Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

L ucien could feel the wildness leap up in her. All the words he could not say were like a whirlwind in his mind. That he'd needed the knife-edge of danger riding in darkness to ease the driving need he felt right now.

Her anger at him only heightened it, the fire beneath her compassion, that fierceness that dared him…

He pressed his tongue between her lips, and kissed her the way he had been longing to, with nothing held back. Her fingers delved into his hair, her body against his as if she had been formed just for him.

"It is not ten yet," she said.

She was baiting him.

It only served to make his cock harder than it had ever been before. "I don't give a damn what time it is." There it was. The truth.

From the first moment he'd kissed her in Everdene Hall, he had fought this battle to maintain the dam he'd built to hold back the feelings she unleashed in him. He'd surrounded himself with rigid rules in an effort to retain control. He could feel the walls cracking, yet in this moment he didn't give a damn. He'd shore them up later…after he'd buried himself, not just in her body, but in all that was Grace, her compassion, her humor, her courage. This woman who was life and light and—God alone knew why—wanted him .

He took her hand, drew her up the stairs to her bedchamber before caution could intrude. Once inside, he locked her door, fumbling with the laces up the back of her dress, eager to strip away any barrier between them.

"God, you are delectable," he murmured as he pulled down one side of her bodice and chemise, revealing a creamy shoulder. He pressed hot kisses to the skin he'd bared as he backed her toward the bed. The ropes squeaked as he lay her on the mattress and followed her down, shifting his body atop hers. His hand slipped under her skirt. "I want to devour every inch of you."

Suddenly she went absolutely still, her gasp anything but one of pleasure.

"Lucien…Lucien, wait."

He didn't think he could. His hunger for her surged as his hand reached the thin skin of her inner thigh above her stocking, but he forced himself to stop, confused. A moment ago, she had seemed as eager for their love play as he was.

"What…what was that sound?" she whispered, tugging her bodice back into place.

He froze, listening. Then he heard it, too. A shuffling beneath the… bed ?

Threats he'd received the past months echoed in his head. The idea Grace might be in danger hardened in a knot in his belly.

Lucien rolled off the mattress onto the floor, crouching on his hands and knees, to peer beneath the bed. There was a smudge of something pale in the shadowy space, a sound like the squawk of a beast in a snare. He thrust his arm beneath the bed, grabbing something warm, writhing. Alive! Whatever he had laid hold of fought like a demon as he dragged it toward him. Suddenly pain spiked through the fleshy part of his hand as the creature sank its teeth into Lucien. He swore, tightened his hold, dragging his assailant out into the open—a kicking, cursing… boy !

He collared the lad, hauling him upright into the light. The child was a grimy, smelly mess, his face smeared with something that might have been food at one time.

"Avery!" Grace cried, shocked. "What on earth? How—how in the world did you get here?"

Lucien's eyes narrowed. One look at his attacker was like being plunged in that chilly lake again, the shock, the dismay. The boy wrenched free, scrambling onto the bed and into his sister's arms.

Lucien rubbed the place on his hand where a half-circle of tiny cuts stung. "He bit me!"

"You frightened him," Grace said, holding the boy tight.

"Finding someone under my bed when I am about to make—er, be with my wife startled me as well, but I didn't sink my teeth into the boy." Lucien found his handkerchief and wrapped it around his bleeding hand.

It stung, but not so much as the strange loss of balance he felt inside. Did he glimpse the slightest hint of her dimple winking in that pink cheek?

"Avery, whatever are you doing here?" Grace asked. "How long have you been…?"

"Dunno. After breakfast. Hid under the bed after the maid made it up. Fell asleep."

"Well, it's almost dark. We'll have to send a note to The Willows telling them that you're here. We can't take you home until morning."

"I'm not going home! Not ever. I'm going to join the navy."

Lucien winced, remembering Simon in the heat of anger.

I'll join the cavalry. You cannot stop me. It was a choice that had all but destroyed him.

Lucien expected Grace to quell her brother's nonsense at once. Instead, she said quietly, "Lucien, may I borrow one of your shirts for him to sleep in?"

Lucien pressed his handkerchief to the wound and glared for a moment. "Are you actually suggesting I hand one of my bespoke, perfectly tailored shirts to this little fiend?"

The lad would probably dump the nearest ink pot onto it out of spite.

"We can hardly dress him in one of my pelisses."

With a grim set to his jaw, Lucien went into his room and retrieved one of his least-favored shirts.

The boy took it with a grudging expression.

"Avery, are you hungry?" Grace asked. "When is the last time you ate?"

"Something other than my hand," Lucien muttered.

The boy ducked his head, but not before Lucien saw a look of triumph. "I sneaked into the kitchen and took some hot cross buns and apples under the bed."

Wonderful. No doubt the crumbs would be the perfect lure for mice.

"How did you even guess where my room was?" Grace asked.

"I peeked in all the bedrooms and saw that." The boy gestured to Lord Admiral Nelson on her dressing table.

Damned resourceful little scoundrel, making his way all the way from The Willows and sneaking in with none of the servants noticing. Lucien would have to have a word with his staff.

He could have rung for the servants, but left the room to cool his temper, finding a maid and ordering food for the boy and a pitcher of warm water so he could wash up. When the servant delivered what was necessary, she didn't quite close the door. Lucien knew he should get as far from the scene unfolding as possible, but something held him in the corridor, as Grace helped settle her brother into the bed Lucien had been eager to share with her.

From the first moment the lad had hurled a mud pie at him, there had been a boldness in this pint-sized hellion who had tormented him. There was no doubt he was the leader of the brothers. And when Lucien and Grace had announced their marriage, Avery had actually struck him, something no grown man of Lucien's acquaintance would have dared, leaving no doubt he planned to be a formidable adversary.

But now, he seemed so young and small, something about him making Lucien damned uncomfortable. Something familiar…He remembered chasing after Simon after their mother disappeared. Finding him huddled in the treehouse they'd built, shivering, hungry, trying to hide his tears. Knowing that when they returned home, he would receive a beating from their father.

Lucien shifted in the hallway until he was able to see brother and sister more clearly. Grace leaned over Avery, stroking his tumbled hair, his face red and hot and shining with tears.

"There, there…," Grace said. "Tell me, why are you crying?"

"I hate Stepmama for marrying Papa and I hate Lord Everdene for taking you away. I want things to go back to the way they used to be."

Lucien saw Grace take a deep breath. "I know," she said. "So do I sometimes. But things can't always stay the same. Even if Mama were still alive and I hadn't married, things would change. Look at how you've grown, just since this spring."

Avery wiped his nose with the sleeve of Lucien's borrowed shirt. Lucien remembered the defiance when he'd dragged the boy from beneath the bed. He'd fought like a wild thing—hell, bit like one as well—but there had been no tears.

Now, the boy and Grace both looked so vulnerable it made Lucien's gut knot. He wanted to turn away, go to the study, lose himself in the piles of work waiting for him there. He wanted to go to his own bedchamber, shut the door, and pour himself brandy, do whatever he'd always done on the nights that sleep eluded him. But he stood there, feeling as if he was looking back in time to the boy he had been.

The boy who shrank away from any comforting touch. Steeled his shoulders, hardening any tears into an icy lump that grew harder and harder over the years until any tears were sharp as broken glass and the shell around him so tough he could no longer feel the touch of his mother's hand.

Lucien wanted to turn and walk away, pull free of the thread that seemed strung between his chest and Grace.

The woman whose body he'd come to know, but whose heart…whose spirit had been beyond his long-hardened mindset to comprehend, even if he ever became reckless enough to want to discover its mysteries.

Her partially unlaced gown drooped off one shoulder, baring a creamy expanse he'd tasted just before they'd been interrupted. Tendrils of rich brown hair, threaded with red-gold strands, curled against her throat.

She crooned a poignant melody, one Lucien had never heard, a tale about stars. The lad quieted even more. But he didn't sleep.

"Grace, am I going to hell?"

The lad's soft query drifted to the door, burying itself in Lucien's chest.

"Of course not! Why ever would you think such a thing? Where in the world did you get such a notion?" Grace asked.

"I heard Mrs. Kemble tell Stepmama that I am the wicked one and I'll drag Bennet and Ethan down with me. She's right, I'm the one that gets the others into trouble. I boosted Bennet up through the window to ruin the luncheon. I'm the one started moving things back where Mama had them. I'm the one who told Stepmama there was a ghost. Sometimes the angry just boils up inside me and has to come out. So I have to join the navy, you see?"

"Bennet and Ethan wouldn't know what to do without you. And Will and Ethan and Papa would be so sad. So would I. You would be far away on a ship somewhere. Whole years would go by and we'd not see you. We'd not even spend Christmas together. Who would play snapdragon and help cut down the Christmas tree?"

That seemed to make the boy stop to consider. He sniffed, then looked up at his sister. "Don't you miss us, Grace?"

"Of course, I do. I miss tucking you into bed, and reading you stories."

"And playing at the lake."

"Yes, that, too."

"Don't you get lonely?"

Lucien heard Grace hesitate. "Yes. I do get lonely. I am so used to chasing after all of you, busy all of the time. But we'll become accustomed to the changes in time. You know, Will and I were alone in the nursery until you came along. Then Ethan and Bennet. You cried a great deal. Colic, the nurse said. But it didn't last. Soon, you were smiling and knocking over towers of blocks and now, I can't imagine life without you."

"I can imagine life without Lord Everdene just fine."

Grace swept the fall of her hair over one shoulder, baring the nape of her neck, the pale curve so vulnerable. "I know he can be…rather alarming, but you shouldn't have bitten him."

"His face was all…all so mad it looked like he'd eat me alive!"

"Oh, Avery. You know he would never?—"

"I don't! He scares everybody. Ethan and Bennet. And the footmen and maids, too. I heard them talking. Even Papa. He didn't want you to marry him either."

"You mustn't let your imagination run away with you. Lord Everdene is my husband."

"It was like he—he changed into a monster when he found me under the bed, just like the ones in the stories Nanny told us."

Hearing Avery talk, Lucien couldn't stop childhood memories from crowding in. His father's face suffused with fury, his eyes hot coals, teeth bared, his huge body seeming to blot out the sun as he raged, and Simon…So small and slight in his grasp. Something bitter rose in Lucien's throat.

"A monster?" Grace said. "To be fair, I was the one who was scared, when I heard something under the bed."

"Aren't you afraid of him?" Avery asked.

She seemed to ponder it a moment. Lucien held his breath. "No. I just picture him the way he was that day at the lake, with mud dripping all over him, and a lily pad on his shoulder. And then he's not so scary at all, don't you think?"

"He was angry then, too. Looked like he'd explode."

"He was also cold and wet, and we'd ruined his boots. But he dove in after me because he thought I was in danger."

"He doesn't even know how to have fun. Anyone would have known we were playing."

She sighed. "Sometimes…I see him watching everyone else while they are talking or laughing or having fun…and he looks a bit…puzzled as if he doesn't quite know how to join in."

Even from a distance, Lucien could see the lad huff. "Maybe because nobody wants him to."

"I do."

Two simple words that cut Lucien off at the knees.

He turned gently and shut the door before he went to his own bedchamber. He sat down at the desk.

The room was quiet. Spartan. Just the way he preferred it.

But not what Grace was used to.

Aren't you lonely? Avery had asked Grace.

Lucien would never forget her face in that moment, the haunting sadness, her soft answer.

Yes.

Yes, she was.

Nearly an hour had passed when he heard a soft rap at his bedchamber door. "Come in."

Grace entered. She was carrying a small medical kit. "Avery is finally asleep. I need to look at your hand."

"Don't mind it," he said. He'd washed the blood off and bound it in a clean handkerchief.

"I won't rest until I attend to it. Bites easily become putrid."

She set the kit on a table then gestured for him to hold out his hand. After a moment, he surrendered. Not because he wanted her to touch him, he assured himself as her deft fingers untied the makeshift bandage. She cradled his hand in both of hers and examined the wounds. The flesh around the bite was purpling and swelling.

"It looks painful. I'm so sorry."

"You aren't the one who bit me."

She flashed him a pleading glance. "I'm sure Avery is very sorry."

Lucien arched one brow in disbelief. She flushed prettily.

"At least, he knows it was very wrong of him…," she amended. "Perhaps he will feel more at ease with you once he grows used to visiting us here at Everdene."

That will never happen, he thought, because I won't be here. But for the first time, the resolution gave him a twinge. How often had he behaved thus? Avoided people who threatened his solitude, escaped…That had been his plan with Grace as well, and yet, he was haunted by the sadness his withdrawal had caused her. Pain that would grow greater still, if he let it.

He watched her as she crossed to the washstand and dampened a length of toweling, the soft curve of her lips, the glow of tenderness in her eyes. Would he be able to block her out as he had so many others? Even on the midnight roads, she had been with him, in the stars overhead, in his thoughts…No, pulling away from her wouldn't change this uncomfortable sensation inside him. And yet, could he ever change this instinctive reaction? Do something different this time? Maybe …a voice whispered inside him.

Maybe not.

She returned to him, and his breath caught in his chest. "This was all an unfortunate mistake," she said as she dabbed away the dried blood. "We have all made them."

"Some worse than others," he observed wryly.

"Surely you will give Avery a chance to make things right," she said. She spread the puncture wounds open just a little and poured whiskey into the cuts.

He welcomed the sting. "I was not speaking of Avery's transgressions. I was merely considering past errors of my own."

She regarded him with that sharp discernment he found unnerving. "You know, in medieval times they used to whip people through the marketplace so the whole village could see them do penance for their sins. You are a fine looking man, so you would draw quite a crowd."

He frowned. "I don't consider it a jesting matter."

"Of course you don't since you are using it as an excuse."

He felt as if he'd grasped white-hot iron. "What?"

"If your mistakes are unforgiveable, you can use them like weapons to keep people away. You do not have to take risks."

"You were just complaining that I was riding at night."

"I am not speaking of physical risks. Those are easy enough. Risks of the heart are another matter."

"Easy to say when one's conscience is as clean as yours. You know nothing about what I have done."

"Then tell me."

God, she was so beautiful, so earnest, so tempting. As if she were some mystical being who might wash his sins away. But there was no such healing magic. Not for a man like him. And she'd best understand that now.

"I am what destroyed my family," he said. "I spent years after my mother and sisters disappeared believing my father's lies. My father insisted that Mother was not in her right mind. He enlisted me to be his spy. Alert him if anything strange happened. I performed my duty well. I discovered my mother, Jane and Cassandra, attempting to run away in the middle of the night. They begged me not to tell, but I was my father's creature." His lip curled in disgust. "I raised the alarm, and they were captured."

He watched Grace, searched for the change in her face, to see her disgust, her horror at what he'd done.

She paused, as if trying to take it in, and he waited for her to recoil from him, turn away. But she only peered up at him with those eyes that seemed to penetrate to his deepest core, her face sorrowful, filled with understanding. "You trusted your father. Most children do," she said so gently his hands knotted into fists.

"Father said Mother deserted us." His voice grew rough. "Years later, when I began to ask questions, he said she had died somewhere on the continent."

"That is on his conscience. Not yours."

"Three years ago, Penelope discovered that our mother was alive. That she had spent years in an asylum. A kind doctor got her released. But father warned that, if she contacted us, he would cut Cassandra, Jane and Simon off without a farthing."

Only now did Grace's eyes widen. "No wonder you were all so shocked when he turned up at the welcome dinner."

"It was only after I was reunited with my mother that I learned the true reason they had been fleeing that night. My father intended to force Cassandra to wed his political ally, a renowned lecher thrice her age. Cassandra was not yet fifteen."

Grace pressed her hand to her mouth, as if she was about to be ill. Well, she should be, considering the ugly truth. "How horrid."

"My mother risked everything to stop the wedding. In the end, she managed to do so, despite being interred in that asylum."

"So that is why you and Cassandra clash," Grace said. "But you were a boy when all of this occurred. Yes, you were involved, but your father was responsible. You were his victim, too."

"I was no child when Penelope determined to find out what really had happened to our mother. I tried to stop her. I threatened her." The words were like knives scoring his skin. "I am not proud of it."

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"I didn't want Simon to find out the truth. I do not…form attachments easily. But my brother…" He stopped, swallowing hard. "For years we'd only had each other. Then, he finally learned that I had been lying to him the whole time."

"Oh, Lucien…it all must have been horrible for someone as young as you were then." Empathy filled her gaze, along with something he couldn't quite name. "I still believe you can make things right with Simon and Jane. Even with Cassandra. Ask pardon, make amends."

"I have done. As best as I am able."

He could see Cassandra's face, hear the loathing in her voice. You want to make amends? Stay away from Everdene Hall…

He could tell Grace about his promise now. Would she be so compassionate when she realized that he would live at one of his estates in Lancashire, hundreds of miles away. And she would likely have to join him?

No.

He had seen the betrayal in Cassandra's eyes, condemnation he richly deserved. He needed more time before he had to witness that emotion in Grace.

But it was inevitable, wasn't it? Once she learned how he'd ‘made amends' to his sisters by vowing to stay away from Everdene Hall. Grace had only married him to live here, close to her brothers.

He watched her, silent as she tenderly spread salve on the wounds, then wrapped them in a clean bandage. Impulsively, she kissed the knuckles of his injured hand. Her bodice slid off one shoulder. "Oh, bother!" she said and Lucien gently slid the cloth back into place.

"The laces in the back of my dress became hopelessly tangled when I tried to pull my bodice up and refasten it after we heard the noise. There is no way I can sleep this way. Would you be willing to help unfasten them—if it wouldn't pain your hand too much."

"It wouldn't pain me." Not exactly true. It would be exquisite torture, awakening all of those tumultuous feelings that had boiled to the surface before Avery had appeared.

Yet Lucien would take any excuse to touch Grace's velvety skin. His need for her was fiercer than ever.

With an endearing smile, she turned away from him, scooped the silky tresses out of his way, baring her neck and a tempting slice of her back. Perhaps it was best that they had been interrupted earlier. He'd teetered on the precipice of something that alarmed him then. The conversation he'd overheard with Avery made the danger greater still…

With great care, Lucien began to untangle laces and hooks and eyes, picking loose the knots. He let his fingertips linger on the pearl-like bumps of her spine beneath the muslin of her chemise, the delicate wing of her shoulder blade. When the task was done, he imagined unfastening her corset as well and lifting the chemise over her head. But no.

She turned to face him and glanced at his bed. He could see his desire echoed in her eyes, her curling lashes at half-mast. He clasped her wrist with his thumb and forefinger, rubbing a slow circle on the sensitive place where her pulse beat.

Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, and he wondered if she had any idea what the nervous gesture did to him. He wanted to gently nip that full lower lip, kiss his way to her earlobe.

Forget…

"I—I had better go," she murmured. "I need to be there when Avery wakes up. I wouldn't want him to be frightened."

"No." Lucien's voice roughened with unspent need. He forced himself to uncurl his fingers from her wrist.

He opened the door to the adjoining bedroom, and she disappeared through it. He watched her cross the room to sit in the chair she'd drawn over beside her bed. She picked up the boy's small hand.

Aren't you lonely here… Avery's question to Grace seemed to taunt Lucien. More poignant still, her answer.

Yes. I am …

What could Lucien do about it?

Certainly nothing here, even with his family returning soon. Simon had written that Cassandra was in a state when they left. It had not taken much imagination to guess why. Had Cassandra planned to tell Grace the role he'd played in the destruction of their family?

He had told Grace that much himself.

But he'd left out one key piece of information. The devil's bargain he had made with Cassandra. That they would quit the Everdene estate, move far away…

He knew that Grace would learn what he'd done. Maybe she would hate him for it.

But not yet. He remembered the tender brush of her lips on his knuckles, as if she could kiss away his pain. An uncomfortable feeling clenched around his chest.

No. He'd not tell her yet.