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‘A spy, then? Who sent you here?’ His fingers tightened. Not a harsh hold, but a tempered one. She knew he must feel the hammering pulse beneath his fingers.
‘No one.’ She could barely get the words out.
‘I do not believe you, but if you are in trouble I could help.’
It was the last thing she had expected him to say.
He hardly knew her and yet here he was offering his assistance. Another responsibility. Another needy supplicant. Another duty on top of all his other duties. Pride made her shake her head and she saw a distinct flicker of relief.
‘You are a guest here at Falder and my sister would be disappointed, no doubt, if I packed you off before your due date of departure. But if you sleepwalk again, Lady Emma, take warning, for I shall not be as lenient as I have been this time. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Then I’m glad of it.’ Again, his thumb traced the blue veins on the thin skin of her wrist and she felt her world throb. When she looked up, there was muted calculation in his eyes and a worm of worry niggled.
Had he used the caress as a means to an end by underlining his threat with a promise? Admiration surfaced in equal proportions with ire. Such cunning would not be out of place on board the Mariposa, for with it he had gained exactly what he wanted.
And all without raising a finger. She was too much her father’s daughter not to applaud his craftiness.
Taking her reins when he offered them back, she walked her horse down towards the water, the mist of salt enveloping the beach with an opaque whiteness. A wilder bay than she was used to, and colder. Shivering, she bent to pick up a shell and the sound inside as she raised it to her ear was exactly the same as it was at home.
For a second she felt displaced, uncertain, lost in the pull of what had been taken from her, and drawn to the man who now came to stand beside her, his cheeks lightly spattered with the mist of ocean. If she had been braver, she might have leant forward and touched the wetness, felt the swell of cheek beneath her fingers, and understood what it was that she could now only guess at. But she was not brave. Not like that. Not here with the wide brim of her hat tugging in the wind and the fullness of her riding skirt unfamiliar around her legs.
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
She recited the word over again and again beneath her breath, trying to incite some sort of sense in her actions. Trying to make herself step back from him, out of reach, out of harm, out of temptation. But when his thumb came up to caress the sensitive skin on her bottom lip, she closed her eyes and just felt.
For once.
For this once.
For the time it took to run her tongue across the length of skin and bring his flesh into her mouth.
‘Lord, what you do to me.’ The darkness in his eyes was bottomless as his lips slanted down across her own, the hunger in them easily definable in the afternoon grey. Just the two of them with the damp rivulets of water running beneath her feet, and the green lands of England all around. Just the two of them coming together along the full lines of their bodies and pressing hard.
And then there was nothing.
No today or yesterday, or tomorrow with its sharp uncertainty.
Just him. Just the warmth of skin against the cool of the rain and the burning fiery want that consumed her. She did not notice when he cast aside her hat, loosening the curls to his touch. All she knew was urgency and want and need.
A man’s touch. On her woman’s body. The living reality of her countless dreams. She felt the puckering of her nipples and the clench of an almost-pain between her legs.
More. More.
Everything, she longed to whisper, everything, and when he drew away she tried to hold on, tried to take his mouth in the same way that he had taken hers, but he stopped her simply by pulling her against him, head firm beneath his chin, fitting well into the spaces of his body.
‘Emma.’ Whispered. Barely there.
The frantic beat of his heart against his throat told her that he was as affected as she was. Not all onesided, then, not all her fault. She could not find it in herself to raise her eyes to his.
‘I’m sorry. That should not have happened.’ His voice was husky. ‘There is no excuse at all. I should not have—’ He stopped and the shrill cry of a gull could be heard over the silence.
He was sorry? She stiffened. An apology. For this?
Every man she had ever known in her life would have taken what it was she had just offered and be damned with what happened next. But not Asher Wellingham. No, not him. Confusion ripped through guilt and sheer embarrassment chased hard on the heels of that.
Lord. What now? When she felt his hands slacken she stepped back and reached for the bridle, angry at the help she needed to mount and pleased when he did not speak again as he handed her her hat. Did not explain. Did not even try to draw level with her as they cantered along the beach and up into the valley that led to Falder Castle.
Gaining her room she laid her head back against the solidness of the portal and tried to catch her breath, lost in the run up from the stables. Her breathing was closer to normal when she opened the connecting door to see Miriam sitting in a chair by her window, reading a book.
‘Whatever has happened? You look like you have come across a ghost.’
Emerald’s smile was laboured. Hardly a ghost. Asher’s lips still burnt into the recesses of her memory and raised the temperature of everything.
Hot. Scorching. Torrid.
She poured herself some water, watching the drips run jagged against the side of the glass before drinking it all.
‘You seem better, Aunt.’
‘If you could find the cane, Emerald, I’d be better still.’ The sentence was finished on a bout of coughing and Emerald’s worry grew. After her behaviour today, she was uncertain whether the Duke of Carisbrook would even want her to stay till the end of the week and here was her aunt plagued with illness.
Lord, could things get any worse? She shook her head and made herself concentrate on what Miriam was saying.
‘Carisbrook has a map room at the back of the eastern wing. I saw it today when I attempted a walk round the rose garden. Perhaps he has already found the map, and keeps it there.’
Emerald’s interest was piqued. ‘Near the rose garden you say?’
‘Yes. The Wellingham family mausoleum sits further over to one side. The footman I walked with said that the garden has been laid out in memory of the Duchess of Carisbrook.’
‘Melanie Wellingham is dead and buried at Falder?’
‘She is indeed. The tomb of their son is there too.’
‘A son?’
‘Stillborn at full term three years before she died.’
Death and loss and waste.
The enormity of Miriam’s revelations changed everything. The Duke of Carisbrook had loved his wife. He still loved his wife. The sapphire ring on his finger, the picture in the library and the flower garden, and his self-confessed resistance to being plunged again into the state of holy matrimony—suddenly everything added up, made sense.
She was a small detour in the course of his life. That was all. He was a duke with lands stretching hundreds of miles in every direction and a shipping fleet that plied the world.
He was not for her.
Would never be for her.
She reached into her pocket for the shell she had collected and wished that she could find the map and just go home.
Chapter Seven
He was drunk.
He knew he was by the way the portrait of Melanie that he sat in front of swam in and out of focus. He hated this painting. Hated the sheer memory of it. A brutal reminder of all that he had lost.
He should not have kissed Emma Seaton. Not like that. Not with the raging want in his blood and the sure damned knowledge of duplicity in his head. She was not as she said she was. She was a liar and a would-be thief. She was dangerous to his family. To him. To the world he had spun around himself ever since he had returned home, a slim wedge against chaos. He should kick her out, right now, before the calmer shifts of reason took hold and her turquoise eyes reeled him in like the sirens of Circe, haunting, familiar and undeniably false.
And yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He sighed and leant his head back against the wall wondering just why it was that he couldn’t. Not just the warm willingness of her body or the sharp raw hit of lust that had floored him when her lips had met his. No, there was something else too. Something he had felt unexpectedly as he had held her on the beach against him. Something close and safe and right. Something that took away the cold for ever etched into his very bones and left a question of possibility.
‘I thought that I might find you here. And drinking.’ The heavy censure in Taris’s words jarred his thoughts and Asher closed his eyes against it. Tonight his more usual reserve was lost under the fiery belly of too much whisky.
‘When I was with Emma Seaton today … I forgot Melanie. For just one moment … I forgot her.’
He felt the stillness of his brother rather than saw it, but he was strangely relieved by the confession. Saying the words lessened the strength of them. Tonight he needed absolution.
‘She is a beautiful woman, Asher, and Melanie has been dead for over three years. Why should you not admire her?’
‘Because she’s a liar. Because she was here the other night. Right here. Dressed as a boy. And because I think she and Liam Kingston are one and the same.’
‘Lucinda’s knight in shining armour? The one who bested Stephen Eaton? Lady Emma?’
‘She has a tattoo on the soft skin of her right breast.’
‘A tattoo?’ Intrigue was plain in his brother’s question.
‘Of a butterfly. Done in blue.’
Taris began to laugh.
‘I want her to stay here. At Falder. I want to protect her …’
The laughter abruptly stopped.
‘Someone has hurt her,’ Asher continued and stood, tripping over a low stool in front of him as he did so and veering towards the wall. Leaning against it, he was pleased to regain his balance. ‘And she’s frightened. I can see it in her eyes … sometimes … often … and I can hear it in her voice.’
A clock chimed in the next room and Asher counted the hours. Three o’clock. Two more hours till the dawn and the promise of sleep. Tonight it was all he could do to keep from closing his eyes and let slumber overtake him.
But he mustn’t.
He knew he mustn’t. Not until the dawn when the voices were softer and memory did not cut his equilibrium to the quick.
He slid down the wall, his knees drawn up before him. In defeat. The stubs of his severed fingers rested against his knee and he brought them up into his vision as if seeing them for the first time.
‘Sometimes I can feel these fingers … ghost fingers touching things, feeling things. I used to think they’d gone to the place where Melanie was, a little part of me waiting with her till the rest could follow … and now … I don’t want to follow them.’ As he leant his head back, his eyes went to the uncurtained window, where he could see only an unbroken darkness and he hated the lack of control he could hear in his voice.
‘Melanie would have wanted you to be happy again. Laugh again. Feel again.’
‘Would she?’ He stroked his finger down the thin crystal stem of his glass and almost laughed. ‘I remember once in Scotland when she nearly fell into a raging river and I caught her and pulled her back. She said that if anything ever happened to me, she would be sad for ever. For ever. Such a long time … for ever.’
Taris was quiet. Asher noticed he had removed his glasses and put them into his pocket. Seeing with memory. All that his brother was left with now. Sometimes he hated Beau Sandford with such a passion that it worried him. The smarting scars across his back. Taris’s loss of sight. Even in death the pirate haunted him.
‘Go to sleep, Taris. I will be all right.’
‘I could stay …’
‘No.’
He was pleased when his brother left him to his familiar demons.
Emerald strolled back towards Falder after an early morning walk, and caught sight of a light burning low in the little salon off the library as she mounted the front steps. If Asher Wellingham was already up, she would speak with him about yesterday. She should not have kissed him, should not have been alone with him, could not believe what she had done. She, who had always been so circumspect in dealing with the opposite sex. Well, it needed to stop before she did something she knew she would regret and she meant to tell him so right now.
The Duke of Carisbrook was slumped on the floor when she pushed open the door, his back against the wall and an empty bottle beside him. Taris sat asleep in an armchair. Like a sentinel.
Turning back to Asher, she saw that he watched her, the intensity of his gaze startling. He made no move to stand up; with his cravat askew and with the stubble of a twelve-hour beard upon his face, he looked like some dark and dissolute angel.
‘I am sorry,’ she managed. ‘I saw the light from outside and thought I might speak with you. About yesterday.’
‘Perhaps another time would be better,’ he returned softly, and she was relieved to hear a hint of something akin to humour in his voice.
‘You are well?’ She could barely just leave it here.
His eyes flicked to the window where the beams of a new day flooded in.
‘Very well. Now,’ he replied and pushed himself up. Emerald resisted an impulse to help him as he bent over, his hands clamped tightly about his head and holding everything together. She had seen enough hangovers to recognise that this was a bad one.
‘Did you sleep at all last night?’
He shook his head, squinting against the light that caught him squarely from this angle.
A new thought struck her. He never slept. Her mind ran over the times she had found him up, fully dressed, in the small hours just before the dawn.
After the ball. The first night she had searched Falder. This morning. Each time with a glass in his hand and the look of the damned in his eyes.
‘My father had a remedy for too much drink.’ Her resolve to confront him faltered under his vulnerability this morning and his eyebrows arched.
‘A man of many varied talents, then,’ he chided and crossed the room to replace a blanket across his brother that had fallen on to the floor. Taris barely moved as he did so, well wrapped in the arms of Morpheus.
What had they spoken of, Emerald wondered, in the dead of night? What kept them from warmer beds and a more comfortable slumber? Memories? Secrets? Her?
‘Could you concoct this remedy for me?’
She was more than surprised by his request. ‘I’d need herbs and sugar and milk.’
‘We could find those in the kitchen. It’s this way.’
He edged his way around her, careful not to touch, and opened the door. She saw he used the solidness of it to retain his balance.
