The Firebrand (28 page)

Slanting across the area just over his heart was a smooth, livid scar.

He yanked the robe closed. His was the self-protective anger of a wounded beast, and she felt an unbidden surge of compassion.

"I'll bet," he said, "you weren't expecting so much excitement on your wedding night."

She forced herself to stop staring at him. In his dark silk robe, with his hair tousled and his feet bare, he appeared so...so decadent. Hurrying over to the bed, she said, "Silky, do come down. It's safe now. That nasty dog won't hurt you." Rising on tiptoe, she reached for the canopy that arched over the bed.

The calico cat peeked over the top, its slanted eyes flickering nervously around the room.

"It's all right," Lucy coaxed. "He's just a dumb dog, all brawn and no brains.

Come, Silky."

The wary cat crept down into her waiting arms. Hugging the cat to her chest, Lucy turned to find Mr. Higgins watching her. The moment of compassion vanished. He looked large and threatening, painted by lamplight and shadow.

"So this is your idea of excitement?" she asked tartly, feeling as though her entire body had caught fire. What
had
she been dreaming about when she'd been so rudely awakened? Whatever it was, it left her feeling warm and lethargic.

His gaze took her in with slow-paced deliberation, from her long unbound hair to her bare feet, lingering at the places where the light shone through the thin organdy of her nightgown.

"It's a start," he said. He must have sensed her fascination with him, for he studied her minutely, his clear-eyed gaze taking her in, bit by bit. The interest she couldn't quite hide sparked an answering interest in him. In the space of moments, he seemed to transform himself into the arrogant rogue she had encountered so long ago.

She clutched the cat closer until the poor creature let out a mew of protest. At a loss, Lucy stared at the floor, her gown brushing the rich carpet. She waited, expecting him to leave.

When showing her around the house, Mr. Higgins had gestured offhandedly at the door between their chambers. "My room is through there," he'd said.

"Is it locked?" she'd asked.

"Does it need to be?" he'd fired back. And that, Lucy thought, had been that.

She'd spent the remainder of her wedding day with Maggie, who was giddy with excitement as she helped her mother and grandmother settle into the new house. Lucy had gone to bed exhausted from all the unpacking, and until now she hadn't given the closed door another thought.

"Who was it," she wondered aloud, "who coined the term 'marriage of

convenience' ? I am not finding this very convenient at all." "Neither is my dog," said Mr. Higgins.

"He shall have to get used to having a cat around," Lucy said firmly. "It wasn't poor Silky's idea to uproot herself and move to a strange house ruled by a great hairy beast." Realizing she was staring at her husband's bare feet, she shifted her gaze up to his face.

"It's not Ivan's fault, either," he said. "The old boy was perfectly content to mind his own business until his domain was invaded by a peculiar female with a nasty temper and no discernible purpose on earth."

"Silky has a purpose."

"Murdering small birds?" he asked. "Sneaking around in the dark when civilized creatures are asleep?"

"Keeping me company. Curling up to sleep in my lap." "Then she'd better learn to get along with Ivan."

"He had better learn to get along with her." Curiosity got the better of Lucy. Still cradling the nervous cat, she went and opened the door a crack. Ivan lay on the hearth rug with his chin planted sullenly between his front paws and a mournful look on his heavily jowled face. The dog glowered when Lucy stepped into the room. The cat dug her claws into Lucy's shoulder. She looked around, experiencing her first real glimpse into the inner sanctum of her husband.

The dog growled, but fell silent when Mr. Higgins shushed him.

Her gaze took in the massive fireplace, the tall bookshelves crowded with well-thumbed books, a large globe and skeletal brass telescope, the huge bed. The scale of 'everything was massive. Intimidating. Much like its inhabitant.

The cat shifted skittishly in her arms and nearly bolted. Stroking Silky to calm her, Lucy was drawn to the French doors, which framed a view of the lake. She knew she was trespassing but that had never stopped her before.

"It's beautiful," she said softly. "I've never seen such a sunrise."

Without being asked, he opened the glass-paned doors for her. The impatient cat fled immediately, shooting from her arms, vaulting over the balustrade and then melting into the shadows of the yard below. Though knowing she, too, ought to bolt for cover, Lucy stepped out onto the balcony into the moist chill of the morning air. Clusters of lilacs hung from the tall hedge plants, heavy with dew, filling the air with the fragrance of early summer. The sky burned bright pink; the lake mirrored and intensified the glow, casting up the light so that the entire yard and quiet roadway were bathed in eerie radiance. As Lucy watched, a raft of waterfowl took wing, skimming along the surface before arrowing cleanly across the sky.

She turned to Mr. Higgins. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," she said.

"I agree," he said. But he wasn't looking at the sunrise. He seemed amused,

although he didn't smile. She could somehow detect a subtle humor dancing in his eyes, those mesmeric eyes that had first drawn her attention so long ago.

An unsettling chill slithered over her, yet at the same time, she felt the fire of the sunrise, only now it burned inside her. She thought about what he'd said, about him being her last chance.

She lifted a hand involuntarily to her throat, holding her gown closed. She wished she'd thought to put on her robe, but she hadn't counted on being so abruptly awakened. She found her voice and said stiffly, "That's a wonderful view of the lake, Mr. Higgins."

She moved toward the tall mahogany door, eager to reach the empty safety of her own room.

He stepped in her way to block her exit. "You shouldn't keep calling me Mr.

Higgins."

"Why not?"

"It's too formal after a kiss like that."

Was he referring to that absurd, mocking embrace at their wedding? She frowned in confusion. "What kiss?"

"This one." Taking her by the shoulders, he tugged her against him and slid his arm behind her back. With the same motion, he pressed his lips down onto hers. Lucy found herself at a loss, for she couldn't seem to govern her reaction to him. She wanted to feel the texture of his mouth upon hers, to know what he tasted like, to experience the dizzying sensation of desire lifting her up and sweeping her away. She wanted to stay, yet at the same time, the longing to linger and explore the desire he ignited shamed her.

She pushed against his chest, but her own hands betrayed her and the defensive motion turned into a searching caress. His chest was broad— hard-muscled, warm beneath her chilled fingers. Her betraying hands explored upward, spreading over his big shoulders, feeling the ridge of a scar across the top of his arm. His muscles contracted, and she sensed his self-consciousness returning. She moved her hand to let him know it didn't matter.

The old, old longing fell over her like sunlight through the window. Past and present fused into this single moment. More than five years had passed since she'd first looked into his challenging eyes. So much had changed in those eventful years, but one thing stayed constant—there was still a seductive magic that bound them together.

She caught her breath and said, "No more—"

He touched his finger to her lips and then put his mouth there, brushing lightly back and forth in a motion she felt all the way to her toes.

Her hands tightened into fists on his shoulders and once again, instead of pushing him away, she clutched him closer. The brushing motion changed and softened into a tender pressure. She was shocked to discover that he'd parted her

lips with his own and touched her with his tongue. She shocked herself even further by opening to him and letting him fill her with the forbidden taste of passion.

She felt him everywhere, even in the places he wasn't touching. She burned with a fever so intense that she felt disoriented, not herself at all.

Then, slowly, he lifted his mouth from hers. She could neither move nor speak. Since her days at finishing school she'd imagined what kissing was like, but this embrace, so long in coming that she'd nearly given up on it, surpassed any imagining.

"It's morning," she stated, wishing her voice didn't have that odd tremor in it.

She took a step back. "I must go."

"You could stay." He ran his hand down her arm and maybe she imagined it, but she felt his thumb briefly outline the curve of her unbound breast. "You take me out of myself, Lucy. You make me forget—" He stopped abruptly and drew his finger along her jawline, the proprietary touch nearly as intimate as his kiss. "We didn't marry because of this," he said, then bent and touched her mouth with his, searing her briefly with a reminder of the intimacy and heat they'd just shared. Then he pulled back. "But that doesn't mean—"

"Mr. Higgins—"

"Rand."

He was right. As his wife, she must learn to use his given name. But she couldn't just yet. Everything was too new and...disturbing. He seemed so different, an unsettling combination of the former, flirtatious rogue and the wounded, withdrawn man who still had a man's desires and still remembered his seductive ways.

"I must go," she repeated, speaking with stronger conviction now. She hurried away, rushing through the door between their rooms and pulling it shut with desperate haste.

His sleep hopelessly disrupted and his nerves rattled by the encounter with Lucy, Rand dressed in the growing light of early morning. He hadn't employed a valet in many years, though it was the fashion for men of his class. Since the accident, he was reluctant to expose his scars and imperfections to anyone, even to a servant. A petty vanity, he knew, but he didn't want to bare the old wounds.

Five years after the tragedy, he could still hear the whisper of those hovering around his hospital bed, when they didn't think he would ever regain

consciousness.

They had been wrong. The first part of him to awaken had been his sense of hearing.

"He may never come around," a man, probably a doctor, had said. "The head injury is severe. I'm surprised he hung on this long."

"Perhaps it's for the best," said another voice. "Who could live like...this?"

Despite the chilling words, he'd struggled to come back, for he couldn't die without knowing what had become of Christine.

Swimming through a fog of pain, he became aware of hospital smells

—overcooked food, boric acid and body waste—and knew he was beginning his journey back. Unable to make a sound or movement, he'd pleaded with frantic eyes, peering out through the web of gauze around his head. No one had noticed, not the doctors who marveled at his stamina, not the nurses who cleaned him and patiently fed him liquids through a hollow tube. And especially not Diana, who finally arrived, pale and thin, at his bedside.

He waited for her to speak, desperate to hear his wife's voice.

Her image came into focus between the diffuse threads of the wrapping.

Finally she spoke. "What is that awful smell?"

A doctor cleared his throat. "I fear the burns are quite extensive, Mrs.

Higgins."

She drew away, and he could see the shudder pass through her like a bitter wind. She didn't come back until summoned by his doctors, days later.

"Really," she protested, "you are the doctor, not I. I don't see how my presence could possibly make a diff—"

"He spoke, Mrs. Higgins. Your husband said something. That's why I called you here today."

"Well, what did he say?"

"Ma'am, is your name Christine?"

She went to Rand's bedside with utmost reluctance. He could see resistance in the set of her shoulders and the way she avoided looking at him.

"Randolph?" she said.

He had marshaled all his strength in order to ask his question.
"Christine?"

He hissed his baby's name through damaged lips.

Diana had shut her eyes while tears escaped and rolled down her hollow, white cheeks. "She's gone, Randolph. The hotel collapsed and burned. She and Miss Damson were both...killed."

The denial that had roared through him had more healing force than all the efforts of the doctors of St. Elspeth's and the specialists from Rush Medical College combined. He couldn't accept that his baby was gone. He had to get up, get out of there. He had to find her. Perhaps the mindless refusal to believe what

he heard had given him the strength to do what he did next.

He'd sat up in bed, startling everyone. And then he'd pulled the bandages off his head. The doctor and nurses were used to him from weeks of changing his dressings, but this was Diana's first glimpse of him since the fire. He didn't know at the time that it would be her last.

He would never forget the expression on her face or the involuntary sound that escaped her when she looked at her husband.

He hadn't seen her again after that day. His next visitor had been a hired lawyer informing Rand that Diana was suing him for divorce.

Buttoning a waistcoat over a crisp white shirt, Rand pulled himself back to the present. He cursed under his breath, furious that the encounter with Lucy this morning had sparked memories of his tormented past.

Perhaps Diana's stated grounds for divorce still haunted him. Never mind that he'd been confined to a hospital bed, recuperating from saving her life. He could have argued that point, but in his wounded state after the fire, he could do nothing to disprove her claim. When he saw the official papers, he'd finally admitted something that had lurked like poison in the back of his mind for weeks. He didn't want to be Diana's husband anymore.

He'd signed his capitulation with a shaky, bandaged hand.

This morning Lucy had disproved the humiliating claim unequivocally. He'd wanted her with a reckless need he hadn't felt since he was a lad of seventeen, seducing scullery maids in the linen closet. Exuding the careless charm of a young man of privilege, he'd been spoiled by those who were easily swayed by good looks and a glib tongue. Thoughtless, impulsive and ever looking to fill the void left by his absent mother, he'd used his looks and status to full advantage. On his graduation from university, his father had directed him to marry Miss Diana Layton, and he'd readily obliged, certain that trading in his wild ways for marital bliss would finally bring him the soul-settling contentment he'd always craved. He'd been so stupid. And so damned eager.