Unmasking the Thief, page 19
“Someone’s coming,” she whispered.
“I know.” By the light of her shaky lantern, he turned the large key, wrenched the door open. A thundering on the stairs followed them as they fled out of the building.
Francisco didn’t hesitate. He ran to the left, hauling her with him, past the wrecked window to her prison, where her captors were trying to climb out, and down another dark alley.
“A late-night game of tag,” he murmured, diving down another lane. “Who’d have thought it?”
In spite of everything, a choke of half-hysterical laughter fell from her lips, and he spared the time to grin at her as he hauled her through a backcourt and over a wall into another street. She could hear the distant pounding of feet, but it came to her at last that Francisco knew this territory as well as they did, and that he was leading them on a wild goose chase which they would have to give up or risk bringing the law down on themselves.
Eventually, Francisco led her into a wider street, skirting the square by the theatre and onto another. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked an unobtrusive door on their right. Pulling her inside, he closed and relocked the door, after which, by the light of the flickering lantern she still held, he led her up a clean, ornate staircase until, two floors up, he unlocked another door and drew her inside.
“Where are we?” she whispered.
“My rooms.” He closed the door, turned, and took her in his arms. “You’re safe, Matty. You’re safe.”
Chapter Nineteen
She thought she would burst into tears. She didn’t; although she gripped Francisco’s shoulders so tightly, it must have hurt. Her whole body shook and, yet the comfort of his arms, of his body, seeped into her, warm and healing.
For some time, neither of them spoke. He stroked her hair, might even have kissed it, while her recent, sudden danger faded into the knowledge of safety. Of rescue by the man she had loved without reason. Now she had a reason, and somehow, that held in check the questions starting to clamor in her brain. It was too sweet just to wallow in him, in his strength and goodness and courage and skill and…
Perhaps she was crying after all, for wetness trickled down the side of her face. Only when another drop landed on her temple did she realize the tears were not hers.
She lifted her head, reaching up to cup his damp cheeks. “Francisco,” she whispered, stunned. “Oh, Francisco, no one hurt me. They only frightened me so that I was never so glad to see anyone in my life. I could not believe it was you.”
His arms tightened. “I thought I would be too late, that I’d never find you, never be able to save you.” His voice was husky, uneven as she had never heard it. This, after hard-eyed intrigue, relentless investigation of the highest in the land, and daring rescue—to say nothing of delicious, knowing kisses—this, at last, was Francisco de Salgado in a moment of weakness, utterly vulnerable. And her whole being ached for him.
Reaching up, she kissed the salt tears on his cheek and slid her hand down to take his arm. “Can we make tea?”
“Coffee,” he said, dashing his free arm across his eyes. “Sit through there. I’ll bring it to you.”
She hesitated, but only for an instant. He needed the moment, and perhaps she did, too. Although cold without his closeness, she walked into the room he had indicated. A glow from the fireplace attracted her to a dish full of spills, with which she set about lighting the nearest lamp and the many candles scattered about the room.
Apparently, he liked to be well lit. Perhaps he worked into the night.
His sitting room was homely rather than fashionable. A comfortable sofa stood before the fireplace and two well-used armchairs on either side. A low table sat between them. In the corner was a stout bureau and hard chair. The windows were hung with quality velvet curtains against the cold, and several paintings hung on the walls—no portraits but landscapes and an interior of what looked like a jolly inn.
Matty drew the guard back from the fire, poked it into life, and added a few more coals. Then she knelt beside it and waited for Francisco.
He was not long. He brought a tray with a coffee pot, cups and saucers, and sugar and cream.
Still kneeling on the floor, she poured two cups of strong, black coffee and watched him sit on one armchair and add sugar to his. She reached for the cream jug. “I need to go home. Mrs. Dove will have raised a massive hue and cry.”
“I nipped that in the bud. She thinks you’re with your mother.”
Matty wasn’t even surprised. “How did you know I’d been abducted?”
“I was close to the Doves’ carriage when I saw you conducted to another. It bolted too fast to have been a friend’s, and I saw at once who was responsible.”
It was one of the things that had baffled her from the beginning. “Who?”
“Emma Carntree.” He raised his cup and drank. “She is angry and spiteful.”
“Because you rejected her?”
A smile flitted across his face and vanished. “Thank you for knowing I did. Yes, that, and, I think, she is wroth with Thorne for dancing too much attendance on your sister while ignoring her. Finally, she’s paying the price for being the dashing mistress, and she doesn’t like it. I’m sorry. What happened to you was my fault.”
“No,” she said simply. Then, laying down her cup after a long, welcome sip. “Is that what upset you so much?”
His gaze fell to his coffee. He was leaning forward in his chair, not relaxed at all. “Partly.” She thought he would leave it there, but without further warning, he began to talk. “I have not loved anyone for a long time. Not since the French came to our home and shot my parents and my sister in front of me. I only escaped because a rifle misfired, and I could run. I did not save them, but I survived. I always survived. And then you… I was so afraid I would not save you either.”
Horror and pity welled inside her, for his family and for what he had suffered. And yet leavening the emotion was a growing wonder because surely his words meant he loved her?
She shifted, leaning her arms on his knees until he looked at her, and the haunted blackness in his eyes warmed to something softer and more compelling.
“How old were you?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“Fifteen.”
“And you are still making up for something no one could have stopped.”
“Revenge is the word you are looking for. I have been taking it ever since.”
“But the war is over.”
“And it’s no longer quite so important to endanger myself for the country that took me in. Hence my intention to retire.” He stared into her eyes, frowning. “Matty, don’t look at me like that. I’m no hero, no knight in shining armor. Because I managed to help you tonight does not wipe out the terrible things I have done.”
“Do you want to tell me about them?”
A shudder shook him. “God, no.”
“Things that someone had to do,” she guessed. “Things, perhaps, only you could do. Like tonight.” She dropped a kiss on his knee, and his hand cupped her head with something like wonder.
“You must remember it’s largely my fault Emma went after you so maliciously in the first place.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she assured him. She folded her arms around one of his legs so that she could lay her cheek on his thigh. It jerked minutely beneath her and was still. “How did you find me?”
“I scared he wits out of Emma until she told me you’d be abandoned in Covent Garden. It could have been worse. It could have been Seven Dials only a little further on. I grabbed a hackney—the driver and horse were both tired and on their way home, but by a mixture of bribery and bullying, I made him hasten to Covent Garden, where I hung out of the carriage, demanding news of you from any passerby. A couple of young…ladies going home from the piazza admitted to seeing you alone, flustered, and in a huge hurry. Another girl told me she’d seen three men wrestling you into a building in this street.”
The girl with the shawl? “How did you find the right one?”
“It was the only one with a light, and when I stuck my ear against the window, I could hear your voice. I could even see a tiny bit of the room through a chink in the curtains. The window and front door were both locked, but since the wood was rotting on the window frame, I decided to give them a fright and crash through. I wasn’t sure it would be quite so easy, but even so, I dazed myself as much as them.”
“No you didn’t. You were wonderful, amazing. You were my knight in shining armor. You are.” She propped her chin on his thigh and looked up into his face.
His breath caught. His eyes looked almost desperate. “You owe me nothing,” he said urgently.
“Of course not. There are no debts where love is concerned.”
Confusion joined his desperation and something that was not quite hope but a fear of hope. He seemed to have stopped breathing altogether.
“I love you,” she said honestly. “I loved you before you saved me.”
His eyes closed as though in torment. “Don’t. Don’t, Matty. You don’t know me.”
“It seems I know enough.” She rose up on her knees, reaching up to his neck, and his eyes flew open once more.
The world stood still. Only her heart seemed to move in rapid, hopeful beats. And then he dropped his head until his mouth covered hers. Only then, with the sweetness of his kiss and her own rising happiness, did the tears squeeze from her eyes and trickle back into her hair, where his roving fingers felt them.
With a sound like pain, he gathered her into his lap, holding her against his chest. “Don’t cry, darling, please don’t cry.”
“Only for happiness,” she said shakily, laughing at the same time. “Oh, Francisco, please, will you kiss me?”
He did, with delightful thoroughness.
*
Francisco was in acute danger of casting all sense to the winds. He had been flung so rapidly from fear to determination, back to fear, and then into the blinding happiness of being loved by her, that the only thing to do seemed to be to lay her down by the fire and make wild, exquisite love to her.
In fact, he was half out of his chair before the screaming of the more sensitive part of his brain kicked him back into it again.
She had been abducted, terrified, and almost sold to a brothel. The last thing she needed was a man taking advantage of her. He allowed himself the bliss of kissing and stroking her because she seemed to like it so much, but somehow, for her, he managed to control the insistence of his arousal, to calm the flare of passion until she simply lay against him, looking so contented he thought his heart would break.
In a little, he reached over her and found their cooling coffee, which they drank together in the same chair. He poured them another, and with her still in his lap, she asked about his paintings, and they talked, incongruously, about art and the different countries portrayed, and then about anything and everything.
Outside, the watchman cried six o’clock. Only three hours had passed since her abduction.
“You need to go home and sleep,” Francisco said. “I’ll go and find you a hackney.”
“I don’t want to sleep. This feels like home. I thought you lived at Albany.”
“I have rooms there, too. For the ton, largely. I have a servant there.”
“But not here?”
“No.” Desire thrummed through him still, like a pleasant backdrop to the pleasure of her company. “You can sleep here for a little if you like. I can’t imagine anyone will look for you very early after the ball last night, but you will have to go home and change soon.”
She sat up in his lap, her movement stirring his arousal. “How long do we have?”
“A couple of hours. Maybe three.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips. “Do you want to sleep? You were tired, even at the ball.”
“I was,” he admitted. If he was tired now, his body didn’t seem to know it.
“Will you sleep beside me?”
He took her hand and placed it over his galloping heart. “If I lie beside you, I will not sleep.”
She had to be feeling the ridge of his erection beneath her hip, but it did not seem to frighten her. She raised their hands from his chest and pressed his palm over her heart instead. “I am selfish. I don’t want you to sleep.”
Her heart raced beneath his fingers. He lifted his gaze slowly from her breast to her lips and finally to her eyes. “Do you know what you’re offering me?”
She nodded once.
She was wonderful. He hadn’t even offered her marriage, though he fully intended to. Somehow, he thought, she knew that. Somehow, she knew him. And instead of being ashamed and appalled, he was awed.
He rose with her in his arms. “A taste,” he whispered. “A taste of love.”
Her lips clung to the side of his neck as he walked slowly with his precious armful to the bedchamber.
As he laid her on his bed, a rare surge of doubt washed over him. He had only ever made love to experienced women who understood the game and did not cling. But this was no game. This tied him into emotional knots because she loved him, because he would die rather than hurt her.
She gazed up at him from the pillows, her beautiful eyes glowing with desire and longing. And then his doubt seemed to infect her, too, for the glow dimmed.
“You don’t love me,” she whispered.
“Oh, my dear.” He sank onto the bed, caressing her soft cheek with the backs of his fingers. They were not quite steady. “If I didn’t love you, there would be no problem.”
She smiled, and the glow was back, along with more than a hint of wonder and an understanding he had never expected. She pushed herself up from the pillows, laid her arms around his neck, and kissed his mouth as though she would never stop.
While they kissed, her busy hands untied his cravat and thrust his coat back off his shoulders. It came to him with a flood of amusement that she was seducing him, and by God, he liked it. So, he smiled against her lips and set out to show her just how much.
Unfastening her elegant ball gown and unlacing her stays, he dragged his mouth free of hers to kiss her throat and shoulders and nudge the gown further down her breasts until they were tantalizingly, almost completely exposed. Then he returned to her trembling mouth and dealt with the ties of her chemise. From there, it was a simple matter to haul her across his lap and whisk the garments from her body.
Dear God, but she was lovely, naked and rosy with desire for him. He devoured her with his eyes and his hands and lips, delighting in her bold caresses beneath his shirt, over his back and shoulders. Only when her teeth nipped his shoulder in frustration did he lay her back on the pillows, between the sheets, and tear off the rest of his own clothes. They landed on the floor, on top of her abused ballgown, and then he was back on the bed, skin to skin with her, his mouth fastened to hers.
She welcomed him eagerly, with stroking hands and blissful sighs that intensified into gasps and moans and something very like a sob. He recognized her need with fierce triumph, but he would not rush these moments. He worshipped her entire body with his mouth, murmuring endearments and delights until she was squirming beneath him for more.
Only then did he slide into her body, speaking in a roughened, uneven voice. “Will you marry me, Matty Mather?”
The words served a double purpose, distracting her from possible physical discomfort, and, he was relieved to see, filling her with joy.
“Yes. Oh, yes!” She clung to him, rocking instinctively with him. And somehow hanging on to the shreds of care and consideration, he taught her the pleasure of love, and received it.
*
There was a sweet, delicious decadence in lying naked in her lover’s arms as the sun came up behind the curtains. The wonder of physical bliss overlaid the joy of loving him and being loved. This beautiful, amazing man with the clever body would be her husband. Then they could sprawl in bed all day if they wished. She wondered, vaguely, how often they might do this and smiled into his chest.
He was lazily stroking the tangled hair against her shoulder. “Would you like to live in Kent? At least to begin with. I rent a pleasant little property there, though I doubt Dunne will sell it to me. It marches with his stepson’s property.”
“We could live there for now and decide in the future.”
“A lady after my own heart.”
A thought seemed to strike her, for she lifted her head from his chest to look at him. “Are you rich, Francisco?”
He smiled. “A fine time to ask that. This is why I love you. I am comfortable.”
“Will you show me your lands in Spain, too?”
For a moment, she thought he would throw up all those barriers again. He didn’t, though he looked faintly surprised about it. “Yes. We can include it in our wedding journey if you like.” He kissed her nose. “With you, I think it might even lay a few ghosts. When will you marry me?”
“Whenever you like,” she said honestly. Then, “Oh dear, Mrs. Dove!”
“Well, you’ve already sort of given notice to keep Thorne off your back. So, three weeks for the banns to be read will see you free.”
“And I should do something about finding a replacement who will be good for the girls…”
The smile was dying on his lips.
“Did I say something wrong?” she asked quickly, and to her relief, he hugged her closer.
“No. No, but I too have a task to finish before we can marry.”
“Thorne.”
“Thorne. But I don’t want to think of him now. There will be time enough later. This is our stolen time, Matty Mather, yours and mine.”
She parted her lips, and he rolled her beneath him for a long, full-body caress.
But outside was complete daylight, the world was bustling, and it was time to go home. She had to care about her reputation for Marion’s sake, at least.
“I should go,” she said reluctantly.
He eased away from her and swung his long, muscular legs over the side of the bed. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll go out and fetch us some breakfast. And a hackney.”
