The Royal Rakes: Waking Up With A Rake Part 11

Oh, he was delicious. And he smelled of saddle leather and warm horse. His mouth was sure and firm. When he slanted it over hers and his lips parted, she slipped her tongue in as he'd done to her.

It didn't matter whose tongue did the exploring. A French kiss was just as decadently wicked that way as the other. England had been at war with France on and off for more or less forever, certainly for the whole of Olivia's young life. But for the moment, she decided French culture had at least one thing to commend it.

Heartily.

Their kiss was a whole world. A circle of two. A shared breath. Olivia felt certain their souls were mingling, all tangled up together, wandering from one body to the other, unsure which house of flesh they belonged in, but satisfied to share the s.p.a.ce equally in both of them.

Rhys's kisses moved along her jaw and then down. Ripples of pleasure undulated in his wake.

"We ought to stop," she said, tipping her head to one side so he had full access to her neck. Propriety tried to rear its prim little head, but the heat gathering between her legs rendered her words breathy and unconvincing, even to her own ears. "We need to stop."

"Mm-hmm," he agreed between feather-light kisses, but he gave no sign he intended to stop.

"I mean it." She smoothed her palms over him, reveling in the solid expanse of his broad back, the warmth of him emanating through his wool jacket.

"I mean it too," he said as his fingers found the silver frogs that held her pelisse closed. Then suddenly his hands were on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, kneading and caressing them through the sheer fabric of her column gown. Her nipples tightened, throbbing for him to touch and tease. His mouth dipped lower. For a moment, she wished she was wearing that new gown Jean-Pierre had designed for her with the built-in boning so she'd have two fewer layers separating them and a lower neckline that offered more of her decolletage.

"Rhys, please," she gasped when he rucked up her skirt and found the slit in her pantaloons. She was wet and swollen and aching for him. "Oh, please."

His questing fingers stopped, but he still held her. She pulsed into his palm, hot and needy. It wouldn't take long. She was almost there. She couldn't believe how quickly he'd driven her to that exquisite precipice, but there she was, teetering on the edge. He knew exactly what she liked, where her special spot was, and just how to stroke her. He could send her soul flying with another limb-bucking release. A flick or two of his talented fingers was all it would take.

"Please," she repeated.

"Please as in 'please stop' or 'please don't stop?'" he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. It obviously cost him dear to halt long enough to ask.

Why had he given her a choice?

Please don't stop, she longed to say, but it wouldn't be fair. In a few minutes, she'd be sated and boneless as a cat and he'd still be...well, she could feel quite explicitly what he'd be since the full glorious length of his hardness was pressed against her hip.

How could she only take and never give? She loosed a shuddering sigh, trying to collect herself.

"Please stop," she whispered. "If anyone finds me like this, all mussed..."

His face went hard as winter oak, but he removed his hand and smoothed down her skirt.

Olivia bit her lip to keep from begging him not to. He refastened her pelisse, his gaze fixed on the silver frogs as he worked each fastener. His features were strained, his breathing ragged, but he won the struggle with the urges that drove them both.

"There," he said as he hooked the last frog. "You are now returned to an 'un-mussed' state."

Perhaps on the outside. Her insides were still definitely mussed.

She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes. "If you'll excuse me, my lord-"

"Rhys. You agreed to call me Rhys," he said, grasping her arm so firmly she was sure it would leave a bruise. "Do not use my t.i.tle to build a wall between us."

Didn't he realize she needed a wall? But she didn't want to argue with him. She was too weak. It was all she could do to keep the quaver out of her voice.

"Rhys, I need to spend some time in the hothouse with my orchids. Please let me pa.s.s."

His face was a war with itself for a few heartbeats, but finally he settled and released her arm. "I'll do better than that." He stepped back. "I'll walk with you."

"That's not necessary."

"Yes, it is." His tone was firm enough; it brooked no argument.

His hand resting lightly on her elbow was comforting. A complete separation would have been agony. When they left the stable, his hand shifted to the small of her back. Any place he touched felt as if it might burst into flames, but she didn't feel up to demanding they have no contact whatsoever. Especially when every inch of her skin wanted him to touch it with a fierceness that surprised her.

They walked in silence on the winter-hard path that led to the gla.s.s and iron structure housing her plants.

"I must have been mistaken," he finally said. "I thought you liked me a little."

"I do." The problem was she liked him rather too much. She'd never understood women who allowed themselves to be compromised by a man before. Had they no spine?

She was more sympathetic to the ruined girls now.

"Then if you do like me a bit, would you care to explain why you made me stop?"

She could protest that anyone might have stumbled upon them in flagrante delicto. She could argue that he was the Duke of Clarence's representative and she the said duke's possible royal fiancee and their outrageous behavior did neither of them any credit. She could point out that l.u.s.t was one of the seven deadly sins.

But none of those would be the real reason.

"Because it didn't seem fair. I was doing all the taking," she said, darting a glance at him. "There was no way for me to give you pleasure."

He stopped walking, gave a little snort, and then a chuckle.

She kept going. "I fail to see the humor."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh when you're deadly serious," he said as he caught up with her. "There is pleasure aplenty in the giving of pleasure. This simply means you need another lesson tonight. Contrary to what you might think, you're still not a knowledgeable virgin."

Her belly quivered at the thought of more intimate education. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to come to my chamber."

Or for you to give me another lesson.

"The immediate reason for my being there-insuring your safety-has not changed. Until I discover who arranged for you and Molly to have an accident, you'll have my company by night." He waggled his brows at her. "Whatever else we may do once I'm there is, of course, your choice."

How could he make it all her responsibility? Why was it her place to always say no? Society a.s.sumed a man could dally in any amount of sensual indulgence he wished so long as the woman didn't censure him. The world was indeed in error when it named females the weaker s.e.x.

"You are impossible."

"Without doubt," he said agreeably.

They topped a small rise and the land surrounding the manor house of Barrowdell sprawled before them. In the distance toward the east, a conical hill of perfect symmetry rose from the meadow. No trees grew on its slopes, no hedge, only a thick stand of winter-brown gra.s.s.

"An ancient mound," Rhys said. "Hence the name Barrowdell, I gather."

Olivia nodded, grateful the subject had been changed. The thought of more sensual instruction from Rhys Warrington left her slightly light-headed.

"Papa has had scholars come from Oxford to look over the barrow. They found no way in. Some mounds do have an exposed entrance, I'm told, but this one is old enough that the wind and rain have covered it over with soil and Papa wouldn't give them leave to dig. But the scholars were of the opinion that it is a burial place of some sort. I think that's why Papa wouldn't allow them to excavate." A shrill wind whistled across the meadow, bending the winter gra.s.s before it in undulating waves. "He said the ghosts of Barrowdell have lain quiet all these years. No need to trouble their bones."

"A wise man, your father." A shadow pa.s.sed over Rhys's face, and this time Olivia was sure she didn't imagine it. "Not all ghosts lie silent."

"Is there a ghost that vexes you?"

He looked down, his mouth drawn tight. A muscle worked in his cheek.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You don't have to answer. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's all right. Yes, I have ghosts. Every officer loses men under their command. It comes with rank," he said, tight-lipped. "It's never easy, and I suppose it shouldn't be."

Olivia walked on, deciding he'd say more or not as he chose. She wouldn't press him, but she was glad when he fell into step beside her.

"During the last battle of my command, things...went badly," he said. "I made a decision that day I've had to live with, but even now, I'm not sure it was the right one."

She remained silent but reached over to briefly squeeze his hand. If he was willing to speak of it, she was willing to listen. Whatever it was, she wondered if it was the cause of the premature streak of silver in his dark hair.

"My horse was wounded. Dying. Both forelegs shattered. My lieutenant, Morris Duffy, was also injured in a French volley. He took a round to the abdomen." Rhys cleared his throat before continuing. "The gelding was screaming and the French were overrunning our position. I had one shot left."

His Adam's apple bobbed in a hard swallow.

"No wound is a good one, but a gut shot is a particularly bad way to go. A man can linger a long while." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Duffy begged me to finish him."

Olivia's belly churned. "Did you?"

"No." He frowned at the distant barrow. From the faraway look in his eyes, she suspected he wasn't really seeing it. "I shot the horse, threw Duffy over my shoulder, and carried him behind the lines."

Olivia breathed a sigh of relief.

"The surgeons could do nothing for him. Duffy cursed me for three days, raving with fever before he finally died in bloated agony."

Rhys picked up his pace, and Olivia was forced to trot in order to keep up with him.

"You can't reproach yourself for this."

"Can't I? I gave a dumb animal more mercy than I showed Lieutenant Duffy."

"But you did the only thing you could do. Don't you think you'd carry even more guilt if you had shot him? I'm sure everyone you've spoken to about this says the same thing."

"I've never told this to anyone."

That stopped her in her tracks. Rhys trusted her with this horrible bruise on his soul. She would have to tread lightly lest she make it worse.

"And I don't know why I tell you now," he said, not slacking his pace for a moment. "Forget I said anything about it."

She'd never forget it. He trusted her.

"Contrary to what you may think, Rhys Warrington, you are not G.o.d." She stopped him with a hand to his forearm. "There was a chance, however slim, that the lieutenant might survive his wound. You couldn't take that chance from him. You did the right thing."

"I try to tell myself that, but I knew at the time there was no hope."

"There is always hope." She caught his hand between both of hers and held it tightly.

"I used to believe that." He smiled sadly at her. "I used to believe a lot of things."

"Like what?"

"That right would always triumph in the end. That a man's friends can be trusted to guard his back. That a merciful G.o.d looks down on us all with a loving eye."

She squeezed his hand. "You're right to believe those things because they are all true."

"No, they're not. I left them on a battlefield in France." He pulled away from her and walked on. "Next to my dead horse."

Chapter 15.

Rhys trudged on, lengthening his strides. It was beyond foolishness to tell her what had happened at Maubeuge. Did he imagine she could somehow offer him absolution?

There was no way she could understand, much less grant him peace over it. All she knew of life and death was what she'd been taught by her tutors and her vicar. She'd never looked into the face of a man who dreaded days of pain and putrefaction more than the great unknowable Dark. She hadn't heard Duffy's bleating pleas.

Or his virulent curses.

The stench of dying was on Rhys for days afterward. He'd stayed with Duffy to the end, leaving him only when the chaplain came. Rhys suffered with his lieutenant as Duffy lost his dignity and humanity by tortured degrees. A hundred times, Rhys wished he'd made a different choice and spared the man who'd been his trusted companion from that excruciating, demeaning death.

No one would have known it wasn't a French bullet that carried Duffy off if Rhys had ended things for him on the battlefield.

But I'd know.

Men died in battle all the time, but this was different. This deliberate, willful taking of another life smacked of murder, however much Duffy begged for it.

Nevertheless, he was ashamed when Duffy suffered in hopeless agony. And when the lieutenant finally drew his last labored breath, Rhys was even more ashamed, because he was relieved to have it over.

Except that it wasn't over. He relived the whole thing countless times. The battle at Maubeuge was a miserable defeat in which all his actions were questioned. His decision about Duffy was just the final expletive-laced footnote to the dismal end of his military career.

He never should have brought it up to Olivia. Now, between one heartbeat and the next, the hated visions would crowd out his present reality and he'd be transported back to Maubeuge to experience those horrendous moments again.

It always started with a dull roar deep in his ears. The h.e.l.lacious sulfur of spent cannons came next along with the coppery tang of blood. Then his head would fill with the distant bugle call of retreat, the clash of sabers, and shouts of men locked in mortal combat. And always there was Duffy's silent, accusing face, frozen in time, mouth drawn in a tight ring of despair as Rhys spent his last round into the thrashing gelding's head.

He steeled himself against the malevolent apparitions that were sure to come.

Ghosts that refuse to lie quiet indeed.

But to his surprise, no roaring rose up in his mind. All he heard was the crunch of pea gravel under their feet, the rattle of bare limbs when the wind cut through the nearby woods, and Olivia's breathing as she labored to keep up with him.

He slowed his pace. When she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, the tightness of unshed tears pressed against the backs of his eyes.