CHAPTER TWENTY

Sitting behind the desk in the study of his town house, Avery looked up from the papers he had been reading and motioned for Baccy Willard to come in. The big burly man approached with his battered tricorn firmly gripped in his big knobby hands.

“Well, man, is it done?”

Baccy swallowed, his Adam’s apple stretching up and down. “I done it. I kilt her … just like you told me.” He stared at a place on the wall above Avery’s head. “You never said she was so pretty.”

“Pretty?” Avery rudely grunted. “Pretty as one of those damnable India cobras. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.” He shoved back his chair and stood up. “No one saw you? You got in and out without a problem?”

“I watched ’er for more’n three days. Today she let the servants go home early. It were a good time to see it done.”

“Good thinking, Baccy.”

He shuffled uneasily, shifting from one foot to the other.

“What’s the matter?” Avery fiddled with the papers stacked on his desk, impatient now that he knew the task was completed.

“There were a woman. She come into the room just as I was leavin’.”

“Did she see you?” Avery leaned over the desk.

“She seen me. Not me face, but she seen enough.”

“God’s teeth! We’ll have to find out who it was, get rid of her before she has time to cause trouble.”

“I know who it was.”

“You do?”

He nodded his shaggy black head. “It were the girl what you was supposed to marry.”

“Velvet? You aren’t talking about Velvet Moran?”

“That were her.”

“Good God, what would Velvet be doing with a woman like Celia?” Leaning even farther over the desk, sunlight glinted through the window onto his powdered blond hair. “You’re certain it was she? You couldn’t have been mistaken?”

“It were her.”

Avery realized he was sweating. He didn’t like the feel of it trickling down his sides beneath his linen shirt. “You’ve got to silence her, Baccy. Your life could be in danger.” As well as his own. Velvet had been nosing about before, digging for information about his father’s murder. If she had formed a friendship with Celia, there could only be one reason.

“Kill her,” he commanded. “Get rid of her before she makes trouble.”

Baccy shuffled his big feet. “I don’t like killin’ women. Specially pretty ones.”

“Listen to me, you big oaf! You get rid of that girl before she opens her mouth and you are carted off to Tyburn Hill!”

Baccy looked sullen, his black brows pulling down until they met in the middle of his forehead.

“Go on,” Avery urged. “Get it done and the sooner the better.”

Baccy scowled then slowly nodded, his features dark with brooding resignation. Hanging was his secret fear. He would do what Avery said. Moving quickly for a man of his size, he lumbered to the door, then closed it carefully behind him. Avery stared at the place he had been, but his unease didn’t lift as it usually did. What was Velvet after? Why was she seeking information about an eight-year-old murder?

If Baccy killed her, he would never find out.

Then again, once she was dead, it wouldn’t really matter. Avery smiled with satisfaction and sank back down in his chair.

Picking up the final sheaf of papers needing the duke of Carlyle’s signature, he dipped the quill into the ink bottle and scrolled his name across the bottom. Ink splashed carelessly on the pristine pages, but he didn’t care. His carriage was waiting out in front, his trunks already packed and loaded. He was leaving London as soon as he was finished with this last bit of business, departing for his most recently acquired estate in East Sussex, the former home of Sir Wallace Stanton.

He had a funeral to attend.

Avery flashed a second satisfied smile, at his marriage to Mary Stanton and the death of her father, the most profitable endeavor he had undertaken in years.

*   *   *

Christian Sutherland stood at the bottom of the staircase leading up from the entry at Windmere. A drizzle had begun to fall outside the windows, the air chill and oppressive, the sky thick with dark spiraling clouds.

He glanced up at the sound of Mary’s footfalls, slight, soft, padding steps approaching with a hint of trepidation.

“Mary…” His breath caught as it had begun to of late whenever she appeared, a slender, golden wraith, a childlike figure of loveliness he found more alluring than the most sought after courtesan.

His attraction to her had strengthened in the days since their arrival at the Haversham country home, hours spent in the gardens, or sharing a simple meal together before the hearth. He had found her sweetly honest and unfailingly sincere. Her shyness was endearing, and she was generous to a fault. More than that, she seemed to fit him, her softness in contrast to his strength, her gentle demeanor a buffer to his bold determination.

“I’m ready, Christian.”

He took her hand, helped her descend the last of the stairs. “Are you certain, Mary? Is there nothing I can say to dissuade you?”

“He was my father, Christian. I loved him. I must say my final farewells. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

Anger filtered through him, fury at Avery Sinclair. “If the duke is there, if he orders your return with him to London, there is no way I’ll be able to protect you.”

Her small frame trembled. Christian could feel the fear spinning through her. “I must go,” she whispered. “Please don’t be angry.”

He was far beyond angry. He was livid with rage and frustration. Mary Stanton should have been his, not Carlyle’s. She would have been treated with care and respect. Instead God only knew what suffering she might endure at the hands of the duke.

“If it hadn’t been for you…” Her voice rose just above a whisper. “… If it weren’t for these days we have shared—the courage you have lent me—I do not know what I might have done. But you are wise and you are strong, and some of that strength and wisdom now resides in me.”

Her pale eyes grew luminous with tears. They shimmered on a fringe of golden lashes then spilled onto her cheeks. “I shall never forget you, Christian. Through all of the years of my life I will remember these special days that I have shared with you.”

Something sharp knifed through him. “Mary…” He took her into his arms and sheltered her there, his chest aching with bitter regret and no small amount of fear for her. “My love, I am begging you. Please … say you will stay here where you are safe. In time, we will find a solution, some way out of this muddle Carlyle’s treachery has immersed us all in. There is always a means if one is—”

“Do you love me, Christian?”

He cupped her face between his hands. “I care for you, Mary. You know how deeply I care.”

He felt the faintest shake of her head. “It doesn’t really matter. I am a ruined woman, no longer pure, not the sort of female a man like you would marry.”

Christian gripped her arms. “That is not true. There is nothing Carlyle could do to make you anything less than you are—sweet and kind and innocent. Do not talk that way again.”

Mary looked at him, sadness brimming in her eyes. “You are the strongest, bravest man I have ever known and I love you with all my heart. If you loved me in that same way, there is nothing I would not do so that we might be together.”

“Mary, please. I am not a man who loves easily. My feelings for you are deep and irrevocable, but love? I do not know, and I will not lie to keep you.”

Her throat constricted. More tears slid down her cheeks. “That is why I love you, Christian. And why I always will.”

A knot formed in his chest. “Don’t go, Mary, please.”

“I must, my lord. Please don’t make this harder than it is already.”

He dragged in a harsh breath of air. If he loved her, perhaps she would stay, try to find a way for them to be together.

If he loved her.

But did he? He had never loved a woman. He wasn’t sure he knew how. Perhaps he should have lied. Christian tossed the notion away. Whatever happened, it wouldn’t be fair to Mary.

Setting his jaw against the pressure building inside him, he directed her into the carriage, settled her in the seat then sat down across from her, stretching his long legs out for the journey to her East Sussex home.

He wanted her there before the duke’s arrival, wanted it to appear that she had been in residence all along. Christian would accompany her for most of the way, then send her on alone.

The thought made the tightness in his chest expand until his ribs seemed to press into his lungs. Somehow he would help her, he vowed. Somehow he would find a way.

*   *   *

It was dark outside, only a sliver of moon lit the empty London streets outside the Haversham town house. An occasional carriage, returning its occupants home, and the lonely hooting of the owl who had built its nest in the stable were the sounds that filled the chill night air.

It’s over. After all these years, it has finally come to an end. He was weary, so unbelievably tired. Defeat hung like a shroud around his shoulders. In the silence of his bedchamber, Jason felt the walls of failure closing in, an implacable, invisible prison.

Only a single candle flickered in the room, the flame burning low, guttering in the pool of wax that had been building as the hours crept past. Sitting in a chair in the corner, his long legs sprawled in front of him, his hair unbound and hanging around his shoulders, he lifted the brandy decanter to his lips, taking a long pull of the soothing liquid straight from the bottle.

Tonight he needed the solace, needed to drive the demons of hatred away.

Not since the beginning, eight years ago, had they stalked him as they did this eve. Back then, when he had been thrown into prison, when he had been forced to endure the suffering, the pain and humiliation, he had done so for a single burning purpose—to see his brother pay.

Vows of vengeance had seen him through the torturous weeks aboard the inmate-crowded brig, days he was so seasick he slept in his own vomit, too weak to lift his head from the hammock he slept in, forced to drag in fetid air from the seven-inch space between him and the next odorous male body.

Hatred of his brother had given him the strength to survive blistering days in the fierce Georgia sun with little to eat and barely enough water to keep him alive, long days of backbreaking labor, fighting the bugs, the sweat, and the death that lurked in the malignant swamplands.

When he thought he couldn’t go on, when he thought he would rather be dead than face another sunrise, thoughts of Avery living in Carlyle Hall, dining on pheasant and champagne while he ate weevily rice and watery soup made for fifty men from a single ox bone kept him going. Thoughts of Avery squandering the Carlyle fortune, of him destroying their father’s good name, of him sleeping with the woman Jason had once believed he loved.

Determination was his ally, a need for revenge so strong just thinking about it could make him sick to his stomach.

Always he had believed he would win. Always. Tonight, in the shadows of his quiet room, he sat in the darkness facing the terrible certainty that Avery was going to be the victor. There wasn’t enough proof to clear him. With Celia gone, he would have to leave England without the justice, the vengeance he so desperately wanted. If he didn’t, sooner or later he would hang.

Then Avery would have won even that final, empty victory.

Jason took a long, steady pull on the bottle, scoffing at himself in the process. Who was he kidding? His brother had won years ago with his cruel betrayal. He had lost a part of himself during those terrible years in Georgia, in the days after his escape into the vicious swamplands, moving just ahead of the baying hounds. Days he was more animal than man.

Survival was all he lived for then, a will so strong it overrode all he ever was, any traces of decency still left inside him. It was during those final bleak days that he gave up any chance for the kind of life he’d led before, to be the man he was before.

Jason flicked a glance at the door, his thoughts turning to the woman in the room next to his, the petite dark-haired beauty, Velvet Moran. Velvet Sinclair, he corrected. His wife—for all intents and purposes save one. A true and bona fide, God-sanctioned marriage.

That he could not have—had sworn with an oath of blood he would never allow himself to have.

He took a drink of his brandy. Once he had wanted such a union, dreamed of children and home and sharing his life with a woman who belonged to him, as his father and mother had done. Those dreams died on the blood-soaked deck of a captured British barkentine, destroyed forever by a conscienceless act of violence and death that placed him among the vilest men who walked the earth.

Even as the thought occurred, images appeared, the echo of a cannon blast, the smell of gunpowder hanging in the air, the shrieks of the women dragged out onto the burning deck.

Jason shook his head, fighting the memories, the terrible images, his fingers tightening around the neck of the brandy decanter, the cut glass edges beginning to saw into his flesh.

With a force of will, he shoved the gruesome thoughts away, set the bottle on the floor, stood up, and began to peel off his clothes. Shedding his wrinkled tailcoat, then his waistcoat, he shrugged out of his white lawn shirt. He still wasn’t drunk enough to sleep, but perhaps he would be able to rest a little. Even an hour would help. Whichever path his fate now took, he needed his wits about him if he intended to survive the days ahead.

Weariness and the brandy made his movements sluggish and awkward. He cursed when he brushed the edge of the table, tipping it sideways, and an untouched brandy snifter, placed there for his use, went crashing to the floor.

He cursed his bad luck, which seemed to mirror the events of the day, and barely had the will to bend down and pick up the pieces.

*   *   *

Velvet heard the splintering of glass in the room next to hers. Jason was still awake. But she had suspected as much. He was mired in depression at Celia’s murder, certain his last hope for proving his innocence had died along with her.

Velvet had tried to cheer him at supper, had described in detail her meeting with the constable and relayed the news that the man seemed satisfied with her tale of the murder. The killer was a footpad, the constable was certain, intent on stealing the countess’s jewels. They were safe for the moment, she had told Jason, but he had only nodded, excused himself, and retired upstairs to his room.

A few minutes later, a servant was summoned and a bottle of brandy sent up to his bedchamber. There had been no word from him since.

Listening now, the sound of Jason’s movements carried through the wall between their rooms. Knowing she shouldn’t, her heart throbbing softly in warning, Velvet swung her legs to the side of the bed, drew on her quilted wrapper, and walked to the door leading into his bedchamber. It wasn’t locked. With Celia’s murder so near at hand, Jason was worried about her safety. He wanted to be able to get in quickly if trouble arose.

Quietly lifting the latch, she opened the door and stepped in.

Long dark shadows filled the chamber, and the dim, yellow flicker of a candle burned low. Jason knelt beside a small piecrust table, facing away from her as he worked to pick up the broken shards of a brandy snifter, his sun-darkened torso burnished in the faint light of the candle. He was naked to the waist, she saw, wearing only his breeches and boots.

He straightened from his task at the sound of her approach and started to turn, but not before she saw the crisscross of jagged white scars that formed a vicious patchwork across his back.

A gasp escaped before she could stop it. Jason swore an oath, set the bits of broken glass down on the table, and started in her direction. “What do you want, Velvet. Did you ever think of knocking?”

Her bottom lip trembled. She felt sick to her stomach. “Y-your back. Dear God, Jason—what in heaven’s name has happened to you? What have they done?”

He stiffened, stopped a few feet away and came no closer. His face looked hard, his features closed up and remote. “I was flogged. It happens to criminals, Velvet. I am not a particularly humble man. Taking orders was difficult for me, a man raised as heir to a duke. It took a while for them to break me, longer than most.”

Her eyes filled with tears. How could she not have noticed? How could she not have guessed? Then again, they had only made love a few times and she had been too caught up in the things he was doing. Or perhaps he had simply been careful that she did not see.

Velvet closed the door with a soft thud behind her and made her way toward him across the room. Inside her chest, her heart thumped painfully, hurting for him, each breath tight with knots of pity.

“Turn around,” she whispered and saw him bristle even more.

“It isn’t pretty, Velvet. I hoped you would never have to see.”

“Please, Jason.” Her throat felt so thick, the ache there so harsh she could barely speak. “I want to see how badly they have hurt you.”

His muscles quivered, strained with the tension that poured through his powerful body. She thought he might refuse, then slowly he moved, his shoulders straight as he turned so the candle shown on the deep grooves and ridges. They were lighter than his darkly tanned flesh, a maze of thin lines that crossed the heavy muscles, some deeper than others where the lash had cut more than once. Broad valleys of flesh had been ripped out in places then partially grown back only to be torn out again.

Her breath constricted, seared down her throat. Oh, dear God, the pain he had suffered. Tears stung her eyes, spilled in scalding droplets down her cheeks. She couldn’t begin to imagine the torture, the relentless agony he must have endured. Her hand trembled as she lifted it toward his scarred and battered flesh. She rested it gently atop one of the grooves, bent and pressed her mouth against the taut brown skin.

She heard his hissed intake of breath, felt the muscles tighten. Twice more her mouth brushed his flesh as if she might take away the pain, banish the horrible anguish he had suffered.

He turned then, his eyes penetrating, dark with terrible memories, with anger that now seemed directed at her.

“I’m a criminal, Velvet. I tried to explain that, tried to make you see. I didn’t kill my father, but I’ve committed other crimes, dozens of them, worse crimes even than murder.”

“No…” It was a barely whispered word. Velvet shook her head. “It wasn’t the same. You were innocent. You were fighting to save yourself. You didn’t deserve what they did.”

He gripped her shoulders, his fingers biting in, tight and unrelenting. “Why can’t you see? Why is it so hard for you to understand?” He looked down at his scared left hand, made a fist that showed the back and held it close to the candle flame. “I got this while I was in Georgia. I stole money, Velvet—from a small parish church. I assaulted the vicar to get it, an old man who happened to get in my way. I was trying to escape the rice plantation that was my prison. I needed money to do it—I didn’t care where I got it. When they caught me, they heated up a long length of iron and they branded me.”

Velvet stood frozen. A scalding fire seemed to be building in her stomach. Dear sweet God!

He rubbed the melted web of skin on the back of his hand. “I was bigger by then and stronger than two smaller men. I was worth more alive, as convict labor, than I was dead—or they simply would have hanged me.”

Her heart seemed to crumble. Pity for him choked her, nearly made her gag.

“When I finally escaped three years later, I held my hand over the flame of a candle to burn away the big T the men had put there. A big ugly T, Velvet. Everyone in Georgia knew the letter stood for Thief.”

A sob escaped. “I can’t bear it. I simply cannot.” Velvet took the final step between them, slid her arms around his neck, and pressed her cheek against his shoulder, trying to absorb some of his pain.

Bitter sobs shook her. She felt his hand, tentative at first, then stroking gently down her back. “It’s all right, Duchess. Those days are past. The scars don’t hurt anymore.”

Velvet only cried harder. Sweet God, how had he been able to bear it? How had he survived?

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Please don’t cry. I’m not worth your tears, Velvet. A man like me isn’t worth it.”

He had said something like that before. She pulled back to look at him, saw him through a film of tears. “These aren’t the only scars you carry, are they, Jason? The ones locked up inside, those are far worse. Tell me what you’ve done that is so terrible it has nearly destroyed you. Whatever it was, you had reason for it. You were fighting for your life, fighting to right the wrong that had been done to you. Tell me, Jason, let me share your awful burden and in time the pain will fade.”

He only shook his head. Already the darkness had begun to appear in his eyes, to sweep across his features. “Don’t ask that of me, Velvet. If you care for me at all, you won’t ask me about it again.” The turbulence in his expression betrayed an agony that ran soul deep. It was etched so sharply Velvet’s heart twisted painfully inside her.

She wanted to hold him, comfort him. She wanted to take away the hurting, erase the terrible memories. “It’s all right, Jason. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” She reached up to touch him, brushed an errant lock of his wavy dark hair back from his cheek.

Turning away, she began to unbutton her wrapper. It took longer than it should have with her fingers trembling so badly. Jason said nothing as she eased it off her shoulders and let it fall, nothing as she crossed to his big four-poster bed and drew back the covers.

He stood unmoving in the shadows, but she felt his eyes on her, a searing, glittering blue, dark with heat and his turbulent emotions. Ignoring the pulse beating hard inside her chest, the warmth beginning to run through her veins, she clasped the hem of her night rail and dragged it off over her head.

His gaze, a deep blazing blue, watched her toss it away and climb up in his big four-poster bed.

“Please…” Her fingers worked the single plait of her hair, unbraiding it then loosening the strands. She spread it around her shoulders. “I need you, Jason, just as I know you need me. Make love to me this night. Help us both to forget, if only for a while.”

Long moments passed. Jason said nothing. His heart was beating, slamming like a hammer in his chest. He stood rigid, almost afraid to move, staring at the girl who was no longer a girl because of him, at the woman he had married who wasn’t really his wife.

He closed his eyes against the tempting sight she made lying there in his big bed, her luscious body naked atop the milk white sheets. Thick dark red hair framed her finely etched features and full pouty lips. Pale ripe breasts thrust upward, crested by soft pink nipples. In the light of the candle, a forbidden triangle of silky auburn hair nestled between her legs, challenging him to caress it.

“Come to bed, Jason.” Golden brown eyes begged him not to refuse her again.

Already hard, his body throbbed with heat. Blood rushed to the stiff ridge of flesh pressing uncomfortably against the front of his tight-fitting breeches. He had tried to block his desire for her every day since they had left the inn. There were times he had actually succeeded. This night was not among them.

She ran a small hand in invitation over the vacant place beside her. “Neither of us can be sure what the future will bring. I need you to hold me, touch me, make me feel safe. Will you do that for me, Jason?”

His breathing quickened, came in shorter, faster cadence. His hunger grew with every heartbeat, fired by the glow of her skin, the uptilt of her breasts. He watched, her nipples hardened into tight little peaks against the chill that invaded the room, or perhaps it was the knowledge that he wanted her so badly.

His arousal strengthened, ached with every breath. He wanted to pull that tight little bud between his teeth, to suckle and tease until she writhed and begged him to take her. He wanted to rape that sweet mouth, to invade it with his tongue. He wanted to spread those shapely legs, to fill her with his hardness, to thrust into her until the lust he constantly fought was finally sated.

“Jason…?”

Christ’s blood, he was only a man. And he needed her so damned badly. With shaking hands, he reached toward the buttons at the front of his breeches, popped the first one loose and then the next, sat down and tugged off his boots.

Perhaps he would pay for his lust. Odds were he was destined to burn in hell—what difference would one more sin make in a life that was shadowed by more than he could count?

He whispered her name as he sat down naked on the bed beside her. “God, Duchess, I want you so damned much.”

A soft smile touched her lips. Her eyes moved from his face, spanned the width of his shoulders, moved across his hair-roughened chest. Her hand skimmed over the flat slab of muscle across his stomach, paused as her gaze traveled down to the jutting ridge of his sex.

“You are so beautiful. So strong, Jason, so incredibly male. Even the scars you carry cannot dim your beauty.”

He found himself smiling at her sincerity. “I am supposed to say something like that.”

She looked up at him from beneath those thick black lashes. “Do you think I am beautiful?”

“I think you are incredible.” He kissed her then, taking her mouth gently at first, though what he wanted was to conquer, to claim, to possess the very essence of her. He wanted to fuse his body with hers, to make her so much a part of him that she would never forget him.

She kissed him back far less gently, demanding he show her his strength, or perhaps merely sensing his need as she so often seemed able to do. He groaned at the feel of her small tongue sliding into his mouth, and his control slipped badly.

His hands roamed over her body, felt the smoothness of her skin, the sweet hills and valleys that marked her a woman. He kissed his way down to her breasts, took one into his mouth, tasted and caressed until she writhed beneath him. His hand found her softness. She was wet and hot. He stroked her deeply, felt her body beginning to tremble, felt her small hands gripping his shoulders.

“Jason,” she whispered as he rose above her, parted her legs with his knee. “I need … I need…”

“It’s all right, love, I’ve got what you need.” He entered her in a single stroke, filling her completely, locking them both together. Their mating was swift and fierce, driven by long-denied passion, or perhaps desperation. Afterward they lay entwined.

He took her again just moments later, more slowly this time, almost gently, savoring the closeness, knowing it was wrong and yet the pleasure was so fierce, the joy so overwhelming he did not care.

He slept after that, the deepest, most trouble-free sleep he could remember. Tomorrow he would face the problems that remained, the worries about Velvet’s safety and his own, make whatever painful decisions he must make.

Tonight there was only this one small woman and the kind of peace he hadn’t known in years. The last thing he remembered was the pleasure he felt at having her curled in his arms.