"That will be hours," she said. 'The children
might be halfway to Bristol by then."
"If you would only apply a little logic, you would
see how very unlikely that is," Benedict said as patiently as he
could. "They are two children with next to no money. They must
rely on their wits and the kindness or gullibility of strangers. Even
your daughter, spawn of Satan that you believe her to be, cannot
travel at any great rate unless she hires a post chaise. To afford
it, she must take to highway robbery. She would then need to find, in
a short space of time on a small piece of road, a victim willing to
hand over an unusually heavy purse."
Mrs. Wingate regarded him through slitted blue eyes.
"Have you any idea, Rathbourne, how utterly detestable you
become when you adopt that tone of patient superiority?"
"The trouble is, you are tired, hungry, anxious,
and afflicted with an aching hand," he said. "The trouble
is, you had confidently expected a happy outcome only to have your
hopes dashed. Consequently, you are too low-spirited at present to
appreciate that I am perfect and therefore cannot be detestable."
She gazed at him for a moment, up and down, then up
again. Then, "Did your wife ever throw things at you?" she
said.
"No," he said, blinking, not merely because
the question surprised him but because he was trying to picture Ada
doing it and couldn't.
"Was she an aberration then, like Lord Lisle?"
she said. "You did say all the Dalmays were emotionally
extravagant. Yet she never threw anything at you."
"She never did," Benedict said. "We never
quarreled. We were strangers, as I told you before."
"She could not have been as emotional as you
claim," she said. "Perhaps she merely seemed so, compared
to you. A mild show of feeling or a lack of perfect logic must seem
extreme to a man who is so determinedly in control of everything."
"Once upon a time, I imagined I
was in reasonable control of my life," he said. "Now I have
a missing nephew, a stupendous scandal looming like a great storm
cloud on the horizon, and
you
."
And the dreadful truth was, he was enjoying himself.
The dreadful truth was, he was relieved they hadn't
found the children yet.
It was madness to feel this way. Everything Benedict
cared most about was at risk. He knew this; he never forgot that
storm cloud on the horizon.
But it had been a very long time since he'd courted
trouble. He'd forgotten how stimulating it could be.
"Lady Rathbourne must have been a stoic," Mrs.
Wingate said. "That is the only way she could have borne six
years of marriage to you without throwing something at you."
"A Dalmay is as likely to be stoical as I am to
sprout fins," he said. "But if you wish to quarrel with me
about my late wife or my in-laws or anything else, may we not do it
over breakfast?"
"I am not hungry," she said. She dragged her
hand through her tangled hair. "I am too frustrated to be
hungry."
"If we do not stop to eat and rest, Thomas cannot
stop to eat and rest," Benedict said.
Her gaze went to the footman, who was talking to one of
the grooms. Her brow knit.
"He has been awake for more than four and twenty
hours," Benedict said, ruthlessly flaying her conscience. "He
has had little to eat since we left London, some twelve hours ago. He
has ridden in the least comfortable part of the vehicle. He has
fought off drunken ruffians. He—"
"Yes, yes, you have made your point," she
said. "One hour, then."
"Two," he said.
She closed her eyes.
"Perhaps three hours would be better," he
said. "Do you feel faint?"
"I do not feel faint," she said. She opened
her eyes. "I was counting to twenty."
BATHSHEBA DID NOT quarrel with him about his late wife
or anything else at breakfast. She had all she could do not to fall
asleep on top of the eggs, bacon, potatoes, bread, and butter he'd
ordered heaped upon her plate.
He had an even taller heap, which he swiftly demolished.
After breakfast, she staggered up to the room he'd hired
for her and went straight for the bed, the upper mattress of which
was level with her shoulders. She somehow clambered up the set of
steps. She sank onto a mattress of cloudlike softness.
The next she knew, a chambermaid was talking to her and
the sun was streaming in the window. The angle of light told her it
was midmorning.
"You ordered a bath, ma'am," the chambermaid
said. "Shall we bring it up now?"
Bathsheba sat up and looked about her. She'd stayed at
countless inns, but never in a room as luxurious as this. A
washstand, a dresser, and a set of shelves lined the walls. A mirror
stood on the deep windowsill, and a tall horse dressing glass nearby.
At the opposite end from the bed, more chairs surrounded a small
table. Pristine white curtains draped the window and the bed. The bed
linens were clean and dry. A fire burned in the grate, eradicating
all traces of the previous night's and early morning's chill and
dampness.
Now she was to have a bath. With hot water and good
soap. In a tub in a great, sunny, warm room. Unheard-of luxury.
But not for Rathbourne.
"How I long for a bath," she had said—or
mumbled, rather—at some point during breakfast.
And he had told Thomas and Thomas had told somebody and
no one had seemed the least put out.
Now she watched a pair of servants carry in a tub.
Behind them came a short parade of more servants carrying pitchers
and buckets.
As soon as they had all gone out again, she latched the
door and tore off her clothes.
AFTER BREAKFAST, BENEDICT and Thomas retired to the
narrow servant's room adjoining the guest chamber Benedict had hired
for "Mr. and Mrs. Bennett." Leaving Mrs. Wingate to sleep
in solitary splendor atop three mattresses, Benedict took a nap on
the narrow cot, Thomas on the floor beside him.
Sometime later, feeling sufficiently refreshed, Benedict
rose and bathed, using the large basin Thomas had borrowed from next
door.
At present, having done his best with his master's
clothes, the footman was seeing about the carriage. Since that would
take time, and the bill must be settled and the servants given their
gratuities, Benedict decided Mrs. Wingate need not be wakened for
another quarter hour or so.
He was about to sit down to pull on his boots when he
heard loud whispering in the corridor outside.
"It can't be Lord Rathbourne," said one voice.
"Mistress says it were," said the other. "She
seen him at the ticket office."
"She must've been dreaming."
"How could she when she don't never sleep? She said
it were him, big as life, along with a servant."
"Mebbe he rode on."
"She says he never did. She says he come here. And
now I'm the one as has to find out why he didn't stay at the Bear
like usual nor even stop in for his breakfast. And what was wrong,
she wanted to know, that he gives his custom to the Crown, when all
these years him and his lordship his father and all the rest on 'em,
whenever they comes to Reading, they always stops at the Bear?"
Benedict swore under his breath.
The landlady of Reading's Bear Inn should have been
called Argus, for she definitely possessed more than the usual
allotment of eyes.
He should not have come within a mile of Reading. He was
too well known, and not only at the Bear.
"She can't expect you to ask
him
,"
the first voice said.
"Well, I wouldn't, would I, even if she told me to.
Do I look daft to you? I'll ask his manservant what the matter is."
"If it
is
his manservant," said the first voice. "If she wasn't
seeing things that wasn't there."
Not waiting for the man to knock or listen for signs of
life within, Benedict noiselessly latched the door to the hallway,
crossed the tiny room, silently opened the door to the guest
bedchamber, and slipped inside.
Very quietly he closed the door behind him.
He heard a sharply indrawn breath.
He turned… and froze where he was.
Mrs. Wingate froze, too, in the act of rising from the
bathtub to reach for the towel draped upon the chair.
He found his tongue. "I beg your—"
"Ohhh—" She slipped and started to
topple.
He shot across the room, scooping her out of the tub and
up into his arms while the bathtub rocked, sloshing water.
She was wet, and slippery as an eel, and she was
struggling—to hold on or get away, he couldn't be sure. Trying
not to drop her, Benedict bumped into the chair. He lost his footing
on the wet floor and went down, landing on his back with her on top.
The chair skidded across the floor.
He tried reaching for the towel, but the chair was more
than an arm's length away. Meanwhile, she was straddling him, and her
breasts, her naked breasts, dripped onto his face as she tried to
hoist herself up. His hands slid down to cup her wet bottom. Her wet,
utterly naked bottom.
She was wet and naked everywhere, every glorious curve
glistening in the morning sunlight.
She went very still, her blue gaze locking with his, her
hands splayed on the floor next to his arms, boxing him in.
Water dripped from her chin to his.
She bent her head.
She licked the water droplet from his chin.
He remained very still.
This
is a test of character
, he told
himself
. I can and will
—
I
must
—
resist
.
She lifted her head again and gazed at him, blue eyes
wide and dark.
His gaze slid lower. To where the skin was soft and
white and… pink.
Pink, the color one found on a woman in all the
wickedest places.
One tiny water droplet gleamed tantalizingly on a taut,
rosy nipple.
He couldn't remember why he ought to resist.
He lifted his head and flicked his tongue over the
droplet.
She shivered, and another droplet slid down the side of
his neck. She bent and pressed her lips to the place. The water drop
was cool, and he felt the coolness of her damp skin. But her mouth
was warm, and the warmth spread outward from the place where she
touched him. It shot down to the pit of his belly to make it ache,
and the ache vibrated in his groin. He was hard and swollen even
before their lips met, trembling with need. Theirs was a tremulous
kiss, too, like the hesitant first step into a forbidden place.
Forbidden, yes, absolutely.
Also inevitable.
The taste and feel of her mouth—remembered,
endlessly remembered, impossible to forget—swept away
hesitation. He rushed in, like any fool.
He cupped her head to hold her in place so he could
drink deep and long. She sank down onto him, and her body made a damp
imprint on his clothes that did nothing to cool him and everything to
inflame him.
He let go of her to tear off his clothes, heedless of
buttons flying and fabric ripping. In one impatient instant he was as
naked as she. Then he crushed her body against his, warming hers with
his heat while he savored the lushness of her and the softness and
silkiness of her and while his hands hungrily roamed the length and
breadth of her: the graceful slope of her shoulders and the perfect
swell of her breasts and the dusky rose nipples, taut buds against
the palms of his hands.
She roamed him, too, in the same hungry way, and he kept
himself in check, though the touch of those slim hands tore at the
last particles of his self-restraint, and he had little other
thought—if you could call the wild need thought—than to
be inside her.
Still, in me back of his mind he knew this was once in a
lifetime, and he must make it last as long as he possibly could. He
would never have her again, and so he must have all he possibly
could, and give all he had to give. And so he took possession with
hands and mouth upon the soft up-swell of her belly and over the span
of her hips and down along the contours of her thighs. That was too
near where he wanted to be, but he hadn't the will to retreat.
He slid his hand between her legs and held her there,
possessively, held her where it was warm and damp and completely
feminine and pink, where a delicious pink bud hid amid the moist
curls. He stroked there, and she caught her breath and let it out on
the softest moan, and moved against his hand.
He had to have her then, but he had to have her
completely and absolutely. Surrender, unconditional.
He stroked along the soft folds and inside, where he
felt the hot pressure of flesh against his fingers. He held himself
in check, and pleasured her until her entire body vibrated, and he
heard her surrender in one soft cry.