course. In fact, that is an excellent idea. There is a local assembly in a fortnight’s time that I’d like you to attend with me. It is the perfect venue to see whether today’s experiment worked.”

Gabriel couldn’t quell a flare of alarm at the thought, but the idea of having Penelope in his arms on the dance floor tamped it down significantly.

“Perhaps if you spend a few moments each day till then looking at the painting, it will help.” She came to stand beside him as she looked at the canvas herself. Then she reached out to point at it. “See, I’ve painted you in the center, just there. When you try, I want you to focus your attention on the image of you. Visualize yourself in the middle of the room, dancers swirling around you. If you start to feel panicked, keep staring at the painting and remind yourself that it is not a battlefield. That you are safe. Perhaps it will, for lack of a better word,
train
your mind to the reality.”

He looked where she’d directed him, and indeed, there was the impression of a man standing center. But beside him, there was also a blond woman. And it seemed as if their hands were entwined.

“Is this you?” he asked, pointing the woman out.

She blinked at the canvas, then squinted her eyes and pressed her face closer to it. Then her creamy skin flushed pink. “Ah, um.” She laughed. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

Did she mean it hadn’t been intentional?

“Well”—she licked her lips—“it seemed to help you when I told you to imagine me beside you. And—um—I suppose it was only natural to paint myself there.”

Gabriel watched her stammered explanation with fascination. What had she said before? That sometimes the painter expressed emotions or symbolism that they would never otherwise voice? He stared back at the image of the woman holding his hand, and heat slid through him. Then he noticed something else, a bit of symbolism if he’d ever seen any.

“You even paint yourself wearing black,” he murmured.

“What?” she asked, clearly confused.

He reached out and touched the still-drying painting, his finger coming away from the woman’s dress with a smudge of black. He held it up before her. “You do realize Michael’s death was not your fault, don’t you?” he asked her quietly, in an echo of the very words she’d said to him about his soldiers.

She sucked in a breath, then closed her mouth. Her eyes shone bright with a sudden glistening of moisture, even as they fixed on the tip of his finger. At the visible manifestation of her own guilt.

“You had no control over him.”

She shook her head in quick jerks of denial. “I know where you are leading with this, but it is
not
the same,” she whispered. “If I would have followed him to Leeds, he might still be alive!”

“If I would have gone on the mission alone, my men might still be alive, too,” he countered. “I could have, you know. I reached Blücher and delivered the message. I could have left all of them behind and still succeeded, but I didn’t.”

She pressed her lips together.

“My point is, Pen, neither one of us knew what would happen. We did what we felt we must at the time. But you didn’t kill Michael any more than I killed my men. Other people pulled those triggers, not you and I.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. He reached out to wipe it away, remembering the black paint on his finger just in time. He wiped it on the leg of his trousers, but in the time it took him, she’d dashed her own tears away with the back of her hand, to his regret. He longed to have a reason to touch her.

“You told me that all we could control is how we live in the aftermath of trauma—how we make our lives count,” he reminded her.

She dropped her head, staring down at the floor. He reached out and curled his fingers beneath her chin, tipping her face up to him. He hated that she trembled. “And in that, I can only strive to follow your lead. Look at what you are doing. Look at the people you’ve helped. You inspire me, Pen.”

She closed her eyes.

“But this,” he said, gesturing to her attire. Since she couldn’t see him with her eyes shut, he clarified. “You, in black . . . it is an abomination.”

Her eyes opened with a startled flutter and focused on him.

“It is antithetical to who you are. You have to let it go. Do you want to know what I thought when I first met you?”

She nodded slowly, almost as if against her own will.

“I remember comparing you to a ray of early-summer sunshine. You made me happy just to look at you. You drew people to you then. You still do, but you’ve dimmed somehow. And it is not right. This penance, or . . . punishment, or whatever it is that is hiding your light must end.”

He dropped his hand from her chin and walked over to the table where her palette still sat. He picked up a clean brush and dipped it in some paint. The he grabbed a rag and walked back to the canvas, using it to dab the excess black paint until the surface was dry. Then he swiped his brush over the woman’s dress.

It took several strokes to cover properly, but when he stepped back, a rich yellow had overtaken the black.

“
That
is who you are, Pen,” he said gently. “And I think it is time that you find your way back to her.”

She said nothing. Just stood staring with wide eyes at that little bit of symbolism he’d put right in front of her.

And then she seemed to crumple in on herself, her shoulders and head curling protectively as her hands came up to cover her face.

His chest clenched at her quiet sob, alarm snaking up his spine. He dropped the rag and brush forgotten to the floor and reached out for her, grasping her shoulders as he stooped to put his face on a level with hers. “Pen, don’t cry. Please. Please, look at me,” he said as he dropped one hand to gently tug hers away from her face.

The pain he saw swimming in the pale green depths of her eyes pierced him as surely as the lances the French had used at Waterloo with such deadly efficiency. Good Christ, he hadn’t meant for this. He’d only been trying to help her in the same way she’d been helping him. “Oh, Pen,” he murmured, stroking her face, her tears warm and wet against his palm.

He had to stop her crying. It tore at him to see her in such anguish, even if she’d needed to hear the truth.

So he gave her something else to latch on to, as she’d done for him when he’d needed the distraction in the carriage that night.

He kissed her.

P
enelope stilled with shock as Gabriel’s lips touched hers. But then he pressed against her mouth with a fierceness that drove out everything in her mind and everything in her heart.

Everything but him.

She wanted nothing more than to lose herself to the distraction he offered. She grasped at his shoulders, running her hands over their broad, muscled length. But the embrace didn’t bring him close enough. Not nearly close enough. So she clutched at his neck and rose up on her toes, trying to pull herself into him.

Gabriel groaned, a raw sound that sent a thrill skittering down her spine. It only intensified when he tightened his arms around her, bringing her tight and flush against his chest—right where she wanted to be.

But she knew the delicious contact wouldn’t suffice for long. Even as her breasts flattened against his hard planes, hot need curled through her. It rose up from her core in twisting tendrils, weaving through her like hungry vines, pulling and stretching within her.

Hands slid into her hair. His large palm gripped her head, tilting it so that their mouths met at a slightly different angle. His tongue slid into her then and she moaned around it, accepting it.
Craving
it—and more.

Still clutching his neck, she rose a little higher . . . just enough to rock her hips against his, tearing a ragged moan from them both. Encouraged, she rolled her hips in a slow circle against his hard arousal as the vines of need stretched tighter. And tighter still when his hands left her hair to grasp her beneath her hips and drag her over him again.

She pulled her mouth away from his. “I need you.” And she did. Needed to remember what it was like to lose herself to desire. Needed to forget the ache of guilt that never seemed to leave her. Needed to feel something—
anything
but the pain that pierced her heart. She loosened her grip on his neck and ran her fingers down his arms, over the hands that kneaded her hips so erotically. She tugged his hands into hers and stepped backward, pulling him with her. “Come.”

She gave him no time to protest, leading him unerringly to her chamber door. Bless Liliana for putting them on the top floor rather than in the family wing. She’d done so because their adjoining bedrooms opened onto the long gallery, and she knew Penelope would wish to utilize the gallery for exercise should the rains return. But all Penelope could think of at this moment was that it meant her bedroom, and the mindless bliss she was about to find in it, was only steps away.

Keeping one of his hands firmly in hers, she pivoted to fumble with the doorknob with her other. As the door creaked open enough for them to squeeze through, she tugged him inside.

Once the door was safely closed behind them, she turned to face him again. His chest rose and fell in choppy, heaving pants and his golden brown eyes glowed with heat. He leaned back against the door as if he needed it to brace him. He looked dark and delicious and entirely too clothed. He also looked aroused and wild . . . and hesitant.

Her stomach fluttered anxiously. She didn’t want him to come to his senses. She couldn’t bear it if he did. She stepped into him once more, pressing herself against him from shoulders to toes, sliding her arms around his neck to cup his face. “Please, Gabriel. Don’t think,” she said, placing light kisses against his jaw, under his chin until she was thwarted by his cravat. Then she trailed her lips back up to whisper against his mouth, “Please. Just take me.”

Her plea snapped whatever restraint he was holding on to, and Penelope gloried as he spun with her in his arms and pinned her against the door. His lips took hers in a voracious kiss as he dipped his knees and then rose again, dragging his body against hers in a slow, hot slide. His chest scraped along her breasts, his abdomen bumped her own, and his arousal burned against her mons. Even through both layers of their clothes, the heat between them was enough to make her swoon. Were she not pinned between his body and the door, she was certain she’d be in a puddle on the floor.

“Gabriel,” she gasped, before his name turned into a groan. His mouth had moved to her ear, and his teeth nipped at the delicate lobe before his tongue swiped out to soothe it.

She slid her hands down his chest and pulled at his shirttails. She wanted to tug the garment over his head, but she didn’t wish to wait that long to touch his skin, so she slipped her palms under the fabric and ran them over the ridges of his stomach. His muscles leapt beneath her touch, and he sucked in a breath. But then his mouth robbed
her
of breath when it slid down her neck to bite gently where her neck met her shoulder.

She could stand it no longer. She slipped her hand past his waistband and tore at the buttons of his fall. As soon as she got them open wide enough, she shoved his trousers past his hips and down to his knees. Gabriel hissed as he sprang free, a sound Penelope registered with wicked delight even as she used her foot to finish undressing him, pushing his trousers down around his boots.

“Pen,” he rasped, his breathing gone ragged. A pleased smile spread across her face at seeing him so undone. So close to taking her.

And then he spun her in the cage of his arms, tearing at her laces. A few tugs and her bodice sagged a little. His knuckles scraped against her back as he wrestled with the spiral lacing. As soon as she was able, she shrugged the gown off of her shoulders, allowing it to slip down to her waist, where she helped it the rest of the way off.

“Good God,” Gabriel muttered from behind her. She imagined how she must look, her back cinched tight in her stays, her flared hips and bottom bared to his gaze. She felt amazingly wanton and she wanted him to feel the same. She pressed herself backward into him.

It worked better than she’d hoped. Gabriel made a low growl in his throat and slammed her against the door, bracing his hands on either side of her. His hard body covered hers, his clothed chest to her clothed back, his bare loins to her naked bottom. His hard erection burned between her thighs, tantalizingly close to where she needed him. Her temperature spiked, as did her desire. She laid her cheek against the cool wood, sighing against it. Then she rolled her hips again.

“Ah,” he moaned as his mouth opened on the back of her neck. She shuddered violently as he slid his length against her, rubbing along her slickness with firm slides that tantalized but could never satisfy. She burned with her need, but after several sliding thrusts, she feared he would never come inside her.

Just when she thought she could stand it no longer, he turned her to face him again. As she wrapped her arms around his neck once more, he yanked her right leg off of the floor and wrapped it around his hip. She let go of his neck with her left hand and moved it down his body to grasp his swollen shaft. It slid against her palm, thick and heavy and hot. Something clenched within her, knowing she was so close to having him now, to satisfying the gnawing need that no longer lay dormant inside her.

It had been so long since she’d felt this rush of desire. She’d had many offers over the past two years, but none that had even tempted her.

Well, she was more than tempted now. Somehow, Gabriel had broken through the dark shell she’d been hiding in, to the very heart of her. She wasn’t certain how or why or even what it meant. She only knew that what she felt for him in this moment was more than just physical need. It was a deep, desperate longing that frightened her—though not enough to stop her from having him.
Now.
She rubbed the head of him against the center of her pleasure, and a shiver of sparks rippled through her before she parted her blond curls and poised him at her entrance. “Come to me, Gabriel,” she pleaded.

“Pen,” he moaned before his lips captured hers. His fingers dug into her hips as he lifted her, pulling her other foot off of the floor and encouraging her to wrap that thigh around him, too. As her heel dug into his muscled backside, he thrust up into her.

Yes!
she wanted to cry, but she hadn’t the breath for that. Instead, she thrust her tongue into his mouth, tangling with his as he buried himself in her heat again.

Lord, she needed this. She clutched Gabriel to her and moved her hips frantically, hoping he would grasp what she wanted. It took only a few hard thrusts to know that he understood completely. He filled her with rough, merciless strokes that fed the fire building inside of her. It was everything she’d hoped for—better even. When he jerked his mouth from hers so he could breathe, she simply laid her head back against the door and reveled in the jarring slam of his body into hers as her entire body tightened and stretched, reaching and striving for the explosion she knew was to come.

And then it was there, bursting upon her with a suddenness that made her cry out with the intensity of it. Her orgasm must have triggered his, because Gabriel drove into her one, two, three more times before pulling her hips hard against his and emptying himself within her pulsing heat.

Gradually, their moans gave way to heavy breaths as the sweat on her skin cooled. She was still pinned to the door by his pelvis, and he was still intimately lodged within her, though he’d softened. She had the fleeting thought that she would like to stay here, joined with him forever. But all too soon, her limbs began to tremble with strain.

And her mind began to think again. Oh God . . . what had she done? She loosened her thighs’ grip on Gabriel’s hips and lowered her legs to the floor. As he slipped from her, she felt an awful pang of loss that alarmed her further still.

She tried to pull back from his embrace but he wouldn’t allow it, tightening his arms around her to where she had little choice but to tuck her face against his shirt. She couldn’t help but breathe him in, and despite the knowledge that she should never have done any of this, she savored the moment.

“I’m sorry, Pen,” he murmured against her hair.

She lifted her cheek from his chest and looked up at him in genuine confusion.

A muscle ticced in his jaw. “That isn’t how I imagined making love to you for our first time. You deserve better than a rough tumble against a wall.”

“It was a door, actually,” she blurted inanely.

She felt, rather than heard, his grunt.

Her eyes roved his strong brow, his defined cheekbones and tapered jaw, which was clenched tight with concerned regret. He had nothing to feel bad about. Whereas she . . .

Shame filled her. He’d said “first time,” as if he hoped—or even expected—there would be more. And why wouldn’t he? He’d as much as told her he harbored deep feelings for her that first day at Vickering Place, even though he hadn’t known it was really her he was confessing them to. That made her selfish lapse of good sense all the worse. She had no business—none—crossing the lines of intimacy as she had.

Penelope tucked her head back against his chest, unable even to look at him as she said, “No,
I’m
sorry, Gabriel.”

He huffed beneath her cheek. “Why?”

Why? So many things were wrong with what she’d just done. “I never should have kissed you.
Again
,” she added, given she’d kissed him in the carriage the other day as well. Goodness. Perhaps Mr. Allen had been right about her after all.

Gabriel laughed softly, the sound a quiet rumble beneath her ear. “I kissed you this time, if you remember.”

She did. Her toes curled with the memory, in fact. “Yes, but I should have pulled away. Don’t you see?” She lifted her head to look up into his face. “In our time together, you have made yourself vulnerable to me, for your treatment’s sake. It is unconscionable that I took advantage of you and—”

His soft rumble turned to true laughter then. “Took advantage of me? Pen . . .” He shook his head and his eyes crinkled as he looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Making love to you is the
best
thing that has happened to me in—well, perhaps ever.”

Her heart tripped even as a new guilt joined her shame. “You may think that now, but I’ve violated a trust between us. Feelings can easily be confused during the type of treatment we’ve been attempting and—” Her stomach lurched at her next thought. “God,” she croaked. “I will never forgive myself if my mistake undoes any of the progress you’ve made.”

Gabriel’s hands moved up to frame her face. “Shhh,” he said, stroking her gently. “This—what happened between us just now—is not a mistake. Nor are my feelings confused. Madness aside, I know my own mind.”

She shook her head in denial.

He just smiled tenderly at her. “I think I can understand where your worry might be justified if I were just some stranger you’d taken on for treatment. But, Pen . . .” His brow furrowed and his lips twisted, as if he struggled with how to phrase what he wanted to say. Then his face smoothed. “You asked me once why I was able to dance at your wedding and why I was able to attend other balls throughout our acquaintance without you sensing my struggles.” His thumb stroked her cheek. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? It was because of
you
.

“You kept my darkness at bay. When my anxiety would threaten, you always seemed to sense when I could do with a diversion—be it a witty remark or an irreverent observation. And whenever I would get near a dance floor and my head would swim and my breath would tighten and my heart would pound, all I had to do was look at you and everything would ease. You were my talisman long before you ever agreed to treat me, Pen. You
always
have been.”

She stopped breathing as her heart squeezed.
His talisman?

“What happened between us just now only strengthens that for me, so don’t waste another moment fretting it. Besides . . .” His tender smile turned decidedly wicked, which sent a fresh lick of heat through her middle. “After being in your arms, I feel as if I could take on the world. I think you should kiss me again. Perhaps I will then associate this feeling with your lips so that whenever I need to”—he dipped his head and pressed a quick kiss upon her mouth—“all I have to do is steal a kiss to remember exactly how powerful I feel right now.
That
will do more to heal me than all of the talk in the world, and I daresay it might be good for you, too.”