Part 22 (1/2)

Lydia threw herself against him, holding his face in her hands as she kissed him, cutting off whatever else he might say. How she'd missed him these past two nights. How she'd lain awake hour after hour, longing for his touch.

There was no shyness now, no need for him to hold himself back for fear of frightening her. She told him that in the way her hands moved over him, pus.h.i.+ng his jacket from his shoulders, fumbling with the b.u.t.tons that held his trousers shut. There was only this hunger, this urgency...

”Oh G.o.d, oh, sweet Christ...” He bit down on her earlobe as she pressed her hand against him, eager to feel his arousal, glorying in his swiftly indrawn breath as she freed him, closed her hand around him.

She knew the center of her pleasure now, and wanted him to feel what she had felt. She wanted, needed, to give, as he had given to her.

”Tell me how,” she said, her breathing quick and labored as a sweet, tugging tension began to blossom between her thighs. ”How do I love you?”

”You don't have to...like that,” he all but moaned as she slid her cupped hand up and down the soft skin that felt like velvet over the steel of his arousal. ”Oh, yes, sweetness. Just like...that.”

He rested his head against her chest as he stroked her nipples through the thin muslin of her gown, his touch isolating her sensations, making her doubly aware of how his touch affected her. The tug, the slight pinch of his thumbs and forefingers. She cried out with the intense, concentrated pleasure that set off small, antic.i.p.atory explosions between her legs.

She squirmed against him, her body refusing to be still, and he somehow managed to raise her gown until the thin muslin was bunched around her hips. He fingered her still throbbing flesh through the fine lawn of her undergarment, her teeth clenching as she willed the barrier gone, all barriers gone.

Her urgency transferred itself to her hand and she stroked his fullness faster, each pump of her hand more frantic somehow, until they collapsed together on the blankets, a fever of desire and wanting urging her on, dark thoughts coming to her...and seeming so right.

What he had done for her...she would do for him.

As her lips closed around him, as she tentatively ran her tongue over the silk of him, Tanner said her name in a way that told her that there was no world outside this secret bower for either of them. They needed only each other, all that they could give, all that they could take. There was no right, no wrong, no lingering worries...not for now, not for this moment. There was nothing in the world except the two of them, lost in the loving.

He rolled her onto her back, kneeling above her as she raised her hips and he rid her of the last barrier between them. Her thighs fell open of their own accord, a wordless invitation he took up immediately, sinking into her in one long stroke, and then holding her close, kissing her deeply, hungrily.

”Lift your legs, my darling Lydia. Wrap yourself around me. Take me in...take me in...”

She did as he said, wrapping her legs high around him, the move bringing more of him inside her, pressing their bodies close together, so that each time he withdrew, each time he filled her again, the tension between her legs grew tenfold, until she was begging him for the release that eluded her.

Until he began to move faster. Faster. She hung on tightly, certain now she would soon die from the intensity of her pleasure. ”Tanner...please. Please, if you love me...”

It began at the very center of her. She closed her eyes tightly, simply grateful for the longed-for release of tension. But like waves. .h.i.tting against the sh.o.r.e, the onslaught of feeling was relentless, wave after wave cras.h.i.+ng against her, touching every part of her. Again, and again, and again, explosions of the purest delight following hard upon each other as her body throbbed against Tanner's, pulling him in, convulsing around him as he cried out in his own climax.

He collapsed against her, his breathing ragged, and she pressed frantic kisses everywhere she could touch him until, finally, reluctantly, her limbs relaxed, her heart slowed its mad pace, and she could simply hold him, a sweet lethargy overtaking her.

”We...we're getting rather good at this,” he said after a long, comfortable silence, and Lydia found herself smiling, even as tears that had escaped her ran into her ears, tickling them. ”We may find a bed boring.”

”I don't think so,” she told him as he levered himself onto his back, sliding one hand between them, to pick up hers, bring it to his lips. ”I think I'm lying on more than a few stones the blankets didn't quite cus.h.i.+on.”

”And you didn't mention that until now?”

”I didn't care until now,” she told him as he sat up, drawing her up with him. ”Do we have to go back? Couldn't we just have Roswell bring us food and fresh clothing, and stay here forever? Or at least until the first snowfall?”

”I wish we could,” he said, and she heard the sincerity in his voice. And, sadly, she knew that the world was back again, and the problems they'd left behind them at Malvern.

”Mr. Flanagan is in gaol, Tanner. I'm sure he can be made to tell you where he hid the jewelry he took. And the Malvern Pride may be missing, but it hasn't been stolen. We'll find it, eventually. Justin's rather enjoying himself, looking for it.”

”And Jasmine? Can I really send her off to her aunt? She just lost her father, Lydia. She may say she wants to go, but it seems wrong to me, somehow.”

”Because you'd be happy to see her gone?”

He turned to her as he slid one arm into his jacket. ”Yes. That's exactly why. She's without father or dowry or-”

”Virginity,” Lydia said, finis.h.i.+ng his sentence, as she was sure he didn't want to do. And then she said what she didn't want to say. ”It would only be for a year, Tanner, until her mourning period is over. You could give her a dowry, and we could take her to London. She's quite beautiful, and she can be quite charming. And with the Duke of Malvern sponsoring her?”

”Only a year,” he repeated as he exited the hunting blind and turned to a.s.sist Lydia. ”You don't even like her, and you'd agree to her living with us for the next year?”

Lydia went up on tiptoe, and could then see the roofs of Malvern. ”It's a rather large house. Justin will be leaving us soon. She could help us hunt for the Malvern Pride.”

”Perhaps a month or two with her aunt?” Tanner said. ”While we travel to Ashurst for your sister's wedding, and then perhaps go on a tour of the Lake District or some such thing? She wasn't entirely blameless in all of this, you know, much as I think it was her innocence that betrayed her.”

Lydia had her reservations about Jasmine's innocence, but Tanner was the duke, and he had obligations. She wouldn't make things difficult for him. ”I think I'd like to see the Lake District with-”

Tanner's head whipped around, in the direction of the sound of a shot. ”That came from Malvern,” he said, taking her hand.

A second shot was fired, just as loud, just as startling.

”Pistol shots. Almost like a signal. It might be Justin, trying to summon me. Something's wrong. Lydia, you stay here. Go back inside the blind. No one will find you there. I'll come back for you once I know what's happening.”

”No.”

Tanner had already taken three steps away from her, obviously believing she would do as he said. Now he turned to look at her in some shock. ”Lydia, please.”

”I said, no. A year ago, a month ago, I would have done just as you said, Tanner. But not now. I'm coming with you. And if I slow you down, I'm sure I can find my way. After all, I just have to keep going downhill, don't I?”

”Lydia, I-oh, all right. We're wasting time.” He reached back, took her hand, and they began their descent, the way not steep but made easier because of the incline they had to travel on their way up to the hunting blind.

Halfway down, they could see Roswell and two footmen coming across the scythed lawns, and Tanner changed direction, taking an intersecting path that led, not back to the gardens, but more toward the front of the large building.

Lydia, her skirts hiked high in one hand, fought breathlessness as Tanner picked up their pace, feeling almost giddy as he only barely held himself back from an all-out run.

”Roswell, I'm here!” he called out as they neared the bottom of the last small rolling stretch of hillside. ”What the b.l.o.o.d.y blazes is going on?”

”Oh, Your Grace,” Roswell said, holding on to his periwig, his thin cheeks flushed nearly scarlet from his exertion. ”It's that man, the one you conked on the noggin the other night. He's...he's here. He's got Miss Harburton. And...and he's shot the baron.”

”Sweet Jesus! Is he-”

”I don't think so, Your Grace, no. They're all in your study, Your Grace. Locked up tight inside. The man...he said to fetch you, so I-”

”Stay here,” Tanner told Lydia, putting his hands on her shoulders and giving her a single shake, as if to put emphasis to his words. He turned to one of the footmen. ”You, go to the stables. Have one of the grooms take my horse and ride for the doctor. Send another one for the Squire. Now! Roswell, where are my pistols?”

”I've got Jeremy loading them up for you, Your Grace. He said what he knew how. He's...he's waiting on you just inside the Great Hall, Your Grace!” he called after Tanner, who had already begun running toward the front doors.

”Roswell, what happened?” Lydia asked the butler, her eyes following Tanner. ”The man was in gaol.”

”Yes, my lady. But, you see, it isn't really much of a gaol, being as how we don't need one much. And Rodney Sykes, who stays there when there's a prisoner? Well, he drinks a bit, and sleeps even more. I can't say more than that, my lady, because I don't know. There...there was a knock on the door and this fool boy here,” the butler threw a quick glance at the young footman who was still standing with them, ”he just opened it, and the man came strolling in bold as bra.s.s, holding a brace of pistols and demanding Miss Harburton be brought to him at once.”

”Yes, you already said he's got Jasmine. Where does he have her?”

”In the master's study, my lady. She was unfortunate enough as to come down the stairs just then, and he pointed one of the pistols at her and said she needed to come with him. To the study, my lady. The baron was in there, pulling all the books off the shelves even after I asked him kindly not to, and we all heard a shot and Miss Harburton screamed and said he'd killed him and I heard the baron tell her to stop screaming, because he wasn't dead.”

Lydia pressed a hand to her mouth, trying very hard not to scream herself.