The Fall into Ruin, page 17
Anthony looked up at the men from his new position on the floor, cradling the distraught woman in his arms. “What did Smith do to her?”
No one answered or spoke. They all looked to be in shock and didn’t know what to do with their lady’s tears.
“Did she hurt her?”
The men shook their heads. One added, “She took Michael hostage.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Not what,” the man said, his huge barrel chest sucking in and then puffing out, his eyes never leaving Rose. “Who.”
Another scraped his hand over his full beard, hesitated for a moment, but then met Anthony’s furious gaze and said, “You.”
“Why would she want me?” he said out loud, not really expecting much of an answer from any of them.
Rose’s sobs had subsided a little but she gripped his coat front in her shivering hands like she’d never let go. Or couldn’t.
Anthony pointed to two of the men. “Build up a fire so we can get her warm.”
“It’ll give away our position,” one argued. The other went to work and quickly had flame licking timbers.
When he scooped Rose up to carry her closer to the heat, she whimpered but didn’t protest. She was like a little girl in his arms. A frightened, defeated child. He couldn’t rail at her now. Not when she had lost someone close to her. Perhaps this was the consequence she needed? But at what cost?
Anthony thought the likelihood of her friend being alive by morning to be very slim. Then again, Rose would do anything to save him. Michael. Damn it.
Once her body started to relax and her limbs didn’t shiver and shake, Anthony told the men to return to their homes, the servants back to the house.
“I’ll look after her,” he assured them when they looked as though they would fight him. A few glares were exchanged but in this meeting of wills, he was the only one with the strength to hold out. Then it was just him and Rose. His fury was banked but only just. What if it had been Michael who’d walked through the door with tears in his eyes for Rose? Would he have stayed long enough to tell them where Rose was being held and then run for his miserable, rotten life? This was why their relationship was strange. The daughter of one house and the stable lad of another. It was an imbalance that infuriated him. Michael had taken advantage of Rose’s position, her naïveté.
“Rose, are you going to tell me what happened?” he coaxed gently.
He thought she wouldn’t answer but then she shook her head, a hiccup and sniffle following.
“I need to know. Where was she? Where did you meet her?”
Muffled words met his silence. “I…I can’t tell you. She’ll ki-ill him.”
She was shaking so much. Anthony pulled away and took her hands in his, held them before his mouth and blew gently against her fingers.
“Wh-what are you do-ing?”
“You need to get warm before you catch a chill. Although it would serve you right, you little idiot.” His temper bubbled and he fought to gain hold. Fought the urge to hurt this woman who couldn’t defend herself. Hurt her until she saw what she was doing was beyond foolish.
“I-I am n-not an i-idiot.” But her tone held no conviction and he couldn’t warm her like this.
His fingers went to her muffler. It fell to the floor. Her sodden cloak followed.
“Jesus, fucking Christ. Are they trousers?” Put the lid back on. Put the lid back on.
She was soaked through every layer by the looks and he wasn’t surprised. The rain fell in wild sheets, whipped by the wind and driven down by the heaven’s response to her actions that day. Clenching his fingers into fists, he went to the chest where her dresses and padded underthings hid and pulled them out one by one until he found a blanket beneath. It was dusty but it was dry.
“Take your clothes off.”
Her golden eyes went big and wild and Anthony had to wonder if she didn’t get hurt, why was she so dazed? Was it shock? If that was the case, he was going to need more than a blanket to warm her. “Do you have any strong liquor here, Rose? Brandy? Scotch? Even port will do.”
She shook her head. Stood there like a simpleton and stared at him while her teeth chattered.
“Take. Your. Clothes. Off. Now.” He was no longer in the mood to mollycoddle, not that he had ever been.
She shook her head again. That special, shiny, Rose-like glint returned to her eye and buoyed him despite her refusals and shivers. Whatever had played out hadn’t broken her after all. He let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d held.
He didn’t waste time on more commands she wouldn’t follow. He marched back to her, dropped the blanket next to the puddle she was making on the floor with her tears and wet clothes, and started on the buttons of her shirt and then the laces of her boys’ trousers.
“You are quite possibly the most reckless, most stubborn, most pig-headed girl I’ve ever met and that’s saying something since my sister used to have that honour before I met you. I’ll put money on you catching your death this day from the bloody wind and rain and if that doesn’t happen, I’ll throttle you until you see the sense of your stupidity!”
He knew only a few ways to warm a person up from the inside. They had no alcohol so that left anger or passion. He’d try the easiest one first and leave the most tempting one for last. If he made it that long. If she made it that long.
*
Rose tried to slap his hands away but she was beyond exhausted. Her tears were dry for the moment and her face felt odd, tight, scratchy. She couldn’t remember the last time something had upset her to the point she had found herself in only moments before. If that wasn’t bad enough, now she had to endure name-calling from him? If he’d been the pirate’s son she’d needed, she would never have been alone out there. His father’s reputation might have been enough to end Smith and keep Michael safe. They should only have to mention Richard Germaine’s name and Smith should have run a long mile.
Who the hell did Anthony Germaine think he was anyway? Taking the high road while he relegated her to the shit-stained ditch? A renewed sense of self-preservation sparked to life inside of her and she tried again to slap his hands away from her clothing. She didn’t need to get warm. She only needed to get back to the house and confront her brothers, get them to give her all of their blunt and then she would go back for Michael. She’d cried her tears, now it was time to get on with it.
“You could have been killed,” he ranted.
“I know that.”
“You’re an idiot. A child. So naïve.”
“Are you finished?” she said to the top of his head as he reached the last button on her shirt. She knew she had to get dry but she could do it without his help.
“No, I’m not finished. Rose, do you have any idea… Of course you don’t otherwise you wouldn’t have done it.”
The fire at her back had stopped her teeth from chattering at least. “It was my only chance. Our only chance. I had to go. I had to do it.”
That made him pause for a moment. “Do what? Only chance for what?”
She wondered, did his nape prickle? Did his sense of whatever held him forewarn she’d practically thrown him in with her lot without much thought? Smith had promised he’d be safe but then she’d been brutal and fast in taking Michael. Would she keep her word? Rose had to hope so.
An errant shiver rocked her body and she almost fell, had to reach out a hand to Anthony’s arm to steady herself. She had lost the feeling in her feet nearly an hour ago on the return trip and didn’t know how much longer she could stay upright. It was as though ice water ran in her veins where her blood used to be. Why couldn’t he save his arguments for later? For when she was warmer and could think in straight lines?
Anthony lowered her to a stool and then bent to take off her boots. The only part of her, except for her back, that felt any heat at all was her cheeks and she had the feeling they flamed. One boot came free, her dagger falling to the timber boards with a thump. He didn’t look at her again until the second dagger shook loose to join the first.
“At least you were armed,” he noted, his tone tight, his lips pulled, his grip rough. “Stand up.”
She couldn’t do it on her own and had to place her hands against his shoulders where he kneeled at her feet. In only one more moment, he had her buckskins peeled down to her knees, the wet leather clinging like it never wanted to let go. When he put his hand behind her bare knee to pull her foot out of one leg hole, she yelped and nearly toppled.
“Not the time for maidenly protests, Rose.”
She didn’t answer. Just prepared herself for his touch on her other leg. She was essentially bared to him now, her short chemise wasn’t long enough to hide the fact that she had no smalls on beneath the soft leather of her pants. She needed to be able to move freely when riding. She needed to be able to hide herself from him now.
“I can do the rest,” she insisted.
But he wasn’t paying the least bit of attention. His hand hadn’t left the back of her knee nor had his eyes left her legs. When his fingers tightened, the anxiety that had been balled up inside of her all day was released. It fell as heavy as a stone in her middle yet it was almost liquid, warm but with edges.
When he finally did release her it was only to raise both hands to her rough shirt to push the edges aside and pull it off completely. Only he hadn’t undone the button at her cuff and the fabric caught there, pulled, restrained until her breasts jutted out when her shoulders pulled back.
A second thrill shot through Rose and where she had been cold before, she now began to burn. The way his eyes ate her up, the way his hands skated down the outside of her thighs, his calloused palms scratching, all did things to her. Delicious things. Another shiver rocked her and she watched as Anthony physically shook his head and removed his hands. It took great effort, she could see. She almost begged him to keep going.
“Sit.” His voice was gruff, husky, clipped.
Rose realised she had him then. Could make him do just about anything she wanted him to. He was the one who had given her the key to unlock this unusual weapon she hadn’t realised she’d held. Dare she use him to see how dangerous it could be? She didn’t even know how far she was willing to go. She didn’t know how far she could go. Frustrations had built inside of her until she could almost explode. Frustration that she had been bested by Smith. Frustration that she’d had to leave her friends behind. Frustration that Anthony Germaine wouldn’t cross the ultimate line for her in any way that she needed or wanted him to.
She was likely to be on her own soon enough and what if someone took her innocence from her? She’d never before thought of giving it up but then she’d never considered it an important possession either. Could she brush it aside in order to achieve her ends?
She sat.
He swallowed. The bump on his throat rose and dipped. Sweat beaded his forehead as he bent over the buttons at her wrists.
Of all Rose knew about Anthony, the first was that he held himself to the same standards as a gentleman of the ton. The loftiest and the most noble. Yet, last night he’d picked the locks to her rooms like a thief and kissed her as rake would. Who was he and where did he fit? Was he like her after all? Tempted by all things illicit, his honour only holding on by a jagged thread?
Once the wet shirt lay on the ground in a puddle of her outrageous clothing, Rose was left in a thick chemise. They had come to a stalemate. Anthony reached for the hem. It had to go. It was wet. Lord, she was wet. The air she tried to suck into her lungs felt as though it wouldn’t stay long enough to give her life-sustaining oxygen, rushing right back out again. She bit her lip. What was she supposed to do next?
The only thing she could do was raise her arms as he stripped her of her very last piece of modesty, leaving her bare, raw, flushed and wanting. When he dropped to his knees again to reach for the blanket, Rose steeled her spine. She lined up her resolutions. She came up with a plan that could have only two outcomes.
Keep Anthony on her side and at her side.
Or…
Know pleasure at his hands before she passed him over to Smith to possibly doom them both. He would no longer see her as a potential wife after that.
Chapter Sixteen
Gone was the mess of tears and sobs. Gone was the padded suit, frizzed hair and thick spectacles. In place of the Roses he’d so far met, sat a new one. A seductress with powers she didn’t even know she had.
She played a dangerous game.
He let her.
Anthony had come to recognise when Rose was thinking hard, she bit her lip. When she’d come to a point in her mind, she soothed the bite with her tongue. Now she sat before him, naked, thinking, scheming. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t work. He was too angry. Too angry to let her get to him. He may also have been slightly distracted by the thatch of curls he’d uncovered when removing the soft deerskin from her long, shapely legs. What a crime it was for her to cover her body with her padded suit. With any type of clothing at all.
All the yearning he’d spent the last few years pushing down into a box threatened to tumble forth. His cock hardened and his mouth went bone dry. Back in the days of carousing, he would have bent Rose over and entered her in one smooth movement, holding on to her ample hips as he drove into her. Had she been a doxy, a tavern wench, or an indiscreet widow out on the town. But this was Rose. His intended wife. His future boss’s daughter.
All of that should have been important. It should have beat a warning with the sound of his heart in his ears. But it didn’t. He couldn’t look away. He could only think of how big her breasts were. How heavy they would sit cupped in his hands. How wide he would have to stretch his lips to suck her nipples and more into his mouth. Then his gaze dropped lower still.
How he wished he could hold on to the anger, to the rage, to the knowledge she’d deliberately set out in a howling storm to meet London’s most dangerous criminal this decade, hell, perhaps this century.
But he couldn’t. Hold on to it that was. He could barely function as anything but a man in those moments. He was harder than the stone of the castle and she looked softer and more delicate than a spring raindrop clinging to a flower petal.
He was close enough to reach out and touch if only she was his. If only she gave him a sign, an invitation that she was tempted to sin as much as he was right then and there. No one need know. Instead, he kneeled before her and retrieved the blanket, his fingers closing around the scratchy wool.
The remaining moisture left his mouth when Rose blatantly opened her legs, her bare little toes crawling along the floor until she’d found her balance and was leaning towards him, her arm outstretched.
“Thank you,” she murmured, the tips of her fingers brushing his as she took it from his hand.
He let her take it but then stilled her with a grip on her wrist, gentle, undemanding, completely at opposites with how he was feeling inside. With his other hand, he smoothed the silky satin of her thigh, his thumb so close to her core he almost dared to close the distance.
He’d become someone else overnight, over the last few days, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. This wasn’t the boy who’d run wild in the night drinking, gambling, fucking anyone who looked his way with a smile. It wasn’t the man who’d broken his ankle and spent two months drinking alone in the dark. It definitely wasn’t the man he longed to become, one of honour and integrity. “Do you know how much I’d give to taste you right now?” he said as he was held spellbound by his own movements, by her lack of virginal outcry, by how achingly close he was to curls that glistened with moisture and promise.
“How much?” she responded, breathy, feminine, alluring.
“Everything.” But then reason finally clashed with wanting. “But it’s wrong. So, so wrong.”
“No one would ever know.”
His heart gave an almighty thump. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” He went to lift himself back to his feet and give her some privacy, some distance, but then she was tilting forward from the stool and straight into his arms again, her chest pressed to his, her hands on his face, the blanket discarded much the same as all the common sense in the room.
“I’m so cold.” She gave an almighty shiver as if to shore her story with some substance but all it did was rub her breasts against his shirtfront.
Flashbacks of the night before invaded his mind and supplied him with the memory of her pink nipple, the weight of one tear-dropped mound in his hands as she’d mewled like a baby kitten before a saucer of cream.
He nipped her jaw and then pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her neck. He should step away. “Not a good enough reason to do this, Rose,” he said, between tastes of her salty, rain-washed skin.
A smile curved her lips just before she tilted his face back to hers, pressed her mouth to his, her tongue sweeping right in as all coherent thought fled.
Thinking with a mind of their own, his palms floated over her back until he reached her derriere where he found purchase and both squeezed and directed until her sex came to rest against his, the fabric of his trousers the only barrier left now. In minutes she would be so frightened, or daunted, she would call a halt to the sensual onslaught. He had to let her find her own boundaries and then call a stop.
On and on their tongues duelled and his hands mapped her curves. His body ached for satisfaction but his mind knew no matter how far this went today, he would find no relief within her body or at her hands. Rose was an innocent no matter how much she wanted to play the harlot, to distract him from her madness.
When next they came up for air, Rose was earnest when she murmured, “I hate this feeling.”
Anthony’s hands and lips came to a complete stop, as did his heart. “What feeling?”
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, her sigh long, loud, frustrated and obviously unaware how close to his mouth the movement lifted her breasts. Still he didn’t let her go as he should have. “This intensity inside of me like I could explode if only I could find the trigger. You make me want to crawl out of my own skin.”
