The Lover Page 27

  So many things were clear now.

  The abundance of flowers in his town house. His proclamation of passion.

  He had not wanted a woman: he had wanted vengeance.

  Anne threw open the door to her bedchamber and scrambled for the matches inside her nightstand drawer. She turned on the gas in her lamp—and for one timeless second thought about Lady Wenterton.

  Hurriedly she struck a match, picked up the etched crystal globe, and lit the burner tip. Replacing the globe, she turned the light up as high as it would go.

  The walls writhed with shadows.

  Anne tore at her bodice. A button cannonaded across the room, soundlessly disappearing into faded green carpeting.

  It did not matter. Nothing mattered, except getting out of her clothes.

  The ridiculously frivolous, wireless bustle dropped with a muffled swish; her petticoats with a whispering hiss. She was afraid to look, afraid she would find more worms.

  The corset.

  She could not unlace the corset.

  Her abigail was asleep in her bed. Anne did not want her maid to see her like this.

  Underneath the corset her skin crawled.

  Hysteria pushed and clawed inside her, a living entity trying to gain expression.

  She would not let the earl do this to her.

  Scissors ….

  Anne frantically rummaged inside her closet for the sewing basket that had not seen the light of day for ten months.

  Her mother had thought a lady must occupy herself with needle and thread. Anne had humored her when she sat at her bedside, neatly stitching handkerchiefs that would never be used.

  The small twin blades were fashioned to snip threads; they sawed through the black satin, fiber by fiber. She threw both the corset and the scissors at the shadows that would not stop writhing.

  It did not stop the coiling inside her.

  Flinging the damp, clinging silk chemise over her head—Oh, God, he had felt and seen her lack of control—she untied her drawers and kicked them off. Vaguely shocked at her violence, she ripped off her garters and silk stockings.

  Her hair—she frenziedly plucked out the pins, leaned over, and shook out the slithering tresses, fingers combing through them over and over.

  There was no time to heat the water in the geyser.

  Hands trembling, Anne lit the twin wall sconces on either side of the mirror above the bathroom sink.

  A disheveled spinster looked out of the glass, silver shining in her pale brown hair. She was all too recognizable.

  The earl had shown her exactly what distinguishing quality she possessed.

  She twisted a plain brass tap. Rust cascaded from the spout. Unable to wait for the narrow copper tub to fill, Anne stepped into it and scrambled to fit under the spout. An icy deluge pounded the back of her head. The water was so cold it took her breath away. Straightening, she reached for a bar of soap and washcloth. She scrubbed her skin and scalp until they were as raw as her throat. When the tub was full, she twisted off the tap and scrubbed some more.

  The worms continued to crawl on her body. Inside. Outside.

  Anne held her head underwater. Her hair floated about her. Alive.

  She sat up, gasping for oxygen.

  He stood beside the tub, coatless, hatless, gloveless. Michel des Anges, the Honorable Mr. Sturges Bourne. Black hair curled through the opened placket of his white shirt. Stubbly beard darkened his face. The scars edging his cheek were stark white.

  Water streaming down her face, Anne slapped her arms over her chest. Vaguely she realized how ridiculous she must appear.

  He had seen far more than her breasts.

  “Get out. My solicitor—” Was dead. What had he done with Mr. Little’s body? “I’ll make arrangements for the bank to deposit the remainder of your money.”

  “I don’t want your money, Anne.” Regret glimmered in his violet eyes, was instantly gone. “I never wanted your money.”

  He had never wanted her money. Her passion.

  “Nevertheless—” Her strained voice cracked. She swallowed. “Nevertheless, that is what the contract stipulated. I will honor the terms. Please leave. The servants will talk.”

  Anne cringed at her hypocrisy.

  It was too late to be concerned over what servants would say.

  What did it matter what anyone said ever again?

  Gossip did not paralyze or imprison.

  It did not make one scream until one’s throat burned and swelled shut.

  It did not—

  “Get up.”

  Anne snapped clear of the yawning blackness. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said get up.” He reached for the towel on the rack beside the copper tub. “You’re turning blue.”

  “Monsieur des Anges—”

  “My name is Michael.”

  Michel is French for Michael. And my name is Gabriel.

  Black hair. Silver hair. Gray hair.

  “I don’t care what you call yourself; get out of my house! For God’s sake, haven’t you done enough?”

  One second she was looking up at him; the next they were eye-to-eye. In one smooth motion he lifted her out of the tub and wrapped the towel around her.

  “You’re going to listen to me,” he grated. “Whether you want to or not.”

  “So that I can understand?” she screamed rawly—and promptly clamped her mouth shut, appalled at her loss of control. She stood wrapped in the towel, her throat on fire, shivering, trembling, hating her weakness, her vulnerability.

  Hating that she still wanted him.

  While her mother lay dead, food for worms.

  “You think you will never recover.” Hot breath scorched her face. “You can. You will. I’m going to help you.”

  She gulped down her revulsion and gripped the towel between her breasts, wrenching control out of his hands. “I don’t want your help.”

  He loomed over her, tall, dark, handsome, everything she had ever wanted in a man. “That is regrettable, Mademoiselle Aimes, because you’re going to get it.”

  “Don’t address me in French!” she lashed out, impervious to the pain that slashed her throat. Water crawled down her neck, her shoulders, her arms, her legs, reality unavoidable. “You’re not French! You lied to me! You told me you wanted my passion! You didn’t want me! You used me!”

  “But I do want your passion, Anne.” His expression was hard; the violet glitter in his eyes unmistakable. “And you’re going to give it to me.”

  Fear crowded out reason.

  He blocked the entrance to the bathroom door; the tub blocked her from behind.

  There was no place that was safe.

  Nowhere to hide from the truth.

  “If you do not step aside, I will—”

  “What, Anne?” he asked provocatively. “What will you do?”

  What could a woman do to stop a man?

  She had not been able to stop the earl.

  She had not been able to stop the street sweeper who had knocked her into an oncoming cab.

  She had not even been able to control her own body.

  The trembling rose up inside her.

  “You were going to kill me.”

  The memory of her hat pin and his saliva-moistened penis glimmered in his violet eyes. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  But he had hurt her.

  “He said you killed your family.”

  “What did he accuse you of, Anne?”

  She did not want to tell him. The words tore out of her throat.

  “He said I killed my mother.”

  “Did you?”

  Anne slapped him, she who had never raised her hand against anyone or anything in her life. The slap resounded in the small bathroom, flesh impacting flesh, for no other reason than to hurt. Because she could.

  She cupped her mouth in horror.

  Her fingers tingled; they felt as if they had been impaled with hundreds of tiny needles.

  Four finger
s imprinted his left cheek underneath the dark stubble. Violet fire flashed down at her. “We were going on a picnic down by the sea, my mother, my father, my three younger sisters, and I. I was eleven years old, preparing to take my exams to enter Eton. My father joked that I was a man, that I should drive him. He gave me the reins to the gig. The reins snapped. The horses wouldn’t stop. They ran off the road, across a field, straight toward the edge of the cliff. Out of the blue my uncle rode up. He didn’t try to grab the lead horse, to stop them. He reached out. My mother grabbed me and threw me into his arms. His horse reared; it threw us both. My uncle was trampled. I lay on the ground and watched my family go over the cliff. He has taken away everything I have ever cared about, Anne. I’m not going to let him destroy you, too.”

  Anne slowly brought her hands down. Reins did not snap.

  “He killed them.”

  “Did he?” he parried cynically. “Or did an inexperienced boy lose control and send his family over a cliff?”

  Guilt. The other side of love.

  “The reins were cut through,” she said decisively.

  “So where are the reins? There’s no proof. He was an earl. My father was the younger son. Why would he kill his brother?”

  Anne did not have any doubt whatsoever as to why the earl would kill his brother. “He’s insane.”

  He smiled. There was no humor in it. No warmth. “My uncle is many things, but he is not insane. I never lied to you, save for the fact that I knew who you were before we met. I told you I waited at the night house hoping that the woman who solicited my services would see my scars and still want me. You were the woman I waited for. You were the one I hoped would want me. I wanted revenge, Anne, but I wanted your passion far more. I wanted to hold you, to please you. You solicited me. My body. Did you care about me? My wants? My needs? Tell me, Anne Aimes. Who used whom?”

  Anne sucked in air at the base unfairness of his accusation. “I did not endanger your life.”

  “You endangered your life the moment you walked out of the night house with a stranger. There are men who take pleasure in hurting women. Some men take pleasure in killing.”

  Men like the earl.

  For a few moments she had forgotten the horror she had endured. The writhing need inside her body.

  His level rejoinder brought it all back.

  The horror. The hunger.

  Voracious sexual appetites, the earl had said. Dreadful delights.

  … Your lust brought you to this. If you had controlled your sexual appetites and stayed in Dover, you would be safe. If my nephew had controlled his lust and remained in Yorkshire, you would be safe.

  But she had not stayed in Dover. And Michael Sturges Bourne had not stayed in Yorkshire.

  And now here they were.

  He stepped aside.

  She rushed past him.

  She would not be victimized by her needs.

  Anne paused on the threshold. The clothes she had strewn about her bedchamber were gone. A white sheet covered the mattress; the two down pillows in their embroidered white cases were plumped. The remainder of the bedcoverings were folded over the foot of the four-poster bed. Yellow flames snapped and crackled inside the Adam’s fireplace. A silver tray rested on the nightstand beside the gas lamp.

  She blinked in confusion.

  The aromatic sweetness of chocolate flavored the air.

  Rough cotton brushed her cheeks; her streaming wet hair was pulled back and gently rubbed inside a towel.

  Anne jerked away from the gentle ministrations and swirled around.

  He held a damp hand towel, violet gaze alert. Watchful. Predatory.

  Blue shadow darkened his hair and face.

  She had touched the stubble of his beard while he slept. Had kissed that perfect, chiseled mouth.

  And did not know who she had touched or kissed.

  Michel? Or Michael?

  Her heart violently beat inside her breast, her vagina. “I don’t want you.”

  Purposefully he reached for the towel she clutched between her breasts. “Now who’s lying?”

  His fingers were hard; they were roughened with scars.

  Anne could run. Or she could confront him.

  The power of a woman.

  “If I do want you, it is only because of the silver balls.”

  “I know.”

  The towel slithered down her body and bunched around her feet. She clenched her hands into fists and endured his examination, fighting humiliation, fighting excitement. His eyes caressed her calves, her thighs, the damp thatch of hair at the jointure of her thighs, her stomach, her breasts.

  Every place on her body that he had touched.

  Her nipples were hard. She could not lie to herself and say that it was because of the cold.

  He had always known how much she wanted him.

  “I paid you,” she said harshly.

  His eyes met hers. Violet flame glinted inside their depths. “I know.”

  “It’s not you I want,” she said deliberately, cruelly—hating herself, hating him, hating the earl for destroying the only beauty she had ever experienced. “Any man would do.”

  The light in his eyes dimmed. Rough, scarred hands cupped her face. “I know.”

  She opened her mouth to take back the words.

  His mouth closed over hers, lips softer than rose petals while the stubble on his chin abraded her skin.

  This was what she had wanted, surrounded by death. His kiss. His embrace. He was the one she had prayed to God to save her.

  She wrenched her head back.

  Denying him. Denying herself.

  He held her face up to his, his breath feathering her lips. “If you fight me, Anne, I will tie you to the bed. Don’t make me use force. Let me help you. Let me show you ….”

  Anne stiffened. She could not stop the flow of antagonism. “As you showed Lady Wenterton? Did you help her by tying her to the bed?”

  His fingers tightened around her head and dug into her wet scalp. “No, but I wish to God that I had. Perhaps then she would still be alive. But she didn’t want me to touch her. I respected her wishes. I thought time would heal her. And now she’s dead.”

  Taken from him as his family had been taken from him.

  Water dripped down her back, dribbled between her buttocks. The heat of his body scorched her lips, her face, her breasts, her pelvis.

  “I am not in danger of taking my life.”

  “There are many types of death, Anne.”

  “I didn’t ask for this!”

  “Neither did I.”

  “I screamed.” The heat of his body did not take away the coldness inside her. “I couldn’t stop screaming.”

  He brushed her lips with his. Slowly. Softly. Seductively. “You’re not screaming now.”

  But she wanted to.

  She wanted to open her mouth and scream until there was nothing left to come out of her.

  No more fear. No more desire.

  Anne didn’t close her eyes. She stared at herself in his pupils, a plain, pale-faced woman trapped by her own passion.

  Sighing, he closed his eyes, long black lashes a tangle of silk on his cheeks. His tongue thrust into her mouth. The shock of it bolted through her womb.

  Anne closed her eyes, her mouth involuntarily opening wider.

  The darkness behind her lids writhed.

  Suddenly the writhing darkness shifted, tilted, raced up to meet her back and buttocks.

  Anne’s eyes popped open. She lay on the bed.

  White linen fluttered to the floor, revealing a mat of black hair, two small, hard nipples, and contoured muscles.

  Michel’s chest. Michael’s chest.

  She struggled to sit up, to counteract the roll of her body, hair entangling her, impeding her, robbing her of what little dignity she still possessed. “I will not be forced!”

  The mattress sank; he sat beside her, all fluid muscle and masculine temptation. “I have no intention of forcing you.
”

  “You do not think that tying a woman to a bed is force?” Her voice broke, trying to reach a pitch of hysteria it could not make.

  Reaching out—corded muscles flexing, metal a piercing clang—he lifted the domed cover off of the silver tray.

  She remembered the silver-covered serving dish on the earl’s lap. Remembered the worms it had been filled with.

  Anne broke free of her hair and bolted upright. Only to stare in surprise at a large silver sauce dish and a banana.

  He set the lid onto the floor, mattress shifting, squeaking with his motion, then straightened and dipped a finger into the silver sauce dish. It came out coated with chocolate.

  “My uncle was my legal guardian.” He studied the chocolate on the tip of his finger with an odd blend of curiosity and contempt on his face. “No one believed me when I told them that the reins snapped. The earl had been trampled trying to save us, I was told. Why would he hurt us, his only living relatives?”

  Without warning he reached out and wiped his finger onto her left nipple. The chocolate was smooth as silk; his skin underneath it was rough.

  Hot.

  It burned.

  She jolted back in startled pain.

  His violet eyes snared hers. “Stay still, Anne,” he warned.

  Immediately the chocolate cooled and hardened.

  Her nipple throbbed.

  “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

  He didn’t want her.

  Aside from her money, no one wanted a thirty-six-year-old spinster.

  But he didn’t even want her money.

  The gas lamp hissed. Shadow skittered across his features.

  “I loved chocolate when I was a child,” he said dispassionately.

  An ember exploded in the fireplace.

  Anne was arrested. It was not her that his violet eyes gazed at.

  “I had hot chocolate for breakfast,” he said, staring at the boy he had once been. “At lunch. Before I went to sleep. My tutor quickly learned that the promise of a piece of chocolate motivated me to read Shakespeare, conjugate Latin and Greek verbs, even memorize multiplication tables. I hid my prizes and ate them in bed at night so that I wouldn’t have to share with my younger sisters. I used to dream about the day I would grow up so that I could have all the chocolate I wanted.”

  Anne almost smiled at the image of this beautiful, scarred, beard-stubbled man being bribed with chocolate to do his studies. The urge to smile faded at the thought of his younger sisters, dead because of the earl.