Chapter 56
Fifty-Six
“At least two days,” Marcus said huskily, after they had touched, tasted, and explored all the different and delicious ways their bodies fit together.
They lay cradled together in a tangle of clothes and blankets.
The candles in the lanterns had burned down and the bubble of light that held back the bone black darkness glowed closer, warmer than before—or perhaps that was just Marguerite’s imagination.
Her body certainly felt as if it was glowing. Wondrously relaxed and at the same time, every nerve ending vibrating with pleasurable satisfaction. Marcus had not only made love to her, he’d made love with her, allowing her mouth and fingers to do whatever they wished.
Resting against his side, her head on his shoulder, she gazed at his body in wonder.
Marcus Tyndale had the body of a soldier, lean, muscular, and crisscrossed with scars, on his arms, his back, his chest. She traced the ridge of the slash that ran across his forearm and down across his ribs.
It ended just above his hip, her fingers continued down, feeling the shift of rough to smooth skin, over the curve of bone, down to his thigh, to the soft length of his penis.
He shifted, catching her questing fingers in his, before they could curve around it and she caught her breath.
After everything they’d done together, was he going to chastise her for being unnatural?
A wanton? Men were changeable like that.
Marcus seemed different, but she was just getting to know him.
Gerard’s voice rose unwelcome in her head: on your back, spread your legs, keep still. Only whores move.
She braced herself, vowing she wouldn’t allow him to make her feel dirty for doing what she wanted, instead of what she was told to do.
“If there is a child, I will marry you.”
“What?” His words were so far from where her thoughts had been she struggled to make sense of them. “Marry?” Marriage was as far from her thoughts as…giraffes, or physics. She enjoyed the freedom of widowhood. Had only just begun to explore it. “That’s really unnecessary.”
“But it is.” He raised himself up on one elbow.
“Why?” The resolution in his voice startled her. She sat up, pulling a blanket around her.
“I will not leave a child behind.”
Relief and amusement swept over her. She laughed.
“If that is all that concerns you, then rest assured, there will be no need to do what you English call ‘the honorable thing.’ I’ve been married since I was fourteen.
Do you know what my late husband called me?
” She allowed a beat to pass before repeating Gerard’s scornful name for her, “The barren mare.”
“That was unkind.”
“He often was. I learned to live with it.”
“I would not be.”
She dipped her head. “Thank you for your gracious offer, but no.”
“Are you so certain that your husband wasn’t a gelding, rather than a stallion?”
In truth, it hadn’t mattered who was at fault, only whom Gerard had chosen to blame.
He was gone. There was nothing left to tie her to him or to the de Rouvroy family.
She had money in the bank, freedom to paint, and, thanks to Marcus, artwork with which to make her name. “You needn’t worry about it.”
“But I do,” he persisted.
“Why is this so important to you?”
He gripped her arm, eyes boring into hers. “I will never leave a child behind.”
She peered up at him, at the fierce expression on his face. Like a soldier who’d chosen the hill he would die on. Had he been discarded as child? He’d mentioned his French mother, but not his father. “Are you a bastard?”
He inhaled sharply. His grip tightened. “Does my social status matter? Do you think I’m not good enough to be the father of your child?”
She would have laughed again at the absurd twists their conversation was taking.
All over emotions she didn’t feel and for something that would almost certainly never happen.
But the tension in his face, his body, made it clear this was painfully serious for him.
“How can you even think that? After everything you’ve told me about yourself—that you’re a forger, a thief, a mercenary, a murderer, I freely gave myself to you.
Why would you imagine discovering you were born on the wrong side of the blanket would change how I feel about you? ”
His expression—fiercely determined, didn’t alter, and a chill swept over her.
“Or is it my social status that is of interest to you?” She scrabbled for her chemise, pulled it on, began searching for her stays.
“Is that why you made love to me? Because you think if you get me with child, I will have to marry you?
That you will be able to lay claim to an even greater fortune than the one my father has promised you?
“You really are a mercenary,” she whispered, her body shaking with disbelief as she scrambled to her feet, stepped into her stays.
He’d always seemed to be there when she faltered, ready to catch her.
Catch her. She fumbled with the laces, as the words took on a different meaning.
“Is that why you’ve been so kind to me? So gentle? So caring.” Her voice broke.
“May I remind you, Madame de Rouvroy,” he said stiffly. “You were the one who kissed me first.”
“You kissed me in my cell.”
“It was part of the job.”
Her body went cold.
“I tried to resist you.”
“Do forgive me,” she said, attempting to match the formality of his tone. Attempting to breathe. “For forcing myself on you. For besmirching your nobility. Or rather, your bastardy. Because regardless of who you really are, Marcus Tyndale, you are a proper bastard.”
She’d thought she’d learned from her betrayal and her imprisonment, but it was clear she’d learned nothing. Nothing.
Her fingers were like wet dough. Abandoning her efforts to tie her stays properly, she looked desperately around for her dress. She pulled it on over her head, knotted the sash.
“Marguerite…”
Marcus’s voice sounded shocked. Confused. The way she felt. Snatching up a lantern, she stumbled out of the circle of light and into the darkness.
“Where are you going?”
Marguerite didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to get as far away as possible from him.