Chapter 19
When the mantel clock chimed twelve, Tempest started, roused from her book as if from the depths of slumber. Why, more than two hours must have passed since Emily had announced her intention to retire. She looked for Caliban, but even he had abandoned her. She was alone but for the footman by the door, whom she caught struggling to stifle a yawn when she glanced around the room.
Christmas Eve.
She had not meant to stay up so late. Well, she was likely not the first to have been kept awake by one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s books. Tempest had really never had much interest in gothic tales. Such novels were precisely the sort of frivolous reading Miss Wollstonecraft cautioned against.
But as Tempest had lain resting in her room on the morning after her arrival—on Emily’s advice but for reasons quite other than her health—her grandfather had knocked on the door and entered bearing a small armful of books, the volumes of Mrs. Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. “Your father once wrote me saying you were a great reader,” he had explained, looking rather uncertain. The revelation—not that Papa had written, but that her grandfather had read, and remembered, his letters—startled her into accepting the gift eagerly despite her general disdain for such books. Perhaps a show of enthusiasm might encourage a longer visit, perhaps even a real conversation. But he had stayed only a few moments, his eyes darting uncomfortably around the room the entire time, leaving her wondering when he had last visited his late daughter’s chambers.
Mysteries of Udolpho, despite its popularity, had a number of flaws as far as Tempest was concerned. Its pages and pages of description did not transport her to some ancient alpine castle; she had no difficulty remembering she was sitting in a comfortably modern and improved manor house in the north of England, one now tastefully decorated for Christmas at Emily’s gentle insistence. The heroine of the story she found insipid, too perfect by half, and the hero—to the extent he could be said to deserve the title—too prone to fainting. Only the villain, the wicked uncle, seemed to her to have been drawn from life. At least, it required no great stretch of imagination for her to believe there were men who would threaten and imprison a young woman to get their hands on her fortune.
Still, beggars could not be choosers, and the book gave her an excuse to closet herself away at all hours to read, a place to stick her nose when she did not wish to be drawn into conversation. Thanks to Mrs. Radcliffe, she had enjoyed several days not of terror and excitement, but of peace and quiet.
Once her courses had come and gone, her head felt somehow clearer. The strain of worry must have befuddled her senses. By the light of day, even Edward’s letter had looked unremarkable. Nothing of a marriage proposal in it at all, just some hurried words assuring her of his steadfastness and brotherly affection, ending as he had begun. Even Lord Nathaniel had been making himself scarce.
And as to that other late-night realization? No doubt as much a figment of her imagination as the rest. Why, all afternoon, she had given at best half an ear to Emily’s tales of Andrew’s boyhood mischief-making—hardly the mark of a woman in love.
Her fears, her feelings on that night, had merely been an outburst of irrationality, such as women were unfortunately sometimes prone to experience. She was capable once more of behaving with sense, of using reason to apprehend the world around her.
Frowning at the clock, she marked her place in her book, stretched and inhaled the spicy sent of pine boughs, then shivered. Despite the fire, there was a chill in the room. Wind moaned past the windows. The weather must be turning colder. She needed no better excuse to retire, to lose herself under the weight of wool blankets and down-filled quilts. Though perhaps, once upstairs, she would indulge in just a few more pages before she extinguished the lamp . . .
A stream of light leaked beneath her bedchamber door into the corridor. Hannah must have left a candle lit for her. Mentally imagining what lay in store in the final chapters of her book, Tempest’s eyes went first to the writing desk where the candle glowed.
A figure stood there, back to the door, between her and the flame. For a moment, she tried to persuade herself it must be Hannah, although one glance had made it clear her midnight visitor was a man. But no—it simply was not possible. A puff of air left Tempest’s lips in a gasp.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
As Andrew turned toward her and the light limned his profile, she could see he had been frowning over some scrap of paper, which he now laid aside. His features eased. “Tempest. Thank God.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked again as she stepped toward him.
“I’ve been in Hull. A few days ago, an old friend told me Stratton had survived the storm, was believed to be in Yorkshire. So I came after him.” He paused and searched her eyes, as if expecting condemnation. He was meant to be in London, after all.
But the fate of Beauchamp Shipping was the last thing on her mind.
“Did you find him?”
“I did.”
“Did you kill him?”
Again that hesitation, as if he were torn between telling her the truth and trying to divine what she would most want to hear. “I did not.”
She had not known whether she wanted him to say yes or no, until the denial passed his lips and relief swept through her. “I know you wanted justice for your father, but his life is not worth your own.”
“My life is inconsequential,” he insisted. “Believe me—when he revealed that Delamere was also still alive, and in Yorkshire, my only concern was for you.” If the intensity of his green gaze had not confirmed it, everything else about his appearance made it clear that he had come to her with all possible haste. He looked almost as he had aboard the Fair Colleen after the storm, his clothing damp and mud-spattered, his face lined with fatigue, his cheeks hollow and unshaven. It must have been a terrible journey. “Is he here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right? Has he—has he hurt you?” He sounded almost as if he were reluctant to hear her answer.
Without conscious thought, she clutched her book tighter to her chest. “I am fine.”
“Where is he now?”
“Gone to bed, I daresay.”
“Good God, why didn’t you leave the moment you found him here?” His cat’s eyes gleamed in the flickering light of the candle.
“I—” she began. What reasonable excuse could she offer? She had considered it, of course. But her options had been limited. Without a coin to her name or a ship to sail on, leaving Crosslands would have meant returning to London, returning to Andrew’s house, where she faced an entirely different sort of danger. In some ways, Lord Nathaniel’s presence seemed far less threatening. She cared nothing for him, so he could never hurt her the way Andrew might.
Unable to explain herself, she shrugged.
“Well, you’re safe now.” His hand slid up her arm, and she allowed herself to be pulled into his protective embrace, although she knew she should not want it. It was a violation of all her principles to lean on someone else. But, oh, the relief of allowing him to bear her weight, bear her worries for just a moment. It would not last for long—he had his own burdens to carry.
“I’d take you away this instant,” he said, “but the roads were nigh impassible in the daylight. Impossible after dark. We’d be risking our necks to try it now.”
What do I risk if I stay? she wondered. “If the roads are that bad, how did you get here?” she asked instead, her voice muffled by the capes of his greatcoat.
“The luck of the Irish, I suppose you could say.” The note of humor in his voice was entirely self-deprecating. “And I walked the last three miles or so.”
She shivered. That explained the cold radiating from his clothing. “And how did you find your way here, to this room?”
“Mama’s abigail, Hannah, happened to be below, and as she is technically in my employ, I was able to persuade her to assist me. Although she was reluctant to escort a man to the bedchamber of a young lady. It seems she had recently overheard someone brand me a kidnapper.”
He paused, and Tempest glanced up in time to see something of the old devilry gleaming in his eyes. “And you said I was safe with you here.”
His smile faded. “You are,” he said, all seriousness, releasing her and stepping back to shrug out of his coat. “If you’ve a blanket to spare, I’ll make my bed in the corridor, right outside your—where is Caliban, anyway?” he asked sharply as he glanced toward the door.
“I don’t know. Probably with your mother.” Or with Sir Barton, she added silently. The dog had taken a great liking to her grandfather, but she did not think Andrew would appreciate hearing further proof of his canine companion’s unfaithfulness. “You cannot really believe I am in any danger tonight. Let me ring for someone to make up a room for you.”
“No danger? Cary was right,” he snapped, tugging off his gloves and tossing them onto the chair along with his coat. “You’re too stubborn to know what’s best. Too blind to see what’s right in front of you. Are you trusting in Delamere’s honor to keep you safe in your bed?”
“If all he wanted was to force himself on me, he has had ample opportunity to do so,” she said, tired of mincing words. “If not here, then in Antigua. He has always been determined to have some legal hold over me first. But at that he cannot succeed. As long as there is breath in my body to say no, to scream it if I must, he will never have my consent. He would have to kill me first, and I do believe that would defeat his purpose.” Folding her arms across her chest, she met Andrew’s stare. “Now, would you care to tell me exactly what it is I fail to see?”
“This,” he said as he lowered his mouth to hers.
At first, his lips felt chill against hers, but after that first brush the familiar spark passed between them, heating them both. As she stretched onto her toes, reaching for a taste of him, his arms came around her, lifting her against his chest. Her own hands, trapped between them, scrabbled up his shirtfront to clasp his neck.
Despite the eagerness of their hands, the rough scrape of his beard against her cheek, the kiss was tentative. Seeking, finding, their tongues danced and retreated as they learned one another once more. Beneath the ordinary smells of horse and sweat and starch, she caught a hint of salt air, and she inhaled greedily, eager for that scent that was uniquely his, the scent that reminded her of home.
The longer he held her, the deeper the kiss, the more she wished he might never let her go. Nervous fingers tangled in the dark hair that fell over his collar. To the nibble of her lips, the tentative swipe of her tongue, he replied by hitching her higher against his hard body, one arm around her hips, the other cupping the back of her head, stilling her to his plunder.
Only when a moan of surrender bubbled from her did he break the kiss and release her.
“This?” she echoed breathlessly as she slid back down to earth. “This can never be.” The denial rose to her lips automatically, even as every fiber of her being, those traitorous lips included, still vibrated with Andrew’s touch. “I think you know that.”
“Do you mean to accept him, then?”
“Lord Nathaniel? Can you even ask—?” Before she could finish her question, however, he glanced toward the writing desk and her eyes followed his. Edward’s letter lay there, almost where she had dropped it after her last perusal. That must have been the piece of paper Andrew had been scrutinizing when she entered.
“How dare you?” She twisted to face Andrew. “That’s private correspondence.”
“Well?” he demanded, ignoring her protest.
How fitting that jealousy was sometimes called a green-eyed monster. But if Andrew were jealous of Edward, then that would mean... “You know I don’t intend to marry anyone,” she said, her voice quieter. “I don’t—there is absolutely no need, now, for me to marry at all.”
She lowered her gaze so as not to be burned by the intensity of his own. Had that been a flicker of disappointment that crossed his face? Or relief?
“Despite Edward’s worries, I’ll be fine on my own,” she said, the reassurance falling somewhat hollow. “I do not need a man.”
“So you’ve said.” One hand came up to cradle her face. With warm fingertips, he traced the shell of her ear, along her jaw, down her throat, stopping at the place where her pulse beat. A sudden rush of blood surged to flush her skin when she realized he could feel her heart race. And those eyes! He could not help but see. See her thoughts, her fears. Her desires.
“Show me.” When he tipped his chin toward the bed as he spoke, the heat in his voice sent a quiver through her that had nothing to do with fear.
“I—I don’t know what you mean,” she lied. Despite the chill in the air and the layers of fabric between them, she could feel the evidence of his arousal where it pressed into her belly. After that kiss, she could feel her own, too, pooling between her thighs.
“There are some young ladies of whom I might believe it,” he murmured, turning her away from him as his fingers went to the row of buttons down her back. “But you are not one of them. You’re a woman of passion, Tempest.” With each word, another button slipped free, and she could feel the whisper of his breath across her skin. “For some time I suspected Cary of stoking those fires—”
“Edward never—”
Andrew’s lips brushed along the turn of her neck, across the top of her shoulder. “The more fool he.” She offered no resistance as he pushed the blue silk down her arms, over her hips, onto the floor, where it formed an inky puddle around her ankles. Her shift soon followed. “You’re no stranger to your body’s needs, no stranger to pleasure. Such knowledge can only be acquired in certain ways. If not at another’s hands, then your own. So,” he said, stepping away from her, forcing her to stand on her own two feet, giving her the independence she had always claimed to want, “show me.”
Did he really mean for her to pleasure herself? While he watched?
The darkness in his expression, the way his breath rose and fell, left little doubt in her mind.
Could she really do such a thing? No, of course not! Although . . . it would go some way toward proving to them both that she was mistress of her destiny.
With a catch of breath, she scampered to the relative safety of the bed, settling herself among the pillows, pulling the sheets up to her chin, the linen cool against skin that felt almost too warm.
“Shy, Tempest?” He lifted the fragile chair away from the desk and placed it at the foot of the bed, straddling it and leaning forward, intent on the spectacle she was to provide. Behind him, the candle flickered in a draft, and she took some comfort in the way his body blocked the light once more, leaving her robed in shadow. Until, that was, he reached behind him and moved it, casting its glow across the slopes and valleys of the bed. “Go ahead. There’s no shame in it. Or have you forgotten how much I’ve already seen?”
With those words, he dispelled the cold Yorkshire night, replacing it with a memory of the sticky heat of the tropics. As her eyes closed, sensation almost overwhelmed her. Once more the rocking of the ship merged with the thrust of his body into hers. She smelled the spicy scent of his skin, felt the sure stroke of his fingers against her breast.
But it was her own hand that swept over her body now, plucking and pinching an already peaked nipple, then sliding lower, beneath the sheets, to cup her mound. Just one quick press, the heel of her hand against her nub, something to dispel the forbidden ache. No, she could not do this, not while he watched. What must he be thinking?
From some wicked, wayward corner of her mind came another image, his strong hand stealing to the bulge in his breeches, mirroring her movement.
With a gasp, she reached lower and dipped her fingers into her wetness. Ah. Had the groan escaped her lips, or his? No matter. She had indulged her desire for Andrew once, knowing that someday it would come to this—reliving that memory in the dark, lonely hours when she had no touch but her own to ease the terrible throbbing.
The slick stroke of her fingers became her only focus. She opened her eyes once more, but she saw nothing. She might almost have forgotten he watched if, some moments later, he had not twitched the blankets impatiently aside, baring her to a gaze that heated what the night air cooled. The mattress dipped when he settled beside her, and she felt his naked body stretched along hers, though he did not lay a hand on her.
Better, perhaps, if he had. Her nerves felt suddenly frayed, divided between their awareness of him and the demands of her own body. The muscles of her abdomen clenched as she hungered for release.
“Shhhh,” he soothed, and the sound, the heat of his breath, pulsed through her. “Don’t chase it. Let it come to you.”
“I—I can’t do it.” Her fretful voice seemed loud in the stillness.
“You must.”
Had he spoken? The dark demand seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her.
At last, though, he took pity on her, one long finger moving to trace the delicate bones of her hand where it slipped between her thighs. She could almost, almost imagine his fingertip stroking her straining clitoris.
When she whimpered in frustration at the light brush of his hand, he laughed, low and slightly cruel. “I thought you didn’t need a man for this, Tempest?”
“I—I—” Her short curls scrubbed against the pillow as she shook her head. She didn’t. She didn’t.
Still, when he lifted his hand from hers, she cried out at the deprivation. It was not simply need, it was . . . oh, she had no word for it. Desperation, perhaps.
Andrew slid his palm over her hip, down her thigh, coaxing her legs farther apart. She opened to him on a sigh of relief. Yes. Let him—let him—The pulse beneath her fingertips took up the rhythm of her unspoken chant. Expecting him to brush her hand aside, to ease one finger, perhaps two, into her slick channel, she knew a new torment when he merely circled the opening to her body with the pad of his thumb, the pressure firm but still teasing. Not enough, not enough, not—
The explosion took her entirely by surprise, seeming to come not only from the bundle of nerves she stroked, but the place where he touched her, some deep recess she could not quite reach herself.
A soft cry caught in her throat, parting her lips but producing no sound, as if she were trying to hold this moment within her. When the crisis had passed, she watched as Andrew drew his hand up her body, trailing her wetness in his wake, until his fingers caressed her face and he circled her lips with his thumb. Her eyes widened in shock and flew to his, which were heavy-lidded with desire. Not allowing herself to reason her way into a denial, she darted out her tongue and tasted. More salt than sweet. Heat flared in his pupils as she drew his thumb into her mouth and suckled, satisfaction curling her lips when she felt his erection jerk against her hip in response.
“You greedy minx.” He replaced his thumb with his mouth, jealously nibbling her lips for some taste of what she had enjoyed. When that failed to satisfy his appetite, he moved down her body, following the path of his fingers, licking and laving, leaving a string of love bites behind. How could something that ought to sting produce so much pleasure?
Boneless, she offered no resistance as he rolled her onto her belly and kissed over one shoulder blade and along her spine. Only when he covered her body with his own, enveloping her in his heat, branding her with his arousal, did she stiffen, feeling an answering tremor stir within her once more.
“Tell me, Tempest.” The words were a mere breath against her ear, stirring her hair. Her scalp tingled. “Do you want this?” he asked, and she felt his sex brush the entrance to her body. “Do you want—me?”
She should say no. She could say no—he was giving her the choice. But that no would be a lie.
Although she shouldn’t, she wanted him, wanted this. One night together had most definitely not been enough. And somewhere at the back of her mind, a doubt niggled at her. What if she were not always free to make this choice—to choose him?
“I want you,” she said, canting her pelvis, inviting him to enter her.
He surged forward on a groan, an invasion that was part conquest, part caress. The pressure at this angle was exquisite, and as soon as he began to thrust, another orgasm rippled through her—or perhaps it was merely an extension of the first, which seemed still to pulse under her skin.
“I need you.”
The confession escaped her lips on a sigh of breath. A dangerous admission for a woman who had never craved a man’s possession, could never imagine reveling in what she once would have called powerlessness.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind, however, than she realized she was far from helpless. Catching his rhythm, she pressed her buttocks against his groin, lifting her hips as much as she could to meet his thrusts and clenching her inner muscles around his hardness. A low grunt of pleasure rumbled in his chest.
No, not powerless at all.
He countered by catching her hands in his and stretching her arms upward, pressing her into the downy softness of the bed, blanketing her with his weight. Pinned beneath him, able to do little more than receive the pleasure he was intent on giving her, she surrendered to sensation. Yes. She needed him. She did not think she would ever stop needing him. He rode her mercilessly, then. As another climax racked her body, she muffled her cry in the pillow. She was lost, utterly unmoored, floating through space.
I love you.
The words echoed inside her head. Had she spoken them aloud? Behind her, Andrew stilled, and she held her breath, waiting, as if expecting some reply.
Abruptly he withdrew. Liquid heat spilled onto the sheets and across her skin before he collapsed atop her, breathless, sinking her still further into the snowy depths of the warm featherbed.
She should be grateful he had thought to spare her the burden of worrying once more over possible consequences. Or at least had thought to spare himself.
So why did she feel inexplicably like weeping?