Sin and the Soldier, page 9
“Is that not a very sudden decision?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I will never go back to the army. I know that. I just needed something to take its place as my… raison d’être, if you like.”
“Horses and a small livery stable?” she said dubiously.
He smiled at her, and she felt her breath vanish. “Among other things. I have stopped—marking time.”
She frowned, catching some deeper meaning from his words. He was beginning to live again.
Their tea and ices arrived at their table, and their talk fell to less personal matters. And to the more serious business of appreciating the flavored ices. Although Richard smiled as he ate his, his gaze was constantly on her lips, flooding her with delicious memory as well as the pleasure of the present.
As a group of manufactory girls giggled their way to the large table next to them, she and Richard stood and walked across the gardens to the back gate that led eventually to her cottage. Despite her awareness of him at her side, they did not talk much. Worry about the marriage lines had faded as music soared insistently in her mind, the same melody that had been hovering for days. Only now it was building, and she had to play it, write it now before she even looked at the symphony again.
And yet she didn’t want Richard to go.
“I need to play,” she said in a rush as he opened the door for her.
“May I stay and make plans of my own? Or will my presence annoy you?”
“Of course, you will not annoy me,” she said, perhaps too fervently, but she could not hide her pleasure in his request.
She dropped her bundle in the bedchamber from habit, all but tore off her hat, and threw herself down at the pianoforte. She played the insistent tune as far as it would go in her head and dementedly wrote it all down, before turning to the harp to give it breadth and harmony and the counter melody that gave it such power in her mind. She liked it. It seemed to come from deep within her and it moved her.
At various times, she was aware of Richard, sitting in the armchair, one ankle crossed over the other knee to hold a notebook steady while he scribbled in it, or tapped his pencil thoughtfully against his teeth. Once, he crossed behind her and went outside and she could hear the low rumble of his voice as he spoke to his old soldiers. And even through her determination to capture every note and nuance from her head to the paper, she found peculiar contentment. As though they were an old married couple, working away at their own tasks in the pleasant knowledge of the other’s familiar presence.
And yet this was not a companionship she could ever know. Even if by some miracle Richard loved her as she loved him, he was a marquess’s son. Even before her fall to the status of paid itinerant musician, traveling unchaperoned in questionable company, she would have been a poor match for him. Now…
A cup of tea appeared in front of her, and she looked up, bemused, into the scarred face of the man she loved. She smiled, and he dropped a kiss on her lips. Involuntarily, her hand came up to touch his cheek.
“Don’t let me disturb you,” he said.
She rubbed her forearm across her forehead in a gesture of tiredness. “I… I think I’m finished for the day.”
“What is that you were playing? Part of your symphony?”
“No, it doesn’t seem to fit there. It is too much to be a song. Maybe it will be a concerto, or… It seems to create itself, so I’ll just wait and see.” She sipped her tea and watched him bring his over from the hearth. He leaned his hip against the table and drank. He didn’t like tea, she recalled, and yet he shared the ritual with her.
“Have you made your plans?” she asked.
“As far as I can for now. I will show you them, soon.”
She took another mouthful of tea. “What is wrong with now?”
“I have other plans for now, if you are prepared to indulge me.”
Her cup rattled in its saucer as she laid it down too clumsily, for there was a glint of wicked mischief in his eyes.
“Indulge you?” she repeated breathlessly.
“I would like to indulge you, too. In a little afternoon pleasure. If you wish.”
Heat flooded her face, paralyzed her tongue and, it seemed, the rest of her body. She could only gaze, helplessly as the smile played around his suddenly sinful lips.
With a last mouthful, he set down his cup and saucer on the table and stretched out one hand to her, drawing her to her feet until her hips came to rest against his and her whole body thrilled to his arousal.
“Will you make love with me, Natalie Derwent?” he murmured in her ear. “Before I explode with desire for you?”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” she managed by way of weak protest.
“The best time,” he assured her. “The door is locked, and we are safe. And I want you very, very badly.”
She could feel that he did, but his mouth took hers as though to leave no room for doubt. Remembering the men outside, she drew back and went to close the window. After which, she took his hand and led him to the bedchamber.
She had thought there could be no pleasure greater than that he had given her last night, but in her bed that afternoon, with the sun shining through the curtains, and the birds singing their hearts out in the surrounding trees, he showed her there were more and greater joys to be derived from each other’s bodies. With his fingers, with his mouth, and his whole being, he gave her pleasure after pleasure until she thought she could not bear it, and then he gave her more.
Panting, almost mindless with bliss, she still knew that the greatest wonder of all was the joy she gave to him. Only that made her weep. Twice. Until he fell asleep kissing the tears from her cheeks.
*
Monck raised the glass set in front of him to Davenport.
“Captain Gorse still appears to be at Renwick’s Hotel,” Davenport said after returning the salute. “He hasn’t been back to his Albany rooms in days, and he hasn’t been seen at Sedgemoor House either.”
“And my lady wife?”
“Played her usual afternoon concert in the pleasure gardens,” Davenport said apologetically. “I didn’t go myself, but I sent my man.”
Damnation. Both her employer and her heroic lover or suitor or whatever he was should have abandoned her flat by now. Moreover, there should have been rumors all around town, ridiculing the pair of them and causing scandalized hands to fly up in delighted horror at the thought of such a woman as Natalie Derwent getting her disreputable paws on such a noble paragon as Lord Richard Gorse.
None of this had materialized.
“Gorse is still protecting her,” he said, annoyed.
“Looks like it,” Davenport agreed. He shook his head. “Isn’t right, though, keeping your wife from you. Not when you’re prepared to take her back.”
Monck wasn’t just prepared to take her back. He needed her back. His charms were no longer working, even on Amy Laurel, the silly little songbird at Maida Gardens, and he had run out of money. He had won a bit by judicious cheating at cards, enough to play his part among the town swells and pay an accomplice to help him break into Natalie’s cottage.
Mind you, Monck hadn’t had to pay his fellow house breaker yet. The man hadn’t come near him again, and he wondered if he might risk returning to that tavern. The Bird in Hand. Because clearly desperate measures were called for. He could not pay his tailor. He was dependent on Davenport and a couple of others to buy him dinner and wine, but sooner or later they were going to notice that he never took his turn. Lord Calton already avoided him, though he had been amiable enough to start with.
Fortunately, by means of the same judicious cheating, he had managed to avoid gambling debts which, for some reason, were regarded as debts of honor. He would not yet be run out of town, but card sharping was not his main talent, and it was only a matter of time until he was caught. Before that happened, he needed to regain control of Natalie, flee to the Continent with her, and start her earning her keep in the concert halls if he could.
In between public concerts, there were always the kind of clubs where gentlemen of means appreciated beauty with their music. And Natalie, properly dressed in sheer, low-cut garments, with her icy, touch-me-not attitude, was an irresistible draw. And if the price was right, this time he’d let some wealthy noblemen have her for an hour or two. She owed him for the inconvenience.
And he needed all the money he could get. He no longer felt well, and he needed to rest for the winter, preferably somewhere warm and agreeable and expensive. And Natalie was still his best, if not his only, means of acquiring such means. She had brought in so much before that he had lived off it damned well after she had abandoned him. And they’d live damned well again if only he could get her away from Richard Bloody Gorse.
“Spot of dinner, Monck?” Davenport suggested.
“Why not?” It would be riskier going later to the Bird in Hand, but he expected it was later on that the truly, efficiently bad criminals entered the tavern’s hallowed if filthy halls. “Been thinking though, Dav, is that cousin of yours still a magistrate at Bow Street?”
“Temporarily, Monck, temporarily. But yes, he’s still there. Why?”
“Because my loving wife might need an additional incentive to see the error of her ways.” But first, it was necessary to remove Gorse from his path. Thanks to little Amy, he knew where to find Gorse, and it wasn’t Renwick’s Hotel.
Chapter Nine
“Will you marry me, Natalie Derwent?”
The words jerked her back, just as she was drifting off to sleep surrounded by the warmth and weight of his limbs and a glow of emotional and physical happiness.
Her eyes flew open into his. He really had said those words. For an instant, her joy was so intense it felt almost like pain. And then, like a bucket of cold water, she remembered Gerald. And the marriage lines that Richard must have seen.
With a gasp, she pushed him, dislodging him from his position looming over her, so that she could dive out of the bed.
“Are you mocking me?” she demanded. “Or testing me? Whichever, it is unkind. Unnecessarily unkind.”
He lay on his back, utterly naked, gazing up at her not with astonishment but with wariness.
“Why would you think a proposal of marriage was either? Given that I am not Gerald Monck.”
Seizing her old dressing gown from the back of the door, she struggled into it to try and recover some dignity. Then she untied the shawl-wrapped bundle on the stool and swiped up the marriage lines, which she flung at him.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t seen that before. It fell out of your coat pocket this morning.”
“I wondered. I was looking for it when I was in town.” His tone was casual. To her, this was disastrous, catastrophic, and he spoke of it as though it were a missing grocery list. “I meant to show it to Ludovic Dunne.”
Only anger—she wasn’t even sure what drove it—prevented her from crumpling into a ball of grief for her lost dreams that had barely begun, her false beliefs in him…
“Why?” she raged. “The better to send me back to him?”
Richard sat in one easy, practiced motion, slid his legs out of bed, and walked toward her, stark naked.
“I have just loved you to the edge of my sanity if not yours and I have proposed marriage. How is that sending you back to him?”
Dear God, he was beautiful. Naked men were not supposed to be beautiful, were they? But his skin seemed to glow, drawn taut over broad shoulders and narrow hips, long legs, and rippling muscle. Even the asymmetry of his missing arm could not detract from that. In fact, somehow it added to the beauty because it was his, his suffering, his courage, part of what made him the man swaggering so deliberately toward her. The hated document dangled carelessly between his fingers.
She backed into the little dressing table, slid around it until she could fall back against the wall. Yet still, he kept coming and did not stop until his naked body touched hers. A deliberate swish of his hips dislodged her robe, and she had to swallow a gasp of sudden, inconvenient arousal as his naked skin found hers in the opening.
“You didn’t tell me about that,” she threw at him, with a contemptuous jerk of her head to the document between his fingers. “You did not ask me about it. Instead, you seduce me and offer me marriage, while in possession of a document proving my marriage to another very much alive man? What am I supposed to think?”
The document fluttered to the floor. His hard chest against her breasts made them ache for his caresses, distracting her, though she maintained her glare. Even when she felt his arousal beginning to grow.
“You are meant to trust me,” he said softly, and bent his head, brushing his lips across hers. A wave of heat rolled through her body. “As I trust you.” His lips moved, teasing the corner of her mouth. The tip of his tongue touched the seam of her lips and she gasped. Which seemed to be all he needed. His mouth took hers in a long, sensual kiss that melted her from the inside out. Only the pressure of his body kept her upright against the wall.
“You are meant to know,” he whispered against her lips, “that I would never believe that disgrace of a man over anyone, let alone over you. That I would never hurt you.” His mouth sank deeper once more so that she could barely comprehend the wonder of his words. “That I love you.”
With a sob, she threw both arms around his neck, pressing her cheek hard to his. He stepped back, drawing her with him so that he could get his arm around her. He lifted her over his hip and brought her back to bed.
“I didn’t want to tell you until I had discussed it with Dunne,” he said, “and had him confirm my own suspicions—not that it is fake, we take that as certain.” He sprawled across the bed and reached out his arm to swipe the document off the floor, then brought it back with him as he settled against the pillows beside her. His shoulder, hip, and leg pressed warmly against hers and physical contentment helped settle the turbulent, emotional relief of his words.
“Look. Does it not seem to you that this is all written in the same hand? Even the signatures, though he has made an effort to make them different. Do you have any of his writing to compare this with?”
She shook her head. “No, I threw away everything associated with him. But that looks very like my signature, and that is his. I know he can forge mine, for he has done so before. The rest…” She bent over it more closely and frowned. “He could be disguising it. Even the clergyman’s signature… But how we could prove—”
She broke off, snatching up the document. “He has signed Amelia Dart’s name as a witness!” In growing triumph, she laughed. “Miss Dart had left us weeks before the date on this!”
“No wonder he didn’t want me to take it from him,” Richard observed. “He will have used her name to make the document more real to me, judging that you would have spoken of her to me or that I might ask you about her. But he obviously didn’t want me actually showing it to you.”
“It was never meant to stand up in a court of law,” she said slowly, “just scare you away from me. So that I have nowhere to turn. He means that I should either share what I have with him or lose everything with what is left of my reputation.”
The day had seen tides of emotions, sweeping her up and dropping her back down. This last, downward slide from such a great height closed up her throat. “Richard, even if I am free to do so, I cannot marry you. I am too far beneath you in rank.”
“You are a lady of good family. Landed gentry is not despised by anyone.”
“My family is decent. I am not. I let Gerald change my plans to make myself a superior music teacher and became instead a stage performer, traveling with him in the last weeks without even a chaperone. That can always come out, even if by some chance no one connects me with the harpist at Maida Gardens! I am not a fit wife for you.”
His hand came up to stroke her head, to settle at her nape. “You are the only wife for me. I am hoping to be the only husband for you. The rest is…noise. I have a powerful family and, somehow, I have made good friends. They will overcome any talk so that it never touches you.”
“Richard, your powerful family will hate me!”
“Like Dominic and Viola?”
“Lord and Lady Dominic are different, and you know it. The Marquess of Sedgemoor will not welcome me into his family.”
“Actually, I think he will. Though since we are being honest with each other and laying all our cards on the table, I won’t pretend it will be so easy. My father is a stubborn and frequently pompous old martinet, but he has one disadvantage.”
“What?” she asked dubiously.
“He loves his children. Oh, he tries not to, and seldom allows his failing to show, but he moves heaven and earth to keep us safe. Dominic was mad to follow me into the army, but my father would not risk him. He turned the whole world upside down, to do what he thought was the right thing and keep Dom safe when he was charged with murder. He did the same for me, exerting his influence to keep me out of battle. I got around that, but I was still touched that he tried. And he is very much behind the careers of my other brothers. I used to think it was just his need to control us all, but it isn’t. He loves us.”
“Then he will want a better wife for you.”
He kissed her temple. “It may take time to show him I will only settle for the best. You. But it will happen. Not that it matters. Life may be more comfortable with his blessing, but we do not need it. Do you want to dine in the cottage tonight?”
She did, very much, and so together they prepared a simple meal and shared it with the men, all eating together, al fresco, in the small back garden. The men made her laugh with tales of their captain getting into trouble and getting them out of it, stories of heroism and humor and the everyday life of soldiers.
Then, as the light began to fade, two of the men went off “on patrol” and Richard fetched her shawl and walked with her up to the hotel.
