To Seduce an Angel (20 page)

“You have nothing else that's really yours, do you?”

He saw through her disguise. She should not be surprised at it. He had from the first. He stripped away all the false layers with which the duke and Aubrey and Wallop sought to disguise her.
I have myself,
she thought.
I belong to myself,
but his arms came around her in a fierce possession as if she belonged not to herself but to him, and time contracted while the stars danced and Daventry's heart beat at her back.

No one had taught Dav about wanting and not having. His experience had been with a professional, who openly enticed and readily offered. She had been barely clothed from the beginning of their encounter, not cased in stays and skirts as Emma was. He had not yet had to deal with a woman's trappings.

It took some doing to shift Emma in his hold so that he could reach up under her cloak to feel her ribs and run his fingertips across the soft swell of her breasts above her stays.

At his touch she pressed more deeply against him. Emma's sweet, round bottom now nestled snuggly against his hot, stiff cock. With every shift of her backside against his yard, crazy images flashed in his mind.

He buried his face in the curls at the back of her neck and shifted his hand to nestle between her thighs. To touch her there filled him with a mad combination of triumph and need. Her body answered with a restless novice stirring and a quickening of her breath and pulse.

It made the mystery of her plain. Will believed she was acting out of some careful calculation or in obedience to an accomplice's plan. Sensually, she was an innocent even if she was not a vicar's daughter as she claimed, not a woman with a safe, well-ordered past of study and duty, but a constrained spirit longing to escape.

The wind moaned against the chimney stacks, and he tipped his head back against the stones. A roof was a crazy place to take a woman when you wanted to be naked with her. Need for Emma was doing strange things to him. He was a poor specimen of a marquess to give great state bedrooms to his brothers and their warm wives and take his own lover to the roof as if they were a pair of London strays.

“Emma, I want to touch you, to make love to you, but the roof is not the place. I've got to stop.” He looked up into the fathomless sky, letting his pounding heart slow its mad rhythm.

“I don't mind the roof. I like being here with you.”

“Then we'll stay, but let's go higher to look at the whole sky.”

“Higher? You'll scare me witless.”

“I won't let go of you. Trust me.”

It made her laugh. He had not let go of her once since she had stepped out onto the roof. Tatty's voice saying
to trust is good, not to trust is better
came and went in her ear so fast she could not catch it.

Daventry helped her to her feet and turned her in his arms so that he might kiss her again. The kiss escalated, robbing her of breath, sending her pulse galloping. He broke it and held her while they both regained their breath. Then he turned and took her hand to lead her.

She knew she held him back from his usual swift stride. She tested each step while he pulled her after him, with just enough force to coax, not drag. The cold wind blew between them and filled her ears, and she gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering. Her feet felt the icy slates through her slippers, and she tested each step gingerly.

Halfway across the roof, she heard brittle stones break above them like the ice of a pond cracking. At the sound he swung her in front of him with a sudden powerful pull of his arm. As she snapped forward, her grip slipped, and she went sprawling, thumping against the stones, unable to arrest her slide down the slope. Her heart had no time to break before he landed on her, covering her body with his own, in the same wild slide down the icy slope of the roof.

A darker shadow passed over them, and the roof shuddered at the shock of some giant blow and heaved up under them in a sudden explosion, lifting their feet and tilting them head downward, hurtling toward the balustrade. Daventry's arms framed Emma's head. They crashed against the barrier as a shower of dust and shards of broken stone rained down on them. Behind them the balustrade cracked and fell away. There was a heartbeat's silence then a deep thud in the drive below, the shock of it vibrating up through the building and Emma's bones.

Daventry's back had absorbed their collision with the low wall at the edge of the roof. His eyes were closed. His face shone palely, covered with dust. The duke's awful words came back to her.
He's a hard man to kill.
Emma reached a shaking hand to brush away the grit from his eyes and lips. He shook his head once and looked at her. They hadn't killed him, and it made her giddy with relief.

“What hurts? Anything broken?”

She shook her head. Her throat hurt. Her heart hurt. Mad laughter and tears threatened. She had doubted him for a black moment. “You?”

“Scrapes only.”

Below them voices shouted and footsteps pounded.

“What fell?”

“The pots atop one of the chimney stacks. Can you walk?” He was shifting, rousing himself for action. “In a minute Adam Digweed will burst through that door. Let me get you inside first.”

She understood him. He would protect her with his life. They got to their feet, shedding dust and fragments of stone.

Dav surveyed the damage. A four-foot opening in the balustrade gaped. There was a deep gash in the roof where the falling masonry had hit and shattered the tiles before it crashed through the balustrade and plummeted to the ground. Above them on the upper roof, the roofline had changed. A row of chimney pots was missing. He could not be sure the rest of the roof was safe. He had to take her back across the damaged section.

The voices below grew louder, and lights glimmered up from the drive. His brothers would be on the scene investigating as soon as the servants could alert them.

Dav took Emma's hand and led her back up to the inmost edge of the roof against the wall. He made her face the wall, and together they sidled along it back to the door. Inside he shed the velvet cloak and shoved it into her hands. With a low sardonic laugh he tucked her into the closet. “You're safe, Emma. Leave the cloak behind. I'll lead Adam away.”

She touched his face once. She could hear a heavy rapid tread approaching.

“Tell no one you were on that roof.” He kissed her and closed the door.

DAV turned as Adam lumbered through the door, his nightshirt billowing around his giant form, a candlestick in his hand.

“Sir, wot happened?”

“A block of chimney pots tumbled from the upper roof. Let's go down. Is anyone hurt below?” Dav moved deliberately to the stairs.

Adam blocked his path. “You're not hurt?”

“No. The roof isn't safe, however; don't go out there.”

Below in the drive, his brothers had gathered with a knot of footmen. Xander was giving orders. Will held up a lamp, examining the fallen masonry. Five chimneys in their enclosing plaster base had fallen. Looking up, Dav could see where the heavy block had come crashing through the balustrade.

Two groups of footmen went in different directions to search the grounds.

“Been ignoring home repairs, have you, Dav?” Will came to stand beside him.

“Were you up there?” asked Xander.

“Crossing the roof. There was a wire. I hit it with my knee and dove. The stack came down behind me, hit the roof, and tumbled through the balustrade.”

Will swore. “Who knows you go up there?”

“And who has access to the roof?” Xander asked.

“Everyone in the house knows I go there.”

His brothers waited for him to cast suspicion on Emma. He refused. Whatever falsehood he suspected in her, he knew the accident had taken her by surprise.

“Damn it, Dav, everyone in this house, except that girl, was hired by us with great care.”

“Anyone watching from the woods might also know I like the roof.”

“When was the last time you were there?”

“When Will was here.”

“So we assume someone added the wire since then, but the work on the base of those stacks must have taken time.”

“Weeks.” Dav did not believe any of his people had been involved.

Will watched him. “You really don't want to blame that girl.”

“The girl did not loosen the masonry or set the trip wire.” He'd almost lost her. To think about it set his heart pounding again.

“You've got to stop hiding her if you want us to believe that.” Xander made it a command.

“I won't have you grill her,” Dav insisted.

“Someone needs to find out the truth about her.” Will was caustic as ever.

“Someone other than me, you mean.”

“You apparently can't think straight around her.”

Xan put out a hand to cut Will off. “Come on, Dav, you can't let Wenlocke win. Not after all we've done.”

“All right. Tomorrow, you'll meet her.”

 

 

EMMA heard the voices coming. She would know Daventry's voice now anywhere. Even at a distance it seemed, something in the timbre of that voice resonated in her.

The voices stopped outside her door. Big Adam Digweed's voice took over.

“I ought to 'ave been checking the roof regular. I ought not to 'ave left my post.”

“Adam, that masonry could have been damaged before we ever came to live here. The house has not been lived in for years. You've not let me down.”

But she had. She had told Wallop that first day that Daventry walked on his roof. Maybe Wallop already knew it.

There was a pause. A door opened.

“But, sir, if time and weather loosed those stacks, why didn't the thing fall in the gale?”

Emma held her breath. She remembered the gale in early March. It had reached even Wenlocke and uprooted trees.

“It's enough that you're here on duty now, Adam. In the morning, we'll inspect the roof. Keep everyone off of it until we know what we've got.”

“I'm not leaving you again, sir. Right here, I'll be.”

“Thanks, Adam. Good night.”

 

 

XANDER let his wife take him deep into her body. Her hands stroked up and down his back urging him on. It was a call he was powerless to resist. In the aftermath, he turned them, so that her body nested in the circle of his. He knew she would drift off in minutes, weary from the demands of caring for their newest babe, but at his glance, she had understood his need for her without words.

Summoned from their bed by a servant, Xander's wakening had been doubly rude—the comfort of sleep disturbed and the comfort of the house. The house was supposed to be safe for Dav. They had taken every precaution in examining it and staffing it. Seeing the broken stonework in the drive reminded him of their enemy's reach and his willingness to unleash deadly forces against them. From the beginning Wenlocke had had bullyboys and henchmen easily bought and willing to kill.

As he stood in the drive, he had felt the blame descend on his shoulders again. He was the one who had lost his brother that night. He was the one who encouraged the legal action against the duke that had made Dav the marquess.

Cleo stirred against him, drawing one of his hands to cup her breast. “My love, you didn't make Wenlocke the bitter old man that he is. And you didn't fail to protect your brother.”

“You think I'm taking too much blame?”

“You must see now how capable he is, how strong, how ready to take Wenlocke on himself.”

“How does he take on an enemy that sneaks in the night to ambush him with the stones of his own house?”

“Directly.”

“I almost lost you to an accident, remember?” he said.

She twisted in his arms and kissed him with a kiss that said she remembered, too, remembered finding his hand in the dark where her uncle had tried to entomb her and drown her. Hand in hand they had fled destruction together up to the rooftops of Bread Street.

“Wenlocke uses whoever will do his bidding. He used my uncle March and his crony Bredsell and even Dav's kidnapper, Harris. He must have another tool. Someone nearby watching the house.”

“Or someone inside the house.”

“An insider seems unlikely when you and Will have so carefully screened all the staff and when Dav has such loyal people as Adam Digweed and Mrs. Wardlow around him.”

“The only person in the household we didn't hire is the new grinder, a woman; Emma Portland is her name.”

“You don't think she chipped away the masonry around those chimney pots.”