The Edge of Desire (17 page)

At their peril. From the light in Agnes’s eyes, Christian surmised she’d kept a closer watch on Randall—and very likely Letitia and Hermione as well—than any of them knew.

Agnes looked down as the soup course was placed before her. “Sadly, rack my brains though I have, I can’t offer any suggestions as to Randall’s friends.”

“Nor can I.” Hermione picked up her soup spoon.

Conversation lagged as they worked their way through the fish course, the entrée, then moved on to dessert. Throughout, Hermione frowned abstractedly at her plate.

Christian waited until the footmen withdrew, then under the table nudged Letitia’s knee. She looked at him. When he directed her gaze to Mellon, standing correct and upright behind Randall’s empty chair, she blotted her lips with her napkin, then waved an imperious hand. “You may go, Mellon. We won’t need anything more.”

Mellon would have preferred to stay and satisfy his curiosity—he’d heard their earlier comments about his late master’s friends—but he had to bow and withdraw.

When the door closed behind him, Letitia turned to Christian—to discover him regarding Hermione with that steady, gray, impossible-to-escape gaze of his.

Hermione, wrapped in her own thoughts, remained oblivious.

“In order to expose Randall’s real murderer—as we must—we need to learn exactly what went on here on the night he was killed.” His gaze still on Hermione, Christian laid his napkin on the table.

Recalling that her sister knew something about that night that she’d yet to share, Letitia, too, fixed her gaze on Hermione.

Who finally looked up.

Finding both Letitia and Christian focused on her, Hermione glanced at Agnes, only to see her aunt also waiting patiently to hear what she would say.

Hermione grimaced. She brought her gaze back to Christian’s face. After a moment of studying him, she said, “Before I tell you what I know about that night, swear to me that you’ll make sure Justin’s safe.”

Letitia opened her mouth to utter a blanket assurance; Christian stopped her by closing one hand about her wrist.

Holding Hermione’s gaze, he said, “I swear on my honor as an Allardyce, and as Dearne, that I will do everything in my power to see your brother cleared of Randall’s murder.” He arched a brow at Hermione. “Good enough?”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“So what did you see?” Letitia frowned. “And how did you come to see anything at all?”

Christian squeezed her wrist again, then released her. To Hermione, he said, “Start with your evening, before you went to bed.”

Hermione looked down at her fingers, smoothing the
hem of her napkin. “Agnes and I had a quiet evening. I was already in bed when Letitia came home.” Her gaze flicked up to Christian’s face. “My bedroom is above the study.” She returned her gaze to the napkin. “I can’t hear people
converse
in there, no words, but I can hear loud noises. I heard Letitia railing at Randall—I knew it was something about me, but I didn’t know what.” She glanced at Letitia. “You kept saying it was nothing, but it was obviously something—enough of a something to have you screeching.”

Letitia made a dismissing gesture. “The issue died with Randall. It’s…”

Hermione arched a brow. “Dead and buried?” She nodded. “I did wonder whether that was, at least in part, behind what I later saw—or thought I saw.”

When she didn’t immediately go on, Letitia opened her mouth—Christian grasped her wrist and silenced her again. She shot him a weak glare but desisted. Grudgingly.

“So I heard Letitia ranting.” Hermione picked up her tale. “Then I heard her slam the study door and storm up the stairs and into her room. I thought, after that, that I’d be able to fall asleep.” She paused. “I was just dozing off when I heard Randall and another man talking—I couldn’t hear the words, I never can, but I could hear the rumble of their voices. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t, then I heard a thud. A heavy thud.

“I listened, but the voices had stopped. I told myself it was the door shutting, or something like that…only I knew it wasn’t. I know the sounds in that room, and I’d never heard a thud like that—sort of soft but heavy.”

Christian asked, “Did you notice the time?”

She shook her head. “My candle was out. I kept trying to fall asleep—I don’t know for how long. I kept imagining what that thud might be. I actually thought it might be a dead body. In the end, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep until I knew, so I got up to go and see. I thought that the worst that might happen was that Randall might be at his desk—he
often worked late. If he saw me, I was going to say I couldn’t sleep and was heading to the library for a book. But I had to dress—I wasn’t going to get caught by anyone in my dressing gown.”

“Did you hear anything while you were dressing?” Christian asked.

“Or going downstairs?” Letitia put in, trying to hurry things along.

Hermione frowned. “No—not until I was on the landing. I didn’t use the main stair, but the one in my wing. It comes down in the corridor past the study. When I reached the landing, I heard the study door open. I hadn’t taken a candle—I could see well enough—so I crouched down on the landing and looked through the banisters.”

She glanced at Letitia, then at Christian. “I saw Justin come out of the study. I didn’t see his face—he turned and looked back into the room, then he walked on to the front door.” She paused, caught by her memories. “I would have called to him, but he seemed…strange. Stunned, I suppose, now I know what he’d done. Even then, I suspected something bad had happened, so I didn’t say anything, just watched him open the front door and walk out, then he pulled the door closed behind him.”

Straightening in her chair, Hermione paled, but met Christian’s eyes gamely. “I waited a little, everything was quiet, then I crept down the stairs and looked into the study. I didn’t go in—I could see enough from the doorway. I…I thought Justin had killed Randall. It was so
horrible
…but I’d never liked Randall—never liked that Letitia had had to marry him no matter how much she pretended it was a love match. And, well, he was dead now—that was obvious. But I didn’t want Justin to be caught, so I thought…the only thing I could think of doing was to lock the door and slip the key back inside. I hoped it would look like the key had fallen out of the lock later—perhaps while they were beating on the door. I knew no one could possibly think Randall had
taken his own life, but I thought having the door look like it was locked from inside would at least confuse things.”

Christian grimaced. “In that you succeeded, but Mellon knew Justin had called to see Randall and later left.”

“But I didn’t know that,” Hermione said. “Justin might have just arrived and Randall had let him in—I couldn’t tell. Anyway, the key was in the lock, Randall usually kept it there, he sometimes did lock the door—so I locked the door, slid the key back inside, and went back upstairs.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t get any sleep, though.”

Christian could imagine. He considered, matching Hermione’s story with Justin’s, then he looked at Letitia, frowning in concern at Hermione, then at Agnes, who was patting Hermione’s hand.

For her part, Hermione seemed relieved. It was she who asked, “So what will you do now?”

Both Letitia and Agnes joined her in fixing inquiring gazes on him.

Deciding no harm could come of sharing his deductions, he glanced at the door, confirmed it was shut, then in a voice that wouldn’t carry, said, “I believe what happened was that after Letitia left Randall—while Justin was reading in the library after having dismissed Mellon—someone else called on Randall, someone he was expecting, given Mellon didn’t hear the doorbell. His visitor was someone he knew, someone he trusted. That person sat in the chair by his study fire and they shared a glass of brandy.”

“So the person was almost certainly a man,” Letitia pointed out. “Very few women drink brandy.”

He inclined his head. “So this man and Randall chatted amiably—Hermione heard no shouting. Then Randall rose, headed for his desk, presumably to fetch something—and the man picked up the poker and hit him on the head. Randall fell, dead. His murderer dropped the poker, then—presumably via the front door—left the house.”

All three of his listeners were nodding.

“So,” he concluded, “our next step is to learn who the friend Randall entertained that night might be. And to confirm, if we can, how he got into the house, and how he left it.”

All three women’s expressions grew determined.

“And whoever he is,” Hermione said, “
he’s
Randall’s murderer.”

Letitia was pleased Christian had shared his thoughts so freely—without her having to drag them from him—but what she now wanted to know was how he proposed to learn who Randall’s mysterious friend-cum-murderer was. However, not wanting to encourage Hermione to think she could play any role in their hunt, she waited with what patience she could muster until Hermione and Agnes retired.

The instant the door shut behind them, she swung to face Christian, once more seated beside her on the sofa in her parlor. “How—”

He pulled her into his arms. Into a kiss. Not a scorching one. One she might, if she’d put her mind to it, have resisted.

But she didn’t resist. Instead found herself melting into his embrace. Mentally cursed, but by then it was too late.

He kissed her until her wits had long flown, until she was breathless, and achy, and thinking of things she’d had no intention of thinking about—sins she’d had no intention of committing—until he’d kissed her.

When he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, his heavy-lidded with the passion and desire that always—always—lay between them, she could barely marshal one coherent thought. And that one…

She fought against the drugging tide, tried to reorient—knew she had questions she wanted to ask, but couldn’t lay her mind to any of them. Blinking, she tried to reassemble her wits.

Before she succeeded he was on his feet, and she was on hers, and he was towing her to the door.

She couldn’t even manage a frown. “Where are we going?” Even to her ears she sounded more interested than scandalized.

He glanced back as he opened the door. “Upstairs. To your room.”

When she stared at him, faintly stunned, he raised his brows. “You didn’t think I was leaving, did you?”

She honestly didn’t know what she’d thought.

And before she could decide what she
should
think—of his presumption, of his high-handed, arrogant assumption that she would, after just one kiss, be sufficiently besotted to fall in with his plans…she had.

“This room?” He pointed to her door.

She started to nod, stopped herself, but he’d already opened the door and was towing her inside.

And then the door was shut and she was in his arms, and nothing else mattered.

She was distantly aware that that shouldn’t be so, but as her clothes fell like autumn leaves to the floor and his clever hands and even cleverer mouth found her bare skin, she couldn’t remember why.

Couldn’t summon a single reason against indulging with him.

Couldn’t see why she shouldn’t let her starved soul free, let it rejoice in the pure sensuality he brought to her. That he offered with both hands, with his mouth, with his body.

That he fed her with each kiss—scorching and possessive now—that reached her through each touch, each explicit caress, each frankly possessive stroking of her valleys and planes.

In the heat and the fire that followed, in the familiar passions that she and he ignited, that raged as they always had between them, cindering reservations and all ability to think in a conflagration of need. Overwhelming and sustaining. Demanding and succoring. Needing and caring.

The give and take between them had never been com
plicated. Always direct, always unmasked. Every time they came together, she could only glory that that hadn’t changed—not in the least.

She knew why she lay back and welcomed him into her body. She wasn’t so sure she understood why he was there. But after the eight lonely years she’d spent in that bed, she was in no mood to deny herself the absolute irrefutable proof that her sensual side still lived.

That the passionate self who delighted in physical pleasure that she’d buried when she’d married Randall hadn’t died.

Had been resurrected in all her feminine glory.

By him—her long-ago lover.

Sunk deep in the slick heat of her luscious body, her long legs about his hips, her long, svelte form undulating in uninhibited concert beneath him, Christian could only close his eyes and give thanks that—in this at least—she wasn’t about to deny him. Wasn’t about to shut herself off from him.

He hadn’t been sure. Hadn’t known whether she would suddenly pull back—whether she would let him remain this close while she made up her mind.

To his mind, this was his only hold on her—the only certain way, the only certain times, he would have to reassure her. To make her believe in him again, that he would always be there, there to love her every night and every day.

She raced up the peak, and dragged him with her. No matter how firmly he tried to hold back, she knew how to command him, how to shred his control. How to take his hand and
leap
—over the edge, into the void, into the pulsing heart of their passion.

They burned together, shattered together, gasping, clutching, holding tight as they flew…then clinging as they slowly spiraled down to earth again.

Into each other’s arms again.

If last night had seen him take a new direction, tonight had given him hope. As he disengaged and, with a smothered groan, rolled onto his back and gathered her to him, felt
her curl against him, he couldn’t imagine what he would do if she tried to remain apart from him. If she decided against him and tried to cut their ties.

A week or so ago when she’d come to him for help, he hadn’t known that what ruled him now still lived within him. Now he did. Now he felt it, knew it—would, could, no longer deny it. Had no wish to deny it. A week of being with her again had brought him, if not precisely full circle, then to a similar place, a similar state of emotional acceptance to that he’d reached twelve years ago, yet now he was older, wiser, more appreciative of his needs, and hers.