Chapter 29
Outside Merry’s window the sky had the dark luster of a ripe brambleberry.
She had surrendered to a yawning abigail the formidable pile of arrayment she had worn to the ball: the heavy silk gown, the long gloves, the petticoats, the light stays, the silk stockings; and then sent the weary girl to bed.
She had meant to remove her jewels and change the sheer chemisette for a nightgown, but exhaustion had overwhelmed her suddenly, and the burdens she had disguised under a smile and a slightly nervous vivacity came slipping back with a battering strength.
Devon had retired to his own dressing room, and she was grateful that for this moment at least she didn’t have to pretend.
Part of her wanted to crawl beneath the bed linen and give her mind to the nothingness of sleep, except that the hairpins that supported her classical hair design had been placed for effect, not comfort, and they were likely to keep her awake all night if she didn’t remove them now.
She dropped tiredly onto the stool before her dressing table and sat with her head drooping before she lifted her hands to her hair.
Searching through her curls, she began to discover and withdraw hairpins, making each a might be for things that could come to pass if she told Devon about Granville’s visit.
Devon might kill Granville and be charged with his murder.
Granville might kill Devon. Granville might kill her brother.
Devon might rescue her brother and yet feel obliged to deliver him to the British authorities.
Devon might rescue her brother, try to protect him from the authorities, and then be charged himself with treason. …
So deeply did she enter the world of her own thoughts that she didn’t hear Devon come into the room, though he had made no particular effort to do it quietly.
He came to the threshold, meaning to make some casual remark to her.
The words never left his mouth. Instead he put one hand on the bedpost, watching her reflection in the mirror.
Weariness and, it seemed to him, some sort of soul-deep dejection had robbed her face of animation and hence a certain amount of its beauty, and he was reminded of the days when she was at the peak of her illness, when the ravages of disease had made her so plain that Cat had quietly removed all mirrors from her presence.
It had been in those days that Devon had begun in some unconscious way to face the fact that he loved her, when the “fondness” he felt toward her had shone on undimmed, strengthening, and he had been forced to acknowledge that her physical self had little to do with the power she exerted over his heart.
An errant memory came to him of holding her cold and shaking fingers under his as he dragged a rope around her wrists.
Fear whispered through him like a white flame, and then its attendants, which he had recently learned to expect—nausea, remorse, self-hatred.
Was it some past base act of his that brought this sad look to her face?
Meeting her aunt had made him comprehend wholly what kind of life Merry had lived before his own advent into it, and he understood almost more than he could bear about how frightened she must have been by what she had experienced on the Black Joke.
A lingering haunted quality dwelt in her remote gaze, and while her sadnesses had always touched him, since their first full coming together, her emotions affected him even more potently.
It was as though the membrane of some strange fruit had ruptured within him, spilling and spreading its seed through every chamber of his body.
Seeing her thus, his impulse was to drop to his knees at her side and weep into her palms.
Her head moved slightly, lightening the shadows on her face.
A cluster of candles on the dressing stand cast mock suns into the deep coils of her hair.
Her eyes were very blue against the gold of her skin and the lush coral of her cheeks.
The St. Cyr rubies winked in solemn splendor on her breast and on the delicate rise of her shoulders.
There was an exotic quality to the famous jewels.
The droop of the necklet seemed to describe the swell of her breasts; a gold-and-ruby cuff rested three inches above her right elbow; each of her lovely ankles—one stretched in a firm line before her, the other tucked up and under the ivory curve of her buttocks, barely revealed beneath her sheer undergarment—carried a dainty ankle bracelet of glinting gold links and small rubies.
He had glimpsed them earlier, when some turn of the dance or other movement of hers had carried up her skirts enough to reveal the radiant gems and flesh.
A flicker of distress seemed to pass over her features. Her eyes focused, and she gazed into the looking glass and saw him. Her smile was brilliant, unthinkingly arousing; but it came too quickly, too defensively, and he felt a painful, swift stab of desire.
Long-standing habit had made it second nature to him to control his features.
His face revealed the nuances of his feelings only when he made a conscious attempt to express them or when his emotions were beyond thought.
And so to Merry his eyes seemed only thoughtful and alarmingly probing.
As he had guessed, her smile had been a defense, but seeing him suddenly brought back the terror-subdued recollection that even on the Joke, when he believed the worst of her character, he had still loved her, and had told Raven so.
Her smile dwindled; her throat grew tight; her pulse began softly pounding.
Nor could she forbear to notice the picture he made, leaning with rakish ease on an upraised arm that rested against the bedpost. His other hand lay relaxed at his thigh, the long fingers negligently clasping a forgotten glass of white wine, and his unbuttoned shirt fell apart enough to give her a glimpse of the tough, inviting musculature of his chest and his stomach.
Slippery candlelight smoothed like ointment over his hips where they shaped his breeches. She caught a breath as he spoke.
“What troubles you, my dear love?”
Their eyes met through the chill medium of the mirror. She said nothing. The faint shake of her head, which displaced the thick curls on her shoulders, was perhaps a denial of her mood.
He came to her at an unhurried pace, standing behind her, holding her gaze. His hand, slowly lifted, came to her cheek to chart its structure with the careful tracing of a finger.
“Dear heart, can’t you tell me what it is?
” he asked quietly. She answered him with silence, her eyes drenched with startlingly bright color and apprehension, and he recalled that she had spent time in the garden talking with Cat and, according to Cat, with Raven also.
Probably she had shared what was in her mind with them, and the idea that they might be more in her confidence than he was hurt him.
But he was perversely grateful for the wound.
Suffering seemed the only way he had of paying for the unearned joy that loving her brought him.
He had said as much yesterday to Morgan, who had merely opened his dark eyes rather wide and murmured, “What an interesting fancy, child. I hardly know whether to mix you a physic or congratulate myself on how much the year’s done to improve your character. ”
Touching his fingertips along the rise of her cheek, he felt her flesh heat under his skin.
“If I could give you anything, what would it be, Merry?”
She sat curiously still, staring back at his reflection. Then a wry little smile curved her lips. “A moment or two without having to think.”
Softly he said, “Love, I can give you that.”
His face had taken on an intent drowsy look she could feel in the lower part of her body.
Her pulse skipped a pair of beats, and the tightness of her throat spread to her breasts.
She swallowed uncomfortably as the experienced fingers slipped downward, stroking lightly the taut sinews of her throat.
The heat of his body came to her from behind, his hips pressing into her back just beneath her shoulders.
His knee slid up to the cushioned seat, bracing his leg, the motion cradling her against his thighs.
“Drink,” he whispered, bringing the wineglass around her shoulder, touching the rim to her lower lip.
His other hand, cupping her throat, felt the rippling convulsions as she drank.
A delicate massage of the soft underside of her chin tilted her head, and he bent, bringing his mouth down on hers.
He drank the wine from her lips, tasting her flesh with his open mouth.
Gently supporting her chin on his wrist, he slanted the wineglass to take some of the pale liquid on his finger and trailed it in a lazy path along the inner surface of her lips, following it with the tip of his tongue.
The wine left a faint erotic glow where his light caresses applied it to the dove’s-wing softness of her lower lip, the moisture aiding his mouth’s exploration.
Her eyelids fell shut, her lips swollen and slightly parted, her breath deliciously uneasy.