Her Ladyship's Curse

Page 26

I emptied my reticule on the ground and used it to wrap my hand, then followed the hedge by touch to the next gap, which I ducked in. I kept my hand on the hedge as I followed it to the next dead end, and then around until I found another gap. The rose thorns snagged and tore at the fabric, but I kept going until the hedge became smooth black stone.
I stepped into the center of the maze and saw a gazebo by a small pool of water. The reflecting pool was being fed from a black-and-white stone fountain. As hot and tired as I was, I didn’t go near the water but circled around it, looking for a place to hide. I had to go round four full-size marble statues of Lucien Dredmore. I stopped by the fifth to unwrap my scratched, painful hand.
The statue reached out and clamped its stone hand over my wrist, making me scream.
“Release,” Dredmore said from the gap in the black stone wall, and the statue’s fingers uncurled.
“Sweet Mary.” I backed away from the thing and heard gears turning as the arm lowered. “What is that thing? A mechanized statue?”
“The property is protected by movement-triggered sentinels.” He started toward me. “They’re too heavy to knock over, invulnerable to injury, and utterly impossible to escape. Quite efficient in detaining uninvited, unsuspecting guests.”
I backed away. “Well, then, since I wasn’t invited, I should go.” I darted to the gap opposite the one I’d used to find the center, only to come up against another of the mechanized statues standing in it. I dodged its stone hands and ran smack into Dredmore.
“Hello again.” I offered a smile. “Lovely maze. What’s the forfeit?”
“Come here.” He dragged me over to the pool, holding my hand under the gaslight to examine it. “What were you thinking?”
“I’ve been thinking . . . run away, escape, call the authorities, have you arrested and charged with assault, see you imprisoned for several decades.” I yanked my arm, but he wouldn’t let go of me. “You know. The usual things.”
He forced me to kneel down on the pool’s narrow ledge and immersed my wounded hand in the icy water.
I yelped. “Damn you, Lucien, it’s freezing.”
“It will stop the bleeding.” He tore his cravat from his throat and used it to blot my palm, examining it again before wrapping the neckcloth around it. “Walsh might have beaten you to death tonight.”
I pretended interest. “For standing up for his wife? Does that generally merit a death sentence?”
“This has nothing to do with Lady Diana.” Dredmore tied off the cravat. “Walsh is involved in some sort of conspiracy against the Crown. He’s been seen with Talians, and they’ve not come here for the fishing.”
“Talians? Then why are they here?” I demanded. When he didn’t reply, I yanked my hand away. “All right. Why would he want me dead if I know nothing about this business of his?”
“You do know something. You simply don’t know what it means to Walsh and his plans, and neither do I.” He gave me a long look. “But he does.”
Kneeling there as we were, him tending to my wounds, me wanting to pummel him, and the two of us exchanging confidences, felt a bit too romantic for my tastes. “I would like to go home now. I keep early hours and if I don’t get my rest, I’m an absolute hag in the morning.”
He lifted his head. “Don’t run from me again, Charmian.”
I didn’t like what I saw in his eyes. “Oh, is this when you confess your deep and abiding affection for helpless, wounded females, and declare that you would never, ever do anything to hurt one?”
“No.”
“Pity.” I balled up my good fist and punched him in the face.
My knuckles crunched against his chin, which was apparently made of iron, and then the world turned sideways, and cool, soft grass filled my face. Dredmore straddled me, using his weight to keep me pinned under him as he hauled my arms up over my head and kneed my skirts to keep me from kicking.
“What are you doing?”
“We have several matters to settle, my sweet.” He bunched his fist in the back of my bodice and pulled it out of my waister. “At the moment, this is the most pressing.”
“Don’t.” I kept my tone calm as I lifted my face out of the grass. “If you do, I swear, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
He lifted, rolling me over before he yanked at the front of my bodice and pulled it up over my head. “That would be nothing new, Charmian.”
Once he had exposed my chemise, I waited for the ravishment to begin. Society held that seeing a female in her undergarments stimulated a male beyond any hope of self-control, and a woman who disrobed in the presence of a man—voluntarily or not—had only herself to blame for the inevitable inflammation of his passions. So even if I got away from him later and went to the police, they would tell me only that it was all my fault.
Instead, Dredmore lifted me up in a curious position, my skirts bunched around my waist, my bare legs draped over his. He used his fist to bring my hands down between us, and then tore open his shirt before inserting them and pressing them flat against his chest.
I felt the incredible heat of his skin, the hammering of his heart, and the hard bulges of his muscles beneath my palms. Touching a man in such an intimate fashion was not within my scope of experience. This was the work of strumpets, mistresses, and wives. Unmarried females were supposed to keep their hands to themselves.
I glanced up, and in that moment Dredmore looked more remote and aloof than I’d ever seen him. “What do you want from me?”
“Everything,” he said.
But he wasn’t going to take it, I knew that now, and the realization smashed through me, harder than a fist, more painful than finding my way through ten thousand mazes of thorns. He was not the monster I’d always hoped he’d be. He was only a man, and in his arms, I could be simply a woman.
If I chose to be.
I could face his wrath without flinching. He could beat me black-and-blue and I’d still taunt him. But this, this tenderness, this self-denial on my behalf, it infuriated me. I could not fight an enemy who would not attack. I would not give myself to a man whose downfall I had dreamt of causing and whose ruination I had dearly anticipated celebrating. I might as well offer myself from a street corner to anyone with two coins to rub together.
“It will end here and now,” he murmured. “All you need say is no, and I will take you back to the house.”
He was ravishing me by not ravishing me, the evil bastard. In that moment I had never hated him more. “You think you know me, Dredmore?”
“Not at all,” he said politely. “But I can feel you, Charmian. Your loneliness. Your silent longing.”
As he gathered me close, I closed my eyes and made my choice. “Goddamn you, Lucien.”
“He already has,” he murmured against my hair.
I tucked my face against his throat, opening my lips and using the flat of my tongue against his skin. He tasted salty and smoky, and stiffened when I dragged the edge of my teeth up to his jaw. There I followed the strong bone with my open mouth, turning my face into the silken locks of his black hair, letting them soothe my hot face. He bore it a few more moments before he worked his fingers into my hair and turned my mouth to his.
His breath blended with mine, and then we kissed, not with unsure pecks or tentative brushes of lips, but mouth to open mouth, capturing each other for the thrust and glide of tongues, the gasps of pleasure, the explosion of tastes. The raw intimacy of it astounded me, as did the way it stole the air right out of my lungs. That two people could do such a thing to each other and not have their chests collapse or their hearts explode seemed impossible.
I heard myself making the oddest sound, and then I went deaf to myself and the rest of the world as he slanted his head and took me deeper.
Things became rather frantic after that. I tore at his shirt, and he ripped my chemise apart, thrusting my bare breasts against the bruising plane of his chest. I rubbed myself shamelessly against him, eager to relieve the heavy aches and sharp tightness all over plaguing me. Like water on a lamp fire, I only caused it to spread.
His hands kept moving and adjusting me, a supreme annoyance until I felt more cloth tearing and the night air on my bare thighs. The shock and delight of it sent me up on my knees, my spine arching as his mouth attacked my breasts and he shoved his hands between my legs.
I felt the smooth bulb protruding from his fist the moment it touched the astonished, slick folds of my body; after a moment I understood he was positioning himself, and gazed down at him as I curled an arm around his neck.
“Lucien.” I took in a quick breath as he pressed up, seating that heavy, full plum of flesh against me. “A certain confession is perhaps in order.”
“So I feel.” He already knew, but he didn’t cast me away or shove through the thin membrane that kept him at bay. He held me suspended, watching my face. “I want it, Charmian.”
Rina had educated me about the gift I was only supposed to give a husband. Among other things, the giving often caused discomfort and sometimes bleeding. She firmly believed a woman should see to it herself before taking her first lover and had often scolded me to do the same.
I hadn’t, and now—perversely—I was glad. “Then have it.”
Dredmore’s entire body tightened as he laid me down in the grass and came up over me. At the same time, his body pressed into mine, and I felt a burning, tearing sensation.
Prepared as Rina had made me, I still bit into my lip to keep from yelping as he worked himself deeply inside a place Rina swore was made for just such a reason. I was beginning to have serious doubts. “Tell me this is the worst of it.”
“Aye.” He seemed to be in as much pain as I was.
“Just . . . be . . . still.”
Skewered as I was, I couldn’t seem to do that. My insides clenched around him, and there was some quivering involved. My body wanted up and I wanted him out, and my hips rose under his.