Chapter Twenty-Six
“O pen the door!” Verda screamed. She crawled atop the trunk Mama had demanded she shove in front of the door. “The door. Open it! Papa, please,” she whimpered. The tears blinded her. She would never be warm again. The light. She needed light. But there were no candles. No fire. She climbed down and ran for the window. Yanked on the heavy drapes. She pushed a chair to the wall and climbed on that to reach the fastener. “I can’t get it,” she shrieked. “I can’t get it.” Her sobs hiccupped; her words broken. The latch was too hard for her fingers. They were too small… darkness closed in… she couldn’t breathe—
“Verda. Darling, wake up.”
Her body shook through the lethargy. She reached for the raspy depths of baritone.
“I’m here, love. That’s it. Wake up.”
Perspiration coated her skin. “Mr. Oshea?”
“How quickly you forget,” he teased. “Must I remind you, it was Sander not so long ago. It’s certainly acceptable for someone who’s tasted—”
“Sander,” she said quickly, her voice cracking but cutting him off before he could reveal any more humiliating revelations.
Laughter rumbled deep from his chest, vibrating against her naked body. He dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, my love,” he said, reading her mind.
Still, her face burned. Swallowing hard and unable to come up with anything coherent to say, she glanced to the windows. Black skies. The only light in the chamber exuded from the hearth in hot, red coals. Her pounding heart slowed to merely thumping. She breathed in through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. A technique that had always served in steadying her and did now.
“The nightmares…” His voice trailed.
She’d never be able to hold off his questions. Not now.
“Tell me.”
If he’d demanded, perhaps she could have prolonged the inevitable, but it was his gentleness that stole beneath her defenses.
“My mother was ill, bedbound. Papa had spent us in dung territory, but of course I didn’t know it then. I-I was eight.”
He smoothed the hair off her forehead. His lips touched her. “Go on.”
“Papa wasn’t home. The housekeeper only visited twice per week. Even then, I began to realize Papa was a spendthrift and the financial situation was dire.” She took a shallow and shaky breath. “Mama displayed paranoia tendencies. I couldn’t possibly leave her alone,” she whispered. “S-She had me move a trunk before the door.” Verda stared up at the canopy she couldn’t see in the dark. “It was quite heavy. I’m unsure how I even managed it.” She turned her head toward him.
The fire revealed a silhouette of Sander on his side, elbow bent, cheek resting on his fist. His other hand brushed her shoulder, the side of her neck, her upper arm. Soothing motions, not sexual. Offered comfort, not lasciviousness.
“Eventually, Mama quit speaking. Her hands were cold.” Her own hands squeezed into fists that rested between her breasts. She forced another breath. Deeper. “I tried to warm them, but nothing worked.” The memories flooded her and spilled out. “I did everything I could think of. I piled all the clothes from her closet atop her. The fire had long since extinguished with no coal in the chamber. The candles had burned to nubs and drowned in their own wax.”
“Dear God,” he breathed.
“I-I couldn’t get out. The trunk I’d moved”—the tears leaked from her eyes to her temples—“was too heavy. I can’t understand that,” she said with an unexpected wonder. “I mean, I’d moved it originally.”
“Jolted.”
Her gaze flew to him. “What?”
His hand tightened on her shoulder. “Your need to please your mother. Fear jolted a surge of energy and gave you strength.”
“Oh.” She took a minute to consider that, then nodded. “That makes perfect sense.” She drew in another breath. “I remember being hungry but not thirsty.”
“How long were you trapped?”
The word startled her. “Trapped? I-I was trapped. My mother was d-dead and I was… trapped… with her.” She whispered the revelation, wondered again at how she’d survived such a horrid twist of fate.
“How long?” he said again. His voice was still soft, but there was an edge.
“I-I don’t know. Three days, I think.”
Tension shrouded their cocoon. “What happened then?” Again, that controlled countenance.
“The door rattled. I thought it was Papa. I was screaming for him to get me out. I-I couldn’t stop screaming.”
His fingers touched the side of her head. Seemed to soak up her tears. He leaned over her and kissed the offending moisture. “I swear if I see him, I’ll see him paying his due.”
She blinked and rested her cheek against his chest. “You mustn’t blame Papa—”
“Who the devil should I blame, then?” he said through a stiffened jaw. “The eight-year-old girl trapped with her dead mother?”
“But—” The undercurrent of violence stopped her cold.
Sander was right. Papa had not only been irresponsible, he’d left her. Without the barest amenities for survival—no food, no coal—a small child who struggled to reach the latch on the window. Slowly, Verda rose to sitting. “Is that how you felt about… about your mother as well? That she was unable to protect you and your brother?”
His mouth opened—to refute her question?
She lifted her fingers and touched his lips. “You don’t have to answer.” His response mattered not, his presence assuaged her—the adult self of her and the child within who still harbored horrendous nightmares. He’d championed her, whether or not realizing so.
She faced him, making out the barest reflection of him in the darkness. Removing her hand, she leaned and leveled a kiss on him with every rioting emotion careening through her, felling him to his back. She moved atop his body, his warm hands spanning her waist. She used her tongue, just as he’d taught her.
The sensations were delicious and… medicinal. The feel of his tongue brushing hers, the warmth their bodies generated between them—she couldn’t get close enough.
She swung one leg over, straddling him.
“Oh, you are adventurous.” That low growl did something dangerous to her insides as he pulled her down to take one breast in his mouth.
Such sensuous torture.
The wetness between her legs that Sander had washed away returned with vengeance, warmed more by his body beneath hers. She pressed her sex against the hard length of his… “Is this magnificent specimen”—she wriggled on him—“referred to as a”—she angled her head, trying to remember what Mr. Colbert referred to as a, er,—“pikestaff?”
His mouth plopped from her breast with a harsh moan. “Where the devil did you hear—never mind. I don’t wish to know. It’s my cock.” His hands tightened on her waist, halfway splaying her hips.
“This is an interesting position,” she said, squirming about, her brows furrowing. “Is something like this possible?”
With a laugh that sounded just a tad maniacal, his hands adjusted her and he positioned his “cock” at her entrance. “Do what you will with me,” he said in that gravelly sonance that raised the fine hairs on her skin, igniting a rush of fierce desire.
Her body accepted his, filling her. She leaned down and sucked his bottom lip between hers. This was a man she could envision spending her life with. She wasn’t sure how she felt about children, but of him, Lysander Oshea… Verda Fairclough couldn’t be more confident that he was the man for her.
She moved over him, her mouth mimicking her lower body, his hands guiding her motion, driving her momentum to a soaring height. Reaching for that peak of completeness while gasping for air. Her legs squeezed against his hips. Her inner walls tightened their hold on that powerful cock. She licked inside his mouth.
The pinnacle remained just beyond her grasp. She moved faster, chasing the unattainable until she traversed over the brink with a shrill cacophony Sander swallowed with his mouth. Her fingers sunk in his hair.
He didn’t slow. Still fully encased within her, his hips rotated faster, harder. It seemed he couldn’t go deep enough. And yet her body jerked with another swifter climax, jolting through her.
His low growl echoed through the chamber. The vibration penetrated to her soul. She landed hard against his chest, her arms cramping. “Verda.”
“What?” she mumbled against him. “What was that?”
“That was our connection on a higher plane.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“You tell me, love.”
The emotion hit her with a bout of unforeseen tears. “I-I didn’t know,” she whispered.
He lifted her head and feathered her lips with the sweetest of kisses, thumbing the tears to oblivion.
A small smile filled her. “I can’t imagine what possessed me to wait until I was nine and twenty for such bliss.”
“Don’t you, you saucy wench?” The quick flash of humor had her smiling wider against his lips. “I cannot fathom how you were not snapped up at your debut.”
“I never had a debut. Papa… The cost…”
“Something for which I now owe him. You were waiting for me,” he said.
Joy blossomed in her chest. Was it possible his feelings matched hers? “Remember when you asked me if you were my hero?” she asked him, her voice low and trembling at her sudden nerve.
His body stilled, every muscle touching her, taut. “Yes.”
“You are indeed my hero.”
His reaction was stark and immediate. Left no room for doubt that he must feel the same as his mouth crashed over hers again, hot, fierce, ravenous.
*
Sander shifted Verda to his side and fought an overwhelming need to close his eyes and sleep. He was finding it especially difficult with her fingers drawing lazy circles on his torso.
“I believe I am fully energized,” she said.
His groan was one of regret and resignation. “I am not a young man, love.”
“Ah, you have aged. I hadn’t realized I’d slept so long and, alas, soundly.”
“Men require rejuvenation time.”
Her fingers stopped their light whirling. “I don’t understand.”
“At the risk of unmanning myself…” He took her hand, kissed her fingertips, then moved her hand below to his now less-than-impressive staff.
With a sharp gasp—or was it a laugh?—she curled her palm over his softened form, and damn if it didn’t stir with the contact. “ That was inside me?”
His hand pressed down on hers. “Indeed, it was,” he said with a staunchness that rivaled the Earl of Pender at his most pompous.
Breath from her gentle chuckle grazed his skin.
A contented silence pervaded and Sander closed his eyes to luxuriate in the tranquility of the moment, drifting on that higher plane. Though he’d been teasing her when he’d said it, he couldn’t believe “higher plane” was the only phrase that fit the depths of his sentiment.
Sleep fringed his consciousness, prodding him to let go.
Beside him, Verda moved, laying her head on his shoulder. “How did Mr. Colbert die?” she asked quietly.
His eyes flicked open. “A rock.”
The lips touching his skin frowned against him. “What are you saying? He tripped and hit his head on a rock?”
How was he supposed to answer such a question without ensuring her of more nightmares? “No…” He drew the word out.
“Someone hit him, then.” She sat up. The jerkiness of her motion chased his sleepiness to the precipice alerting him of her sudden agitation. “Who?” Her voice wavered, sounding almost faint.
“We don’t know.” Sander had wracked his brain all day long to come up with an answer. If he hadn’t witnessed the tick in his brother’s cheek himself, he might have believed Damien capable of offing the man in a fit of temper. He’d even considered the fact that Colbert’s death on Pender land of a plot to implicate Damien for the crime. But none of those scenarios resonated.
Sander sat up beside her and slipped an arm about her shoulders. “Enough of such a maudlin topic. I would much rather speak of our impending marriage.”
“Marriage?” The mouse-like squeal had resurfaced and ascended to the rafters.
A most encouraging turn, he decided.
*
Verda drew in a slow breath, while her heart pounded like heavy, uneven footfalls in an empty church. A second later, the erratic heartbeats leveled and annoyance set in. Sander’s words were surely due entirely to his overly gentlemanly sense of duty. She swiftly detached herself from his hold. “That is completely unnecessary, sir.” She almost made it from the bed.
Before one foot hit the floor, he had her by the wrist. “Oh, no, you don’t, love. There will be no one-sided lines of repertoire followed by hasty escapes.”
“Mr. Oshea,” she said stiffly. “I am firmly on the shelf and not in need of your saving.”
He tugged her wrist, flailing her to her back, then loomed over her. It was too dark to make out his expression. “I thought we agreed it was Sander,” he growled.
“I don’t feel like saying your name right now.” Heavens. She sounded like a petulant child.
“So, my ruining you is not enough to entice you into wedded bliss, eh?”
A sudden sting burned her eyes. No.
“And if you’re with child?”
She should shove him off her. But he was large, and warm, and curative for the life in which her father had imposed. Still, she wanted more. “You teasing me is not an enticement, sir.”
He fell to her side and wrapped her in a cocoon of shelter. He let out a long sigh that warmed her temple. “Still, you’ll marry me, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes. I shall. But be warned, Mr. Oshea, I am not one who is swayed with sweet words and tenaciousness.” The fabrication rolled primly from her lips. “But you win.”
“Thank God. I was about to give up.”
She burrowed in his side, smiling against the warmth of his skin. “Yes, I sensed it so,” she whispered, letting his very tenderness seep into the depths of her soul.