Her heart was pounding so fiercely the blood was ringing in her ears by the time she reached his room. She tapped, just twice, with her fingertip. “Captain Hardy,” she said, mouth nearly pressed to the door.
She nearly toppled in when he opened it. He tugged her gently inside, closed the door and locked it.
An enormous towel was knotted about his waist. Water sheened his thighs and chest. It clung in beads to the slopes and angles and gullies of him, the smooth mountains of his shoulders, the ditch created by muscles along his spine.
The blood left her head and headed straight for her groin.
“I only have a few minutes.” Her voice was a shred.
Doubtless he noted that her expression was probably somewhere between Mr. Delacorte’s at the dinner table and an appraiser of antiquities who’d been handed the Grail.
He unfastened the towel and dropped it.
She’d unlaced her dress on the way there and now pulled it over her head and dropped it. Then divested herself of the rest of her clothes.
His expression in response to her sudden swift nudity suggested he’d taken a mallet to the head, and she exulted while she feasted unabashedly with her eyes. He was like a slightly nicked and dented idol unearthed from a chamber of a pharaoh’s tomb, perhaps, beautiful, carved from good sturdy metal rather than precious: from the cut of his calves, the hard curve of his thighs, the pale taut buttocks with convenient little scoops where her hands fit when she was gripping them. The flare of his torso from them.
The white slashes and dents of old scars made her stomach contract with an odd sort of desperation: How dare they shoot at him as though he were expendable?
It seemed impossible that anyone had ever gotten the better of him.
Nothing about him appeared soft or vulnerable, apart, perhaps, from his eyelashes.
She crouched to seize the towel he’d dropped, and followed the terrain of his body, first with the towel, then her lips, then her hands. She slid her fingers down the trench of his spine. She lightly scored her nails across his chest. She made him tell his story.
“This scar . . .”
“Pirate . . . boarded our ship . . .” His voice was an enthralled rasp.
“Did you kill him?”
“It was that . . . or . . . be killed.” His answer, swift, staccato, riding out on a ragged breath.
So she kissed him there, on that scar. “I’m glad you killed him.”
“Delilah . . .” he half choked, half laughed.
“And this one?” She’d dropped to her knees to drag her fingers along his hip, where she could guess at how he’d come to sport that puckered scar.
“Shot. I was ill for weeks.”
“And you lived through sheer cussedness.”
“Because I had a fever dream of you on your knees before me, literally licking my wounds. It kept me alive.”
She did lick that scar. Then she dragged her tongue from his hip to where curly hair surrounded his swelling cock and kissed him coyly, near and yet so far.
“Delilah,” he groaned, as surely as if he’d been shot again. “Your mouth. Please. Take my cock in your mouth.”
“Not yet, Captain,” she said.
He called her a string of muttered oaths. She merely smiled, drunk on power, and arousal.
“And this . . .” She’d found a scar across his arm.
“. . . was a child . . . stole an apple . . . from a costermonger.” He was sweating now.
She didn’t ask for details. She understood that the only reason Captain Hardy was invincible now, was standing here before her, complicated and passionate and desirable, was because he’d been caught a time or two. So she kissed that scar.
And when she took his cock into her mouth, his head fell back, and his hands dropped upon her hair as a long, low animal moan was followed by a string of curses and deities he clearly felt the need to call upon to support him in this time of untenable pleasure.
Now this. This was wicked. She allowed her tongue to play over the smooth dome of it. His hands laced into her hair. “Oh God. Whatever you do . . . don’t stop . . .”
She paused. “This is apparently called the Vicar’s Hobby.”
He gave a short half laugh, half moan. “Your hands . . . your hands, too . . . use your hands, too . . .”
She obeyed. The taut cords of his neck, the tension in his jaw, how his head dropped back as he took in and savored the pleasure she gave him, his sighs of near desperation—it was so unbearably erotic that when she stood suddenly, she swayed as though drunk.
He seized her hips, spun her about so swiftly she toppled forward, bracing her palms against his blue coverlet. His palms skated down her spine as he urged her thighs apart with his knee. And then he brought his hand around to where she was aching and wet and stroked a rhythm that wrought from her moans of astounded, ramping pleasure that she muffled with her forearm. “Tristan . . .” she whimpered. “Please . . .”
She came apart into a million cinders when he thrust into her. The counterpane took her raw scream. Her fingers clenched and unclenched in it as he drummed into her swiftly, his breathing gusting. “Delilah . . . dear God . . .” His voice was shredded. “I’m . . .”
He went rigid, his own raw cry stifled and wave after wave of bliss wracked him.
Before she slid like a melted thing down off the bed, he scooped her up into his arms and pulled her up onto the bed. She reclined in his arms as his chest rose like a choppy sea beneath her head.
Her hair was a mess, so he unpinned it, one pin at a time.
Laid them all on his night table.
“You can pin it again before you leave,” he said drowsily. Never had pleasure so owned him. So fully consumed him. Never had it so thoroughly relieved him, if momentarily, of the burden of being himself, the man who held up the world.
“I must leave soon,” she murmured. She gave a somnolent, stunned laugh. “Never in my wildest fantasies did I think I’d need to repin my hair in the afternoon after having been ravished.”
“And after having ravished.”
“Fair enough.”
He smiled. He threaded his hands through her hair. As soft as he’d dreamed it would be, full of hidden mahogany lights. “Have you wild fantasies?” He was tremendously interested in these.
She hesitated. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I’m too sated to laugh.”
“Angelique and I once talked about what we would do if the king came to The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
“The king? Because now that you’ve conquered me, he’s the only challenge left?”
“Because it would madden the Duchess of Brexford, who can never get him to come to one of her dinners. She is terribly rude to me and tried to steal my cook more than once. She thinks I’m quite beneath her.”
“I think we’ve time,” Tristan said thoughtfully, “for you to be beneath me once again.”
She smiled and shifted to throw a leg over his thigh. Her hands were idly roaming over his chest, following the trenches made by his muscle. He shifted, restlessly. Mad hunger was an echo, but already ramping again. “Why were you stealing an apple?” she asked.
“I was hungry.”
“Tristan,” she said. She stopped the caresses and propped herself up on her elbows. Her hair fell down over his chest, across her face. He parted it like a curtain onto his favorite musicale. Her face was an ache.
“The difference between me and the drunk man at the entrance of your boardinghouse is pigheadedness and fortitude.”
“Yes. I’m certain that’s all. Had naught to do with courage, or intelligence, or skill.”
“Flatterer. You must be trying to seduce me again,” he said hopefully.
She was quiet, however. “You must have been so frightened.” It was a near whisper.
She was worried, that was clear. She was hurting for him now, and the boy he was. And somehow he didn’t mind. He had never realized these untold stories possessed any encumbering weight, any ballast, until he began to tell them to someone who thought they mattered.
“I was afraid. But I think when fear becomes a part of your everyday experience that you cease to think of it as fear. You either harness it, and turn it into a source of strength, or it harnesses you, and destroys your soul. I’ve seen examples of both.”
“I think it’s a question of character, too. And while I’m glad you’re here now, I’m sorry you endured that.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
This wasn’t entirely true.
The arc of his life didn’t allow it. It mattered that he caught the smugglers. It mattered to him, to his men, to the king, to the loved ones of the family killed. Dozens, hundreds, fanning out from there, people depended upon his wisdom and judgment and experience to bring them to justice.
And the questions he yet needed to ask her mattered. Who had taken that room on the first floor, for instance?
But he kissed her again, because he could not lie next to her and not kiss her, and apparently he was Achilles and she was the heel.
It began slowly, slowly as they dared knowing they had very little time, their hands moving over each other’s bodies, finding the hollows and knobs and angles and silky hidden places that made each other breathe swiftly, to ripple and beg for more. But in moments it was a frenzy of tangled limbs and little bites and deep kisses and urgency rather than finesse. She clung to him as he dove in her again and again; he buried his cry of release against her throat as she shook and shook beneath him, saying his name as if he’d wrought a miracle.
Side by side again, her head against his shoulder, his heart pounding harder than it had when that pirate had shot at him, Delilah sniffed.
She was weeping! He stiffened with alarm.
She smiled a little and said, “I’m sorry.”
“For biting me? I rather liked it.”
She laid her forearm across her eyes and gave a laugh which contained a little sniffle.
The reflexive ease with which he pulled her closer to his body unnerved him. The ease with which she came to him and burrowed her head into the hollow of his shoulder for comfort was unnerving, too. The realization that there was very little difference between comforting her and soothing himself was the most troubling thing of all.
“It’s that we’re given such a limited repertoire of ways to express emotions, and I’m feeling a number of complicated things all at once,” she said.
Never in his wildest dreams did Tristan think he would ask a woman the next question, or genuinely want to hear the answer.
“What are the things you’re feeling, Delilah?” He dragged his hand slowly down the luxurious satiny skin of her back.
He would never again call her Lady Derring. Knowing that she’d once belonged to someone who had not seen, appreciated, or loved her.
“I was just thinking that . . . if Derring had lived . . . I might have gone my entire life and not known what this . . . lovemaking . . . what you and I are like together. And though every day of running this boardinghouse is a veritable walk on a cliff edge of uncertainty, I can’t regret it. And yet Derring had to die for me to know it. I suppose I feel regret at what could never be with Derring, and also a sort of terrible fear, knowing that I might be nearly losing something. Isn’t that silly?”
“No,” he said shortly. He wished he had more words. “Not in the least.”
He lay there tracing the little pearls of her spine, thinking about the pearls she had sold to open this boardinghouse.
“Do you miss him?” he asked gruffly.
“No.”
He quietly, ungraciously, exulted.
“Sometimes . . . I feel like I can sense his presence here. Every now and again I think I catch a hint of his terrible cigars. Mostly in the kitchen, near the scullery, where I can’t imagine Derring spent any time whilst he was alive.”
Near the scullery.
The scullery, if he recalled correctly, was more or less beneath that mysterious suite of rooms.
And what was under the scullery?
Hell’s teeth.
All that glorious, hazy aftermath of release was burned off by reason.
He should not ask the question now. When she was vulnerable and tender in his arms. When she saw him as comfort, strength, and pleasure. She trusted him, this lovely woman who had vowed never again to trust a man, and who had been a means to an end for people her entire life.
But her vulnerability was also the reason he needed to ask the question now.
There would be no undoing it if he asked it. But he knew it was already too late, and that he was destined.
“To whom did you let that suite on the first floor, Delilah? I’m concerned, you see. More importantly, does he or she play Whist, or the pianoforte?”
“The suite on the first floor?” She smiled drowsily. “Do you know, it’s the oddest thing. A prim, supercilious, well-dressed man paid us two entire sovereigns to keep it for his mysterious employer.”
It wasn’t quite at all what he’d expected to hear. “That is odd. Did he ask for that room in particular?” His grip tightened on her. He forced himself to loosen it.
“No, he just wanted our, and I quote, ‘largest suite of rooms,’ and so we gave him that one. We were uneasy and a bit resentful about accepting the money but ultimately we did, because we had to do it, and could see no reason on the face of things to say no. He wasn’t the least threatening. Just arrogant. Two sovereigns. And we didn’t even have to feed him.”
“Hard to say no to two sovereigns,” he said, absently. His mind was working furiously now.
“Absolutely. We can keep paying our staff. And heating the house.”
“And you’ve never met this person? The person for whom you’re keeping the room? Just his representative?”
“We’ve never met him. Isn’t that odd? He said his employer likes to keep suites available all over the city, and this is another direct quote, ‘just in case.’” She stretched and pointed her toes. “I imagine a debauched lord of some sort, staggering to the nearest hidey hole after a drunken evening, but I honestly don’t know. The man—called himself Mr. X, if you can believe it—actually gave us half a token, and he said that we’d know the lord when he presented the other half. Angelique and I felt ridiculous, but so far it seems more absurd than sinister. As we promised, we clean it every day. He has yet to show himself.”
Tristan took this in. It sounded absolutely mad, but he also didn’t doubt her, because frankly mad people were rife among the aristocracy. And it was too outlandish a story to invent.
But was this Mr. X involved in smuggling, somehow?
Perhaps it was just a coincidence that he took that room.
Or . . . perhaps Tristan was on the entirely wrong track.
The very idea formed a small, icy knot in the pit of his stomach.
All today he’d gone into cheese shops, tailors, pubs, confectioners and asked, “Big bloke with a scar promised me more cigars, has he been in? Has a friend, smaller, looks a bit like a fox.” That sort of thing. Variations on that approach.
Not one of them he’d spoken to today had seen or spoken to men who looked like that.
But he’d told his men to keep asking anyway. And to send word to him straight away if they got even a single viable response. “Use another language, Massey, if you send a message. Portuguese. I can read that, if you can write it.” Both he and Massey had acquired the rudiments of a number of languages throughout their careers.
He refused to surrender to that tight feeling in his chest of encroaching doubt.
“What does the token look like?” He realized he’d pulled his arm out from beneath her. As if touching her while he did what amounted to abusing her trust was dishonorable.
“Like maybe a crest of some kind. A half of a crest. A lion’s leg, a unicorn leg, perhaps? It’s not fancy and it’s impossible to know what it is, really.”
He frowned. Neither a crest nor a token struck any bells at all.
Bloody hell. He still needed to get into that room.
She shifted away from him a little. He’d gone tense as a board, and likely she’d noticed. She was watching him worriedly now.
It got even more tense when there was a knock at the door.
They both froze.
She pulled the coverlet over her head.
“Yes, may I help you?” he called.
“Captain Hardy?” It was Dot.
“Yes, Dot. I’m afraid I can’t come to the door just yet.”
There was a silence. He hoped Dot was too naive to reason out why, apart from the fact that he’d had a bath, which involved a state of total undress. “A man came to the door with an urgent message for you, Captain Hardy. It’s all sealed up.”
His heart stopped.
Good man, Massey, to seal it. “Slide it under my door if you would, Dot, thank you. And if you would please wait.”
There was a little rustle as she shoved it into the room.
He all but dove out of bed to retrieve it. Massey had sealed it with a blob of wax.
In Portuguese, he read:
Halligan spoke with a tobacconist four streets over who was angry because huge man with scar didn’t bring in anticipated cigars. Waiting outside for orders.
M.
Feelings and impressions rushed at him like leaves in a storm: Triumph. Vindication. Exultation. Hope.
Regret.
Injustice.
Dread.
The last three were directed at life and the destiny that required him to leave this woman now.
But when they all blew away, duty remained.
Tristan didn’t know how long he’d held still, but he could feel Delilah’s eyes on him.
He turned and found her expression worried. And wary, and he instantly wanted to make it light again.
He realized he’d basked in her trust and optimism even as he’d taken advantage of it. He was accustomed to those eyes glowing when they saw him.
He strode to the little writing desk, lately the scene of a torturously written poem, and scrawled, in Portuguese:
Gather men. Meet me at Cox’s Livery Stables in fifteen minutes.
Massey would know why.
He blew on the ink, willing it to dry. Behind him, he heard Delilah gathering her dress, her slippers, her hairpins.
He still hadn’t looked at her.
He slid the message back beneath the door. “Dot, if you would be so kind as to hand this to the gentleman waiting outside.”
“Of course, Captain Hardy!” she said cheerily.
He heard her thundering down the stairs.
He finally dared a look at Delilah.
Her eyes were fixed on him unblinkingly. Worried, but still trusting.
“Delilah, I apologize, but I’m afraid I must go out straight away.”
“Is aught amiss? Can I help?”
He watched her pin her hair. He thought how fortunate the man would be to watch her pin it up and take it down every day.
He didn’t want to tell her a placatory lie.
“Yes. Something is amiss. But it will be put to rights.”
They held each other’s eyes.
Her posture was rigid. Her expression was searching, and then it went subtly guarded. And perhaps even a little cynical.
He moved to her swiftly, laid his hand against her cheek. And perhaps he hadn’t the right, but he kissed her again. So she would close her eyes and he wouldn’t have to see that guarded expression, so that he could instead feel her body softening in surrender. Because this might be the last time, and this was how he wanted to remember her.