Chapter 8
There was no way he could sleep.
It was late that night, and the Earl of Dragmore reigned alone in his library. One solitary lamp lighted the room from the corner of his desk. He stood in the shadows by the stone hearth, brooding, whiskey in hand. From outside, a hound howled, the sound aching with its loneliness.
Nick downed the whiskey abruptly.
He moved to refill his glass. He could not shake Jane’s image from his mind.
He was angry because of it. He did not want to be haunted by her angelic face and innocent eyes; he did not want to see that fragile smile as she hovered uncertainly in the doorway of the dining room, waiting, he knew, for him to invite her in.
He hadn’t, and now he felt like the lowest kind of heel.
He had seen her face crumble before she turned and left.
He had also seen her slender shoulders proudly squared.
And he had seen a lot more.
He had seen the way she looked at him in the hallway.
Christ! He knew she had no idea of how she’d been looking at him—and where.
Her perusal had been intent, mesmerized—and undeniably sensual.
She had stared at his chest, his belly, his groin.
With a sharp, indrawn breath, Nick reached down and tugged at his breeches to ease his discomfort.
Shit.
This was all he needed. To be the object of a schoolgirl’s crush. She was a schoolgirl. She was seventeen. Only seventeen.
And old enough to be married.
“She’s my goddamn ward,” he cried aloud, frustration welling. His grip on the snifter in his hand tightened. It shattered. Cursing, he let the shards fall to the floor. He ignored the cuts, the burning of the whiskey. He poured himself another drink.
He would have to put an end to her going without a crinoline.
He was too experienced; he easily could imagine her endless legs beneath her skirts when he saw her thus.
Now he vividly imagined them, white, slender, impossibly long.
And fantasizing made him recall her soft, graceful hands—sliding down her hip beneath his regard.
Did she know what she was doing, touching herself like that, so sensuously?
Did her skin flame beneath her own touch?
Was she inviting him to touch her like that?
Did she touch herself when she was alone—while thinking of him?
He was going to explode.
He drank more whiskey.
It eased his groin. He knew damn well she wasn’t teasing him, had no idea of her effect on his libido, knew she didn’t masturbate and fantasize about him.
He debated fucking Molly, or any one of a dozen passable maids in his employ, but decided the self-inflicted torture was welcome—he deserved it for his depravity.
He must find her a husband immediately—and get her the hell out of his house and his life.
By the time he had finished the glass of whiskey, he had an overwhelming urge to see his son.
Just thinking of Chad, upstairs, asleep, well fed, well cared for, and loved, brought a rushing warmth to his insides, something the whiskey could never achieve.
In case Chad awakened, Nick wrapped his hand in a linen handkerchief, so as not to scare him with the blood.
He silently moved upstairs, ignored her closed bedroom door, quelled the thoughts that tried to rise, and entered his son’s room.
Chad lay sleeping on his belly, his face turned toward the door, his breathing deep and even.
Nick didn’t want to awaken him, but the need to touch his son was uncontrollable.
He dropped to his knees beside the boy’s bed and gently let his hand slip into the child’s hair.
Chad stirred, sighed contentedly, but did not awaken.
Nick felt the anguish then.
He was here, where he did not belong, and he had no choice. But this, all of this, all of Drag-more and all of Clarendon, would one day be Chad’s. This made his own life bearable. This made it worth it.
Yet the fantasy was incipient but tangible.
He pictured Chad in dungarees and bare feet running in the Texas woods.
He pictured him running with his cousins, his sister Storm’s children.
He pictured him sitting on his grandfather’s knee, being regaled by tales of Apaches and Texas Rangers and grizzly bears, in the house where he had been raised. By the man who had raised him.
Raised him, loved him, lied to him.
Shit, Nick thought, caressing his son. The anguish was worse now. Well, regardless of what Derek and his mother had done (he just couldn’t think, much less say, my parents anymore), one day Chad would have to go to Texas to visit. It was his heritage as much as Dragmore.
And just the thought of taking his son to Texas brought something hot and hard to his chest. Something choking.
It had been so long since he’d been home.
What would he say to Derek? Derek, to this day, did not know he knew the truth.
Nick had seen him only once since he had found out, in late ′65, right after the War Between the States, while he was on his way to England and his new life.
He didn’t want to think about any of it.
Not about the blood and stench, the death and dying, of the war.
He didn’t want to think about the day he’d left, ridden off to fight—which was also the day he’d learned the truth about his father.
It was amazing. He’d just made love to his girlfriend, the daughter of a neighboring rancher, a kind of farewell.
And then she told him. Told him his mother’d been abducted by a Comanchero who’d raped her.
Told him how his father—not his real father, but Derek—had hunted the Comanchero— his real father—down and killed him.
Miranda had been married to Derek for only a short time before the raid; she had been mourning her first husband.
Her marriage to Derek had been in name only, hastily conducted a few weeks after her husband’s death because of an oath made between the two men, who were blood brothers.
Derek had sworn to take care of her. When she gave birth to Nick nine months after her abduction, there was no question that the father was the Comanchero.
Shocked, Nick asked her how she knew, but even in the midst of the trauma, he recognized the truth.
Because the truth was in his appearance.
He was different from them all. His father was a golden man like his own Nordic father; so were his brother and sister.
His mother had sable hair and ivory skin.
He, Nick, had blue-black hair and dark copper skin.
His girlfriend told him it was no secret.
So everyone in the territory knew the truth— except him.
Yet he thought of all the times he’d been alone with Derek, hunting, on the trail, riding cattle, in the fields.
He thought of the warmth and camaraderie they’d shared.
Derek had cared for him. That he didn’t doubt, not now, when the trauma of the truth had receded, replaced with some degree of objectivity.
But love him as a son? Impossible—because he wasn’t his son, he would never be his son, he was the bastard of a raping, murdering half-breed Comanchero.
Nick looked at his son with fierce, fierce love.
He did not believe in God. But if he had, he would have said thanks that his son would never go through what he had gone through.
That Chad had been young enough when Patricia had run away not to even notice, and young enough to get over her death without a tear.
The earl got up and left, closing the door gently.
In the hallway his eyes found her door of their own will.
He stared at it. In his emotional state he didn’t give a damn if he thought improper thoughts.
She was in bed, asleep. Probably naked except for a thin nightgown.
He imagined her breasts, small, too small, but perfect.
He imagined her hair, thick and untamed and coming to her hips.
He imagined her naked, her hair streaming down over her bare body, over her breasts, tangling between her legs. He walked downstairs.
And in his bed he lay on his stomach, hard and throbbing against the mattress.
His chest was tight, his breathing heavy.
What if he went to her door, opened it, watched her?
What if she awakened, smiled sleepily? What if he went to her, and she was naked, her body white and pink, nipples small and tight, and he touched her, touched her breasts, firm and hard, touched her waist, slid his hand between her legs and touched her …
He was moving his hips restlessly against the mattress.
With a cry, he ground his thick erection into the bed, rhythmically, fiercely.
He was alive and desperate, his rigid organ pulsating …
Nick grabbed the headboard. He gasped as his seed erupted, warm and wet on his belly, again and again.
He lay very still. He’d nearly broken the headboard. Damn. Worse. He was truly depraved. He was fantasizing about a schoolgirl. About his ward. He was depraved.
He was just like his father, the Comanchero Chavez.