The household began to stir in answer to the bell rope. He heard a swelling chorus of rapid footsteps and anxious voices, his people rushing to defend him.
“Come,” he urged. “My room. Now.” He hoisted Emma up with his good arm and helped her out the door, into his room, and across it to his dressing room. An hour earlier their footsteps had been slower than ivy growing.
He put her in a chair. Her hair was down, and she still labored to breathe.
He stripped off his neckcloth and began to pull off his jacket. She stood at once to help him with shaking hands.
“Miss?” Ruth called from Emma's room. “What's happened?”
Daventry strode into the hall. “A stranger attacked Miss Portland, Ruth. Get your mother and Ned Begley.”
“You're wounded.” Wide-eyed, Ruth stared at him, then bobbed a curtsy and was gone.
He turned and found Emma at his side. She tugged him back into his room. She didn't talk, but she made him sit and began to remove his coat, her face bleak.
“I was hoping you'd undress me.” He flashed her a quick grin, turning and letting her pull the coat around his back to ease it down the injured left arm.
Mrs. Creevey bustled in with a pitcher and basin in hand. She took one look at Daventry and shook her head. “Well, we knew this day was coming. I've set Adam and Mr. C and the footmen to search the house and grounds. Ned's coming to have a look at you, and we'll have Dr. Bartling in the morning.”
She turned to Emma. “You were attacked, Miss Portland?”
Emma nodded.
“Shall I have Ruth tend to you?” Before Emma could make her injured throat work, Daventry answered.
“No.” His tone left no room for discussion. “Emma stays with me.”
Mrs. Creevey didn't blink. “You'll help then, miss.” Together they got Daventry seated next to the bathtub in his dressing room. His hair had come loose of its tie. His white shirtsleeve was torn and stained crimson from shoulder to wrist.
Mrs. Creevey cut away the ruined shirtsleeve efficiently, exposing the smooth curve of his arm and powerful shoulder. He looked again as he had when Emma had first seen him, a fallen archangel.
Blood flowed from the long, jagged wound, crimson on marble. Mrs. Creevey instructed Emma to hold Daventry's hand steady while she poured a stream of cold water over the wound to wipe away the first blood.
Immediately bright new blood welled up. Mrs. Creevey gave Emma a fresh neckcloth to press against the upper arm, while she applied pressure to the lower.
Adam appeared with Ned, who took charge at once.
“Well now, let me look at that.” Ned pulled up a bench and sat with the basin in his lap, Daventry's injured arm extended over it.
“Adam, hold the light, man.”
Ned turned the arm from side to side, looking at the edges of the wound. “The worst of it is at the top here, but it's not too deep. The fellow didn't want to lose his knife, so he didn't get to bone or veins. Can you make a fist, Daventry?”
Daventry closed his hand while Ned examined the movement of his fingers and the muscles in the arm. “Looks clean. No bits of wool in you. Let's sew you up then. Dr. Bartling can look at you tomorrow. Laudanum?”
“Brandy.”
“Tea, first, to warm you,” Mrs. Creevey insisted. She made him drink while Ned prepared his implements. Daventry squeezed Emma's hand. Ned had him lie on the bench while Mrs. Creevey spread thick towels over Emma's golden skirts. Emma took the injured arm on her knees, her hand holding Daventry's.
“Your grandfather's men are getting too bold, Daventry,” Ned commented.
Adam spoke up, “We found a broken window on the ground floor in your mother's room. No one heard a thing. Likely he came in while the servants were at supper.”
“Your brothers won't like this. A second attempt on your life in a week.”
Dav knew that, but he couldn't tell them that the attack was on Emma. Already he regretted his words to Ruth. If she talked about the episode with the others, they might wonder, as he did, who Emma Portland's enemies were and how they had found her in his house. He meant to demand answers as soon as he had her to himself again.
By the time Ned pronounced the wound closed and gave his instructions and Mrs. Creevey began cleaning up and shooing people out of the room, Dav's arm was a fiery ache from shoulder to finger tips.
He made Ned examine Emma's throat while Mrs. Creevey helped him out of his ruined shirt and into a dressing gown. He asked her to send up a plate of food and another pot of tea.
“She's going to be hoarse, and I'd have her drink cold water to keep any swelling down, but there's no bleeding. We'll watch her.”
“She stays with me.”
No one appeared shocked or surprised. So much for thinking he had fooled anyone about his desire for Emma Portland.
Adam opened the door, and Dav's people filed out and he was left with Emma. He held her hand in his good one.
She still wore the gold-and-blue dress. Only he knew that under it she wore no drawers.
“I should go.” It was the first he'd heard her speak since the attack. Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Don't think of leaving me.”
“But . . .”
“You have questions to answer.”
She shook her head.
“I know you can't speak, but you can answer with a nod or a shake of your head.”
Her eyes widened in response. He looked for the blue and saw instead deep wells of black. The black made him angry. He didn't want to love a woman who could be snatched from him at any moment by the evil that had followed her to Daventry Hall.
He lifted his head and drew a long breath. Who was he to complain? He had brought danger into the lives of his mother and brothers and their families, and yet they loved him. Emma Portland had brought danger into his house, and yet he wanted her.
He kissed her, a gentle touch of lips, not the ardent press he'd like to make, in deference to her injured throat. “I can't send Adam away.”
“They are all on guard now.” The low timbre of her voice stirred desires he needed to tamp down.
“Good. You're safe then. No one will harm you tonight. Tonight can be for us, can't it?”
Emma knew he was asking her to join him in bed. There was no leaving now. With the household awake and vigilant even Emma's skills would not let her slip away unnoticed. Her attacker had made it plain that she would die before she ever lived, while Daventry invited her to live, if only for one night. She would love him and betray him.
Emma told herself to be practical. The bed would never do with Daventry's arm. She looked away from it around his chamber with its somber earthen hues. No shadows lurked in the corners. His desk stood under the window as it had when she'd spied on him, still a jumble of books, papers, and writing implements.
Dav saw her glance at his bed. He'd lain in it for nights thinking of her in the next room and wanting the walls between them to dissolve. Now, she was here, and he had one useless arm. He could not make love to her as he'd imagined, but he had to have her.
“I want to undress you.”
He turned her round so that he could undo her bodice for the second time in one evening. She made no protest. One-handed, his head feeling the brandy, he took his time. When he freed the last button, he spread the sides of the gown and pushed it over her shoulders. It slid in a silken rush to the floor.
He had wanted to undress her from the first day he met her, conscious of the irony in his dishonorable intentions, the one legitimate son of his mother, a gentleman by birth and yet no gentleman.
His own intentions should convince him he was not meant to be a gentleman. The night before he had danced with four indistinguishable young women of good birth and lofty ambition, whose names he could not remember. They might mistake his indifference for honorable restraint, but he could not imagine wanting any of them. Whatever came of taking Emma's virginity, he would face it. Perhaps he was one of the Sons of Sin, after all.
He kissed the top of her spine above the narrow wings of her shoulder blades where the white straps of her corset passed. He stepped back to examine the fastenings that enclosed her in layers of silk and linen, a challenge for a one-handed, light-headed man.
The tapes of her petticoats gave easily, and he shoved them over her hips so she stood with her feet in a froth of white linen. Her stays curved in at her waist and out over the flare of her hips, and her thin chemise barely covered her bottom. Her stockings ended mid-thigh in blue silk garters. He closed his eyes, dizzied with lust, and clung to her waist with his one good hand, steadying himself.
When he opened his eyes again, he took in the zigzag pattern of lacing that ran up her spine through what looked like dozens of eyeholes. A two-handed male with all his wits about him would have his work cut out for him.
“I was deceived by the gown,” he told her. “The narrow bodice made undressing you, which I've been thinking about more than I should, look easy.”
“Ruth could help.” Her voice roughened by her injury did little for his condition.
“Ruth would be decidedly in the way here.” He picked apart the knot at her waist. When the ends of the laces dangled free, he hooked his index finger under the lowest loop, and tugged. After the first few he had the knack of it. The rhythm of pulling the laces lifted her body toward him and away, mimicking his intent. His breathing grew ragged as the sides of the corset parted. With the last loop freed, he pushed the open wings of the corset apart and slipped the straps down her shoulders. The white garment fell away and landed with a soft huff like a breath. She took a deeper breath and swayed a little, and he held her elbow to steady her. Her balance restored, she looked over her shoulder at him.
“Now you,” she said in that low whisper that already had him mindless. She stepped free of her rumpled clothes and faced him in her chemise and garters and stockings.
Emma stepped up to him. He smelled of blood and brandy and himself. The effort of undressing her had made him shaky. Mrs. Creevey had removed his pumps and waist-coat and ruined shirt earlier, so Emma could see a narrow swath of his chest and belly, its hard planes bisected by a line of dark, curling hair. She realized that their injuries gave her freedom. He was the knowing one, but he could not take charge as he had in all their previous encounters, and he seemed inclined to let Emma find her way.
Emma rubbed her palms over his shoulders and arms and chest under the silvery gray silk dressing gown. His belly sucked in at her touch, and she loosened the tie that held the silk gown in place. Under it he was beautiful to look at, living marble. She wanted to touch him everywhere at once. She dragged her palms up his ribs, counting them.
“What are you doing?” His voice sounded strained.
She looked up. “Counting your ribs.”
She brought her hands up to his chest, spreading her fingers out, grazing the brown coins of his nipples, sending hot sensation shooting to his groin.
He swallowed. “What's next?”
Her hands paused. “I'm counting your heartbeat.”
She leaned her cheek against his chest, then her hands dropped to the waist of his trousers. His cock leapt in response. He counseled himself to patience. She believed herself in charge, but he looked over her shoulder at an old chair in the corner that he thought would solve the problem of his weak, burning arm.
Emma made herself work the buttons of his trouser fall one at a time. With the release of the last button, his sex jutted forward in its linen case. He caught her hand and pressed it to his length, and she had to pause and lean her cheek against his chest while her heart beat madly with wanting.
Just this to hold him so alive and wanting in her hand. She paused to fix the moment in her memory so that she could possess it forever when everything else was gone. But that was selfish. She could be selfish later.
She undid the buttons of his smalls and slid her hands under linen and wool to shove his trousers down over his hips and legs. He stepped out of his clothes as she had, the long silver robe gleaming around him. She liked the structure of him, the tight cage of his ribs, the flat belly, the neat architecture of his hipbones, the long muscled thighs, his sex jutting up from darker hair.
Dav took her hand pulled her toward the old chair. She hesitated, and he could see that she didn't completely understand his intention, but he sat and pulled her forward to stand between his knees. Then he showed her how to sit facing him, her knees hooked over the chair's low round arms. There were things he should tell her about the first time, but for a moment he forgot to breathe, lost in a vision of blue garters, white stocking-cased legs, and bare thighs. With his good hand around her bottom, he shifted her forward so that their bodies almost met. Her back arched up, and she was open to him.
The irony of it stopped him. At the same time she was giving, and withholding, herself. Her eyes were an ethereal blue he had not seen yet, a blue one could only see by looking straight up to heaven on a clear day. His palm pressed to her back, holding her firmly in place, he made himself test her.
“You are no vicar's daughter, are you?”
She shook her head.
“There are no Grimsby foundlings, are there?”
“None,” she managed in that roughened voice.
“There's no Mrs. Merton.”
“No.”
“Tell me one true thing, Emma.”
Emma was dying with wanting, with the feel of his legs rough under hers and the stretch in her thighs, and the aching pulse in her woman's place that wept for him. All they had done earlier in the drawing room had been leading to this moment, and he was torturing her for the truth.