Chapter Twenty One

P hoebe awoke in the night with a frantic terror clawing at her throat. In the darkness of her bedroom, the shadows swirled and melded and formed a horrible amalgamation of evil, pressing down upon her until the air whooshed from her lungs, driven from them as if a fist had plowed itself into her stomach. Russell's hoarse, raspy voice echoed still in her ears, carried over into waking from the nightmare from which she had emerged. I can get to the both o' ye anywhere I please. Her heart raced wildly in her chest, her limbs drawing tight and tense. "Phoebe. You're all right." The sleep-roughened murmur of Kit's voice near her ear produced a strange sort of sedative effect, as if he had somehow imbued the words with a command she was helpless but to heed. The furious pace of her heart slowed. Her lungs expanded with her first deep breath since waking. Her muscles loosened and relaxed once more. In the darkness, his hand slid across her belly, found her hip, and pulled her toward him, and she went with a breathy little sigh, pitching face-first against him and pillowing her cheek against the warm wall of his chest, the sparse hair dusted across it tickling her nose. His skin smelled clean and faintly musky. Soothing to her scrambled senses. His hand cupped the nape of her neck, kneaded the muscles there with gentle fingers. She felt the brush of his lips against the top of her head and closed her eyes with a sigh, sinking into the embrace. "You're all right," he repeated in a sleepy rumble. A soft chuckle slid past her ear. "I'm the worst thing you'll find in the darkness tonight." It seemed so strange to consider that he was the monster most of London would fear to encounter in a dark alley. That perhaps he had haunted the nightmares of others just as Russell now haunted hers. She took only comfort from him—from the smooth sweep of his palm down her spine, and the deep, even breaths she could hear beneath her cheek. From the slide of his leg across her own and the fingers toying gently with her hair. Perhaps it didn't matter that he was the monster in anyone else's story, so long as he was her monster. The one to send the rest of them skittering off in fear. The monster from whom other monsters fled. The monster who held her within the circle of his arms, who brought only comfort and safety. "Thank you," she breathed, snuggling her cheek against his chest. "Third nightmare this week," he said, pitching his voice low. "Getting to be a habit." "I'm sorry." At least the dark concealed her flush of shame. He'd been so kind to her just lately, kinder than he had ever had to be. All week he had kept her company during the night, though she knew he had sacrificed his privacy to do so. Even though he'd woken at every nightmare. "Not your fault. I sleep lightly. But you—you are going to sleep deeply tonight. For once." His knee nudged between hers, and his fingers tightened in her hair as he eased her to her back. The swirling shadows above her no longer seemed quite so threatening as her head sank into the pillow, as his lips touched the point of her chin and slid down the line of her throat. A low sound of pleasure rumbled in his chest as her hands explored the firm muscles of his back, stroking his shoulders, his sides. His lips touched the hollow of her throat, and then there was the silky stroke of his tongue tracing a delicate line across her sensitive flesh, sweeping down toward her breast. A lambent head kindled in her belly as his tongue swirled around her nipple, and it was impossible to keep still—her hips canted into the press of his knee there between her thighs, and she cast her head back upon the pillow with a soft, plaintive sound that provoked an amused snicker from him. Fire sliced through her veins with every soft suck, every delicate nibble of her tender flesh. She licked her dry lips. "Kit, please—" "Hush." His knee retreated, and she could have whimpered for the loss. A whisk of cool air slid between them as he ducked beneath the covers. His tongue touched the dip of her navel in a ticklish caress as he slid lower, and lower still. One hot hand wrapped around her right thigh, shoving her legs wide to admit the width of his shoulders and then both palms slipped beneath her to arch her hips to his mouth. Phoebe pressed one hand to her mouth, but a humiliating sound slipped between the gaps of her fingers anyway. A searing stroke of his tongue teased past crisp curls, searching out the hot, damp flesh beneath. Her blood sang in her veins, her thighs tensed, muscles quivering. Her knees fell wide in open surrender, and he chuckled against her, notably avoiding that most sensitive part of her. When her hips arched to his mouth of their own accord, he reclaimed a hand, sliding two fingers deep inside her, easing the ache of emptiness within her. A plaintive cry warbled from her throat. Almost, but not quite enough. Her trembling hand found his hair beneath the blankets, gripping a fistful of the cool strands. He made a feral sound in his throat—approval, she thought—and let her redirect his attention to that little bead of sensation at the apex of her thighs. A thrust of his fingers and a slow suck, a swirl of his tongue. She shattered with a queer sound of relief, more moan than sigh, awash in a blissful satiation. "Mm." His low sound of satisfaction vibrated against her thigh, where he placed a tender kiss. "I love to feel you coming on my fingers." Another gentle thrust of them provoked a new burst of spasms, and Phoebe shuddered and gasped. Kit gave a regretful sigh. "It's too damned bad I didn't prepare for this." "I did," Phoebe murmured through fractured breaths. His fingers stalled in their rhythmic plunges. "Did you?" "Stole a few condoms from your drawer." Her fingers stroked his hair in praise. "I had to ask Charity how to prepare them. God, don't stop. Please." That fierce fire had ebbed in the wake of her climax, but the thrust of his fingers was kindling it once more. Her skin sizzled with the slow burn of it. "You glorious, wicked woman," he said, kissing her thigh. "Where?" "Nightstand drawer. Hurry ." The covers went sailing off as he withdrew, and the intrusion of cool air soothed her overheated skin. There was the slide of a drawer, a brief fumbling, and moments later the heat of his body settled over her. She loved the weight of him, the texture of his skin sliding across hers. The crisp hair on his chest teased her nipples, and she slung one leg about his waist, arching into the slow thrust of his hips as the blunt head of his cock sank inside her, filling that aching emptiness. Perfectly . He made a soft sound; a gasp of pleasure, she thought, and she felt a shudder tremble through him. Her hands slipped across his sweat-slicked back, found purchase as she gripped his shoulders. Whatever patience, whatever forbearance he had exercised, it was gone now—he moved in fierce, strong plunges, searing her from the inside, stroking across tender tissues until he touched a part of her that made her gasp and arch as every nerve sparkled and hummed. His breath sawed from his lungs in harsh pants as he strove for fulfillment. "I need to feel you," he rasped against her ear. "I need you to come again. I need you to take me with you." "Yes. Yes ." Her fingernails bit into his skin, and she turned her face toward his to invite the brush of his lips. "Ahh— Kit !" Every muscle seized in an agony of pleasure. She felt the contractions of her inner muscles upon him, felt his last brutal lunge and the helpless shudder of his large body over hers. For a few moments she drifted, weightless, across a sea of repletion, cognizant of nothing more than the lovely lassitude that drifted over her like a soft, downy quilt. Her scattered wits gathered themselves slowly, but the lethargy that enveloped her was unshakeable. She heard Kit's muted chuckle, felt the tender kisses he pressed to her cheek, her forehead. Distantly she was aware that he had absented himself for a moment, when he'd recovered himself, but all she cared for was that he had returned to gather her into his arms once more, and she settled against his chest with a sigh. "No more nightmares," he murmured against the top of her head. "Not tonight." And for once she slept like a babe, deep and dreamless.

∞∞∞

His room the next evening, if only because Phoebe had run out of pilfered condoms and today he'd had the foresight to prepare one of his own. As the candle had burned low, she'd found his trinket box stuffed at the back of his nightstand and had begun rooting through it to demand an explanation of how he'd acquired each piece. And he'd humored her, because she seemed so damned amused with them. "This one?" Phoebe asked, picking a piece out of a small wooden box, holding it up to dangle before his eyes. A pocket watch chain, done in silver. "Ah," Chris said. "I'm afraid that one belongs to your brother." "Really?" Phoebe asked, blinking in the dim light of the candle set upon his nightstand. "Could you not get the watch as well?" "As it happens, I got both," he said. "But the watch had an inscription from your father on the occasion of Laurence's marriage." And though it had not injured his conscience to lift the watch on principle, it had…scratched at it just a bit when he had considered keeping them both. "The chain was enough," he said in a grumbly sort of voice, vaguely annoyed with himself. "I slipped the watch back into his pocket when he was distracted." "What did he do?" she asked. Chris shrugged. "Made some comment to which I took exception, most likely. Don't recall the specifics." "Do you know," Phoebe said as she gently tucked the watch chain back into the box, "I think you like my family. Just a little. Just enough for a small bit of sentimentality." Hell . He did, then. He didn't know why. They were a loud lot, excessively affectionate with one another, and entirely too fertile. But he liked them, for some damned fool reason. He liked picking at Laurence, or baiting his other brothers-in-law with innocently-delivered comments guaranteed to offend sensibilities more delicate than his own. He liked that however much he exasperated them, still he had somehow become part of their family. Their monstrously large, irrepressible, overly enthusiastic family. He liked that, more often than not, when he'd done or said something beyond the pale, Phoebe tittered behind her fingers, her eyes glowing with mirth. He liked that she sent him secretive little glances, as if they shared a delightful secret between them. He'd been lonely. All these years, he'd been lonely, and he had not realized it. There had been a yawning, hungry void gnawing at his soul, and he hadn't even known how severely it had consumed him. It had simply been all he had ever known; the way he had always felt. He'd been drawn to seek out Phoebe's company because she vanquished that empty, greedy darkness that had been his constant companion before her. He was beginning to suspect that he was falling just the tiniest bit in love with her. And he didn't know how to stop it. Those things that he'd thought he'd wanted, thought he'd needed—respectability, social acceptance—were swiftly falling by the wayside. The invitations had continued to come, though of course the best of homes had closed their doors to him, and to Phoebe by extension. But he didn't care. It was the damnedest thing. He didn't care . On the occasions that Phoebe shared with him which invitations had arrived requesting their company for a ball or a musicale or some sort of soirée, he'd found himself grunting and shaking his head to each of them in turn. Stuffed into a ballroom with a hundred other people who resented his presence or viewed him as a curiosity held no appeal. It wasn't where he wanted to be, even if he had once thought it a necessary thing. Even if those invitations had come from those homes society determined to be the best of the best, still he would have declined—because they weren't that at all. Not to him; not any longer. He'd rather be here at home with Phoebe. And between his family and hers, there were altogether too many social engagements already. "And this?" Phoebe asked. Slowly, carefully, she extricated a chain from beneath the pile of his other liberated treasures, the silver tarnished from years spent without a proper cleaning. It had been tarnished when he'd stolen it, in fact. The very first thing he'd ever stolen. "That," he said, in a carefully neutral voice, "was my mother's. The only gift my father gave to her." Other than himself—but an illegitimate child was more curse than gift. The damned earl had been the beginning of the end for his mother; the toe over the precipice of disaster. But Chris had been the one who had pushed her off of it. With his very existence, he had ruined her. Sent her careening down that slope to her inevitable death. Phoebe settled the locket into the cup of her palm. "What was her name?" she asked. "Your mother, I mean." "Bridget," he said. "Bridget Moore." He couldn't recall the last time he'd spoken it. Maybe he never had. "Bridget. I like that," she said. "I suppose she must have been very beautiful." "She was." Though the image of her had faded in his mind—like a portrait left out in full sun, fading the paints from which it had been wrought—he remembered her as attractive. Soft cheeks, full mouth, willowy and delicate. A calm and gentle air about her. Soothing and comforting, most especially to a child who had been born with a great deal of anger within him. "Do you—do you resemble her a great deal?" Phoebe inquired. "Not at all. I'm the earl through and through." Unfortunately. He picked the locket out of the cup of Phoebe's palm and pried open the ancient hinges, revealing the miniature painted within. The portrait of his father, the earl. "You see?" "It's almost uncanny," she said as she peered down at it. "Could I ask what happened between them?" Chris heaved a sigh. "A tale as old as time, really," he said. "Young lord makes promises he doesn't intend to keep to a na?ve young girl. She was a housemaid, taken in by sweet words and genteel charm. I suppose he could be charming, my father—when he wanted something he couldn't get any other way." "He promised to marry her?" "Promised all sorts of things," he said. "And she was fool enough, innocent enough, to believe them. At least until she came up with child and he turned her out for it." He tossed her a speaking look. "He'd begun courting Em's mum by that point," he said. "Couldn't have my mum ruining a good match for him. So off she went, pregnant with a nameless child." "How cruel of him." "He was that, too," Chris said. "Mostly, he was that. He denied me to his dying day, though any fool could see I'm the image of him. He never gave so much as a farthing to support me. Said if mum had gotten herself with child, then it was only her own fault. As if she could have done it alone." He raked his fingers through his hair, catching upon a few knots. "This locket," he said, "was the most valuable thing she owned. But she would never part with it, because she loved him too much. Loved him even though he'd betrayed her. Ruined her." Phoebe closed her hand around his. "I'm so sorry," she said. "It must have been dreadful for you both." "I never knew any different," he said. "But for Mum—yes, it was difficult. There's not much work for an unmarried woman with a child. Leastwise, not much honest work. For a while she took in the washing and mending. Ruined her hands with it. But our landlord kept raising the rent, eking out every bit of coin he could. Eventually, the washing and the mending wasn't enough to support us. So Mum turned to prostitution. She was pretty," he said. "It wasn't hard to find a bloke willing to spend a little coin on her." Phoebe winced. "Still, I can't imagine it was a simple decision to make." "No," he said, and the fingers of his free hand curled into a fist. "She hated it. Felt like she was betraying the love of her life, even if he didn't want her any longer. But the coin was good, and she–she wouldn't sell the damned locket even to avoid selling herself. So I stole it from her. Took it right off her neck when she was sleeping." A ragged sort of laugh lurched from his throat. "She thought it must've been one of her clients that had pinched it," he said. "I meant to sell it for us since she couldn't bring herself to do it, but she was so devastated that she wept for days, and I—I couldn't do it." "You gave it back to her?" He shook his head. "Never had the chance," he said. "She died a few days later. A client of hers liked to drink a little too much, and he had a foul enough temper sober. I slept in the kitchen while she entertained, tucked away in a corner. Or tried to, at least." He scraped one hand across his jaw, rubbing away the tension that had settled in it. "I heard when he started beating her, burst into the room, and tried to pull him off of her. I don't think he heard me, or even felt me yanking on him. I couldn't—I wasn't strong enough—" "It wasn't your fault," Phoebe said softly, in a soothing sort of tone. "You were only a boy." "I was seven," he said. "I was seven years old, and she was just five and twenty." There was a queer tightness in his chest, an ache he'd not experienced in years. "The day I turned five and twenty, all I could think of was how young I felt. How much of my life was still before me. How much of Mum's life ought to have been before her." Somehow, he'd threaded his fingers through hers. He hadn't even noticed. It was just that her hand had been there, and he'd taken it in his, drawing strength and comfort from the squeeze of her fingers in his. "I ran," he said. "Found a watchman and dragged him home with me. I was too late to save her, but quick enough to ensure the bastard was caught." Phoebe tucked her head against his shoulder. "I'm glad he was brought to justice." Chris snorted. "If you can call it that," he said. "He was hanged. The rope snapped his neck immediately. Dead in an instant. Where is the justice in that? Justice would have been parity, and if I'd been just a little older, I'd have given it to him. I'd have made certain he suffered. Like she did." Hell . Perhaps his social graces were lacking, but even he knew well enough that it wasn't done to discuss such things in a lady's presence. It was just that it was so damned easy to talk to her—not as a lady, but as a person. A friend. A wife. Violence had been his lot in life from childhood, and now he had dragged her down alongside him into the muck of it. Actions taken decades ago had come back to haunt him, and now Phoebe had suffered for them. She had taken to his lessons in self-defense with good humor and rapt attention, but they should never have been necessary at all. No one should ever have touched her, ever have threatened her. He would not let it happen again. That healing cut upon her neck would be the very last time anyone ever injured her. And the one who had done it would pay for it a thousand times over. "I can keep you safe," he said, returning the grip of her fingers in his. "I am going to find Russell, and when I do—" "I don't believe I need to know the unsavory details," Phoebe said hurriedly, looking somewhat sheepish. "I've told you I'm not a good man." "Good, I think, is a matter of opinion and perspective," she said. "In the eyes of the law? Probably you'd be a villain. But to me"—the fingertips of her free hand came up to touch the scabbed-over wound upon her throat, and for just a moment her eyes went hazy and distant as if she were reliving that terrible experience—"to me, you'd be a hero. I trust you to do the wrong thing for the right reason." "Don't get accustomed to it," he said. "There's not a lot of heroism in me." "A matter of perspective," she repeated softly. "Will you tell me when—when perhaps I ought to be scanning the newspapers for reports of a particular body found floating in the Thames?" she inquired delicately. So she would know, he supposed. That she was truly safe at last. That she could feel secure once more and know that the villain who had accosted her was dead. "Won't be enough of him left to find," he said. "But, yes, I'll tell you." And that, he thought, would be enough.