She’d made up her mind that she wasn’t going to ask him, that she didn’t want to hear what he might say in response. As she stood staring down at Peter, however, something beyond Emily’s control seemed to drive her, forcing the question from her lips.
It might have been because Jenna’s words had been swirling around inside her head the whole time they were visiting Fulberry Manor, replaying like a never-ending mantra until she was sure she would go mad. In spite of her worry about Jack and about Peter’s investigation, she’d been unable to dismiss her friend’s admonition from her thoughts.
“Doesn’t ’e at least deserve the benefit of the doubt?”
Perhaps he did. Perhaps he’d truly had a good reason for his departure from Oxfordshire. But she was tired of wondering. All she knew was that when he’d left, she’d lost not only the man she’d loved, but her best friend as well.
And she wanted to know why.
Maybe once she had the answer she could finally put it behind her.
For a long moment after she spoke, the only sound that could be heard was the pounding of the rain on the roof of the cottage. Peter seemed almost paralyzed, locked in place, as he returned her gaze with a carefully blank expression.
Then, rising to his feet, he brushed by her and strode over to the fireplace to stand with his back to the room, his stance rigid. “What can that possibly matter now?”
His distant tone roused her temper and she crossed the space between them, coming to a halt at his elbow and planting her hands on her hips in a belligerent manner. “It matters.”
When he didn’t reply, merely continued to stare into the flames, she reached out and caught his arm, her fingers digging into his sleeve. “Peter, please.”
The desperation in her voice must have gotten through to him, for he finally turned to look at her. The firelight cast patterns of light and darkness over the hard angles of his face, giving him a vaguely saturnine appearance that sent a quiver throughout her body. Water dripped from the ends of his tawny, overlong hair, and Emily couldn’t seem to help letting her eyes follow the trails of moisture as they slid down along the planes of his cheeks and the slope of his neck until they disappeared into the collar of his shirt. A very damp shirt that molded to his wide shoulders and lean, muscled arms and chest, leaving little to the imagination.
Closing her eyes to shut out the disconcerting sight of him for a moment, she took a deep breath, attempting to rein in her chaotic emotions before she met his stare and tried to speak again. “I have a right to know.”
“I fail to see what difference it makes.”
“I need to know—” In spite of herself, Emily’s voice broke and she had to struggle to push the rest of the words out through her constricted throat. “I need to know it wasn’t because of me. That it wasn’t my fault.”
Peter’s visage suddenly seemed to pale in the dimness of the cottage and his jaw went slack, his expression one of honest astonishment. “Because of you? No!” Reaching up, he caught hold of her hand on his arm and twined his fingers through hers, his grip warm and gentle—and unexpected. “Is that what you’ve thought all this time?”
“What else was I to think? I make a fool of myself by trying to stir your jealousy, we come close to…to making love, and the next morning you’re gone without a word and everything has changed between us. I must have done something wrong for you to react in such a way. Or perhaps—” She paused, fighting the tears that suddenly blurred her vision. “Or perhaps you never cared for me at all and our relationship was nothing but a lie.”
“Emily, you mustn’t believe that.” He bowed his head, and she was certain she heard him give a low groan before he dropped her hand and began to pace in front of her. “I will always cherish the memories of our friendship. No one ever believed in me the way you did.”
“Then why…?”
“Damn it, how do I explain?” He pushed his fingers back through his hair in a frustrated motion, and when he met her eyes, his own were gleaming with a ferocity that startled her. “It was never you, Emily. It was us. Together.”
“I don’t understand.”
Catching her hand again, he led her over to the stool and moved aside her damp gown before urging her to seat herself. Then he hunkered down next to her, propping his elbows on his knees. At first, he said nothing, then he heaved a breath and raked his free hand through his hair once more. “This isn’t easy for me to talk about. I never planned on…But you…Bloody ever-lastin’ ’ell!”
The fervor in his voice, his slippage into Cockney, was enough to tell Emily just how much this topic of conversation disturbed him. Before, she might have changed the subject, given up on prying the reason for his defection from him. But after her conversation with Jenna today, she had to know. She couldn’t just forget about it and go on the way she had been. She was tired of feeling hurt and angry. It was well past time for her to learn to get on with her life without memories of what might have been to weigh her down.
Tightening her grip on Peter’s hand, she wound her fingers through his and gave a slight squeeze. “Please go on. I have to know.”
He looked down at her hand in his, and even in the dark she could see a flash of something like pain in his eyes. “I’ve never told you—or anyone—much about my past. It’s not something I like to be reminded of, so I don’t speak of it.”
It was true. Even after all these years, Emily knew little of Peter’s background other than that his mother had been a prostitute and he’d lived most of his childhood on the streets of London. Whenever she’d been brave enough to ask him about it before, he’d brushed her questions aside, so she’d finally stopped asking.
“My mum…well, it’s no secret she was a doxy,” he went on, his firmly chiseled mouth twisting into a scowl. “She also…hated me. See, I was a reminder of what she did for a living, and she couldn’t stomach it. She had no idea who my father was. He could have been any one of a hundred men, and the fact that she’d slipped up once and wound up with an unwanted child as a result stuck in her craw. When it came to me, she was quick with the back of her hand and a harsh word, and I was pretty much left to fend for myself.”
He paused for a moment before looking up to meet Emily’s gaze. “I experienced the worst of life before I’d even turned seven, Em. I lived in a whorehouse, and the dregs of society wandered in and out of its doors every day. My God, I had to sleep in the same room where my mum serviced her customers. Curled up in my corner, night after night, listening to those sounds…”
At the bleakness in his expression, Emily let out a small cry and leaned toward him, aching to comfort him in some way, but he evaded her touch by letting go of her hand and getting to his feet. He moved to stand before the fire once again, his profile cast in grim shadow by the flames.
“And that’s not the worst of it. When I was seven, she finally got tired of providing a roof over my head. Never mind that I’d been feeding and caring for myself by picking pockets for longer than I could remember, that I rarely troubled her for a thing or even spoke to her. She wanted me gone, so she kicked me out onto the streets.”
Emily stifled a gasp. She couldn’t imagine a mother caring so little for her own child that she would cast him to the wolves without a second thought. But apparently Peter’s mother had done so. Dear heavens, the woman must have been a monster! “Oh, Peter—”
But he kept talking, almost as if he hadn’t heard her voice. He was too lost in his memories of the past. “And once I was on those streets, life didn’t get any easier. I lived among murderers, thieves, the worst sort of criminals one can imagine.” He looked back at her over his shoulder. “That’s the sort of background I come from. I had to become one of them to survive, and until I found the Rag-Tag Bunch, I lived like an animal.”
He took a step toward her. “That’s why I left. What was happening between us…” He shook his head. “It was wrong, and I couldn’t let it continue. You deserved better than a former guttersnipe who didn’t even know what his father’s name was. I knew I had to leave, to put distance between us, before something occurred that we would both regret.”
Stunned, Emily clasped her hands together in her lap and studied every inch of his features, trying to read his thoughts by sheer force of will. “And you made this decision without even talking to me about it?”
“What was there to talk about? My mind was made up. I had to do what was best for you.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Damn it, Emily, you know nothing could have come of it! The two of us together? The princess and the pickpocket? The daughter of an earl and the son of a harlot? What would society have said?”
He was right. Deep down she knew he was right. But it didn’t lessen the pain. Nor did it make her any less angry that he had made the decision to sever their relationship without giving her any say in the matter.
Clutching her blanket about her, she lunged to her feet and crossed the room to his side, her temper seething just beneath the surface like a cauldron ready to boil over. She raised her chin and glared up at him. “Did you truly think I was that shallow? That your background mattered to me?”
“I knew it didn’t matter to you, Em. That’s why I had to make the decision for both of us. When we were children it wasn’t so vital, but whether we wished it so or not, my background did matter. It does matter. And we can’t let ourselves forget that again.”
Emily’s fury rose up, choking her. “You have no idea what it did to me when you left. I thought we loved each other, and when you were suddenly gone without a word…” She swallowed and blinked, once again feeling tears dangerously close. “I thought none of it had meant anything to you.”
“I’m sorry for whatever pain I caused you. But you must see it was the right decision?”
“What I see is that you took it upon yourself to decide what was best for me when you had no right!”
Peter’s face darkened. “Bloody hell, Em, you didn’t hear the talk, the speculation going on around us. You were oblivious, but I wasn’t. Every time I went into the village, I heard people whispering about the earl letting his sister run loose about the countryside with that worthless London ‘street trash.’ They said I would ruin you. Ruin you. And they were right, weren’t they?” His tone turned bitter. “I almost did. I almost rutted with you up against a tree like you were a common dockside whore.”
Emily didn’t bother to reprimand him for his crudity. She was too busy recovering from his revelation. So that was why he had distanced himself from her in those final days before he’d left Willow Park! “I can’t believe it. You let a few words of idle gossip drive a wedge between us, chase you away?”
“It was more than idle gossip. And it wasn’t just that. It was the way I almost took you that last night. It reminded me of who—and what—I was. I knew if we had ever truly tried to make a go of it together, sooner or later you would have realized what a mistake you’d made. I decided to save us both the heartache and trouble.”
“How dare you presume to judge how I would have felt? I didn’t need your protection and I didn’t ask for it.” Emily glared at him. “But perhaps it wasn’t me you feared for so much as yourself!”
Their eyes locked and held in challenge.
Emily wasn’t certain which of them moved first. But the next thing she knew, they were in each other’s arms, and Peter’s lips descended on her own.
The taste of her was like the sweetest of aphrodisiacs, the feel of her in his arms like his fondest dream come true.
With a gruff moan, Peter reached up a hand and speared his fingers through Emily’s wet hair, tilting her head back for easier access as he thoroughly ravished her mouth. Her rounded curves fit against him to perfection, almost as if they were made for each other.
In some dim corner of his mind, he knew kissing her was a mistake. After last night, he had promised himself this would never happen again, but for once his lust had overcome his determination to do what was right. Lady Emily Knight had always been his Achilles’ heel and it seemed she always would be.
Skimming his tongue over the velvety surface of her lips, he savored the sound of her soft sigh before lifting his head to bury his nose in the fragrant curls at her temple. Her arms slid upward to twine around his neck, and the feel of her delicate fingers sifting through the hair at his nape sent a shiver racing up his spine.
“My angel,” he said huskly, closing his eyes for a fleeting moment, letting the ecstasy of her touch wash over him in waves. “Emily, my sweet, sweet angel…”
Peter brought his hands away from her face and let them glide down her body, passing over her shoulders, brushing down her arms, briefly resting on her slender waist before delving inside her shielding blanket to palm her bottom. He lifted her against himself, fitting her to the bold jut of his arousal.
At the contact, she gave a wavering cry and rocked her hips, the movement like a match to the flame of Peter’s already rampant desire. With a deep growl, he turned with her in his arms to press her back against the wall of the cottage and took her lips once again in a devastating exchange.
Emily gasped and arched against him, the movement dislodging her blanket and sending it sliding down to pool on the dirt floor at her feet.
“Peter,” she whispered once he released her mouth, her nails digging into his back through the lawn of his shirt, “Peter, please, I want…”
But she didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she gazed up at him in the dimness, her haunting purple eyes cloudy with passion and conveying an all too eloquent plea for him to continue.
He traced his hands up her sides in a slow stroke, taking satisfaction in the way she quivered beneath his touch. The firelight shone through the thin white linen of her chemise, delineating every curve of her lush form. Her breasts were high and firm, her rosy nipples taut and stabbing against the damp material.
It was more provocation than Peter could bear.
“Dear God, Emily. You are so beautiful,” he said hoarsely, smoothing a hand over her shoulder. Slipping a finger under the strap of the chemise, he slid it down, his mouth following in its wake, tasting the creamy skin that was revealed to him.
Her head fell back against the wall, and she made no move to stop him as he reached up to peel aside the other strap as well. The chemise fell to her waist, baring her ripe breasts to the fire’s glow and his reverent gaze.
Wrapping his arms around her, he leaned down to take one of the distended pink tips into the warm cavern of his mouth.
Emily was lost in the bliss of Peter’s touch, unable to think of anything but the delight of being in his arms again. His hands on her sent bursts of sensation through her nerve endings, and the moment the heat of his mouth enclosed her naked breast, she went up on her toes in reaction, a keening cry falling from her lips. As he suckled her gently, his tongue plied her nipple, curling around the erect bud until it ached.
She had dreamed of him touching her this way. But never had she believed it could ever happen. Yet, here he was, caressing her, loving her, making her feel things she’d thought never to feel again.
Something niggled at the edges of her consciousness, but she pushed it away, determined to experience every bit of pleasure she could in the moment. Cupping the back of Peter’s head, she held him to her as he nuzzled first one nipple, then the other, the edges of his teeth grazing the tender nubs before his tongue shot out to soothe them. She released another moan in response.
“If I’m dreaming, angel,” he murmured, his breath fanning over sensitive flesh still moist from his attentions, “don’t ever wake me. I want to stay in ’eaven wiv you forever.”
His words were enough to send her pulse skyrocketing. The emotion in that Cockney-tinged voice told her he meant everything he said. To know that she affected him just as profoundly as he did her was heady knowledge.
Needing to feel his skin, to touch him in some way, she let her hands glide down over his broad shoulders and into the vee of his shirtfront. She felt his body shudder as her palms lingered on the solid wall of his chest, indulging in the feel of satiny flesh over hard muscle.
What would come next? she wondered as he lifted his mouth from her breasts to give her another soul-stealing kiss. Emily might have been a virgin, but she was well aware of what went on between a man and a woman, and she knew if they carried this through to the logical conclusion, there would be no going back.
No going back…
The thought was enough to arrest her movements and seize the air in her lungs. The vague shadow that had wavered at the back of her mind, disturbing her, took shape and had her suddenly shoving at Peter’s shoulders in an attempt to push him away.
She couldn’t do this! Too much stood between them. Not the least of which was the fact that she was the Oxfordshire Thief.
Seeming to become aware that she was no longer pulling him closer, but trying to hold him off, Peter tore his lips from hers and gazed down at her in confusion, his blue eyes unfocused and blazing with the depth of his need. “Emily?”
She barely managed to squeeze the words out through the lump in her throat. “Peter, we have to stop. Now.”
Though her voice wasn’t quite steady, he must have been able to read the seriousness in it, for he blinked and his expression instantly closed up. Wheeling about, he stalked across the room to stand with his back to her as he put up an obvious battle to regain control.
Pulling up the straps of her chemise to cover her swollen, aching breasts, Emily knelt down to retrieve her blanket and quickly wrapped it about herself. Dear God, what had she almost done?
Peter Quick was a dangerous man, and finally knowing why he had left her only made him that much more lethal to her peace of mind. She had believed for so long that he simply hadn’t cared, but now she realized that he’d cared too much. He’d walked away from his home and all he’d known because he’d believed it was best for her.
Closing her eyes, she heaved a sigh and reached up to rub at her temples. Never mind that she was the one who had demanded the truth. She couldn’t let any of it matter. Even if there was still some feeling between them, she couldn’t afford to lose her heart to him. Not again. Regardless of his reasons, she’d put her faith in him once before and he’d left her.
How could she ever trust him again?
“I’m sorry.”
His voice was low, almost inaudible over the ominous growls of thunder from outside, but she heard it nevertheless.
“It’s my fault,” he went on, turning to face her. The pain in his eyes was almost more than she could bear. “I never should have touched you, but when I’m around you I seem to have trouble remembering that.”
Emily shook her head. She couldn’t allow him to take all the blame. “No. I was just as responsible.” She started forward, one hand outstretched as if to offer comfort, but came to an abrupt stop. He wouldn’t want sympathy from her. Not after this.
Biting her lip, she looked down at the floor, struggling to find the right words to soothe the troubled waters between them. “Let’s just put it down to talk of the past and the isolation of our surroundings. It’s all too easy to forget things—important things—in a situation like this and to get swept up in the moment. It was an aberration, nothing more.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “An aberration. That sounds about right.” Stalking over to his saddlebag, he lifted it off the floor and slung it over his shoulder before casting her a hooded look. “I’m going to go check on the horses.”
Before she could say a word, he had pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain.
Emily hurried after him, coming to a halt on the threshold and watching as he splashed through the puddles in the muddy yard before disappearing around the side of the cottage.
As soon as he was out of sight, she collapsed against the doorframe, letting the weakness that had been hovering, ready to overtake her, have its way.
What have I done?
She shook her head. She knew the answer to that, even if she didn’t want to admit it. She had reminded herself all too powerfully of what had first drawn her to Peter. Of the passion and emotion that was obviously still very much alive and well between them.
But it was of no consequence. No matter what she felt for Peter, nothing could come of it. Even if he should still care for her, any relationship was doomed to failure from the start.
Wasn’t it?
Oh, this was getting her nowhere! Tightening her hold on her blanket, she glanced up at the gray sky, glad to see that at least the storm seemed to be over. The rain had slackened to a mere trickle, and the thunder had tapered off to an occasional grumble far in the distance.
Closing the door, she returned to the fire to lift her still-damp dress from the floor and shake it out, brushing off the particles of dirt that clung to the material before slipping it over her head. When Peter returned to the cottage, she would tell him it was best that they continue on their way to Knighthaven. Once they were away from this place, they could forget this incident and move on.
But despite her determination, a seed of doubt still remained. Could she forget what had passed between them here?
Could either of them?