‘You are not loveless, Rawden.’
He put his lips to her forehead. ‘Why not?’
Damn her foolishness for saying such a thing. Rawden would hate her pity. ‘I think everyone is capable of love, even the blackest of hearts. Please say you do not believe it - the rumour that your mother strayed before marriage. It only tarnishes her memory, and then your father would have won.’
‘I do not know what to believe, and I will never know the truth, so I have long since forsaken punishing her or myself for it. I loved her, and she loved me, and there you have it. Who am I to judge my mother for wanting to find some happiness in this world?’
‘We all want that.’
‘But you do not have it with me,’ he said.
‘I could, if you would just…if I could trust in you, Rawden.’
His lips moved closer. ‘You can,’ he breathed.
‘But you are locking me up here, and you brought Dawson, your spy, to whisper my secrets into your ear.’
‘Ah, yes. I was going to explain that to you.’
‘Well, he did your explaining for you.’
‘Desperate times called for desperate measures, Grace. I needed eyes in your Uncle Charles’ household, and he seemed an easy mark. That is how I found you in the park and kidnapped you that day, though I neglected to tell Dawson that was my intention.’
‘Well, Dawson will not be spilling any more secrets, as I shall have none to spill. So you have no need to lock me away,’ said Grace.
‘When you have a precious jewel, do you leave it lying around so that others may steal it?’ Rawden kissed her so deeply and for so long, Grace thought she might swoon. ‘I brought you here so that I don’t lose you, Grace,’ he whispered. ‘I will not let you run from me again.’
‘I…I don’t think I want to,’ she gasped.
‘You should.’ Rawden turned her onto her belly and lay his hard body over hers. ‘For I have wicked designs on you,’ he breathed, parting her legs with his knee and nipping her earlobe with his teeth. ‘Very wicked designs indeed.’
***
Rawden woke to blue-green sunlit heaven. For a moment, he did not know where he was until the night’s passion rushed back. He was lying in bed in Grace’s room. Everything was soft and warm – the pretty wallpaper, bright in early sunshine, her clothes strewn about in a profusion of lace and silks, the delicate furniture - female-sized and curvaceously carved. Her bottom was equally curvaceous and currently pressed to his groin, which began to stir when she wriggled and moaned in her sleep.
Rawden froze, lest he wake her, for he was not ready to talk, nor was he prepared to sink back inside her welcoming body and worship it with his. There would be too much feeling, too much tenderness, in that. His face was buried in Grace’s cloudy red-brown hair. Rawden sucked in its scent - apples and apricots mixed with rose, perhaps? He had no knowledge of such things and had never taken the trouble to enquire. He recalled holding onto its silky coils as he had pinned and taken her in the library. His groin heated at Grace’s remembered surrender and her passion, which had risen to match his own.
And afterwards, there had been that strange compulsion to talk, that twisting of his heart that was almost painful. Bitterness had bubbled to the surface, along with that old heady brew of guilt, love and resentment, all tied to his regard for William. Rawden had loved his brother fiercely, but he had also envied him his place in his father’s heart and home, one he could never occupy. Was his desire for Grace some way of taking back some small piece of William’s advantages?
Grace sighed and muttered his name in her sleep, and Rawden slid quickly out of bed. He frowned down at her. She was so unspoiled and lovely in repose. Confusion racked him. This was not the triumphant afterglow of mutual satisfaction – fleeting, selfish, smug. He had been as intent on her pleasure as his own last night. No, this was infatuation – hot, urgent, all-consuming, and it terrified him. He could not give his heart to Grace for her to crush with eventual indifference. Had the hard knocks of life taught him nothing? Was he to be reduced to a babbling, weak fool on account of a woman?
Rawden rushed from Grace as quickly as his legs could carry him. He dressed for the road and called for his horse to be brought, and within the hour, he was galloping across the causeway against a headwind of guilt and desire.
But instead of spinning his horse around and galloping back to Marshgrave, and his wife’s bed, he did as he had always done. Rawden locked all tenderness out of his heart and pushed on alone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Grace stared out at the tide surging over the causeway. Gulls whirled against a biting wind rushing across the stretch of grey water and already the sun was low on the horizon, so he would not come back tonight. What a fool she had become, watching for Rawden for three long weeks. He regularly sent presents of jewellery and little trinkets, along with letters enquiring about her welfare, but otherwise avoided her as though she were a leper. One thing he had sent had been especially galling.
She glanced back, and there he was, whittling at some wood under the shade of a tree. He had turned up unannounced three days after Rawden’s departure. The scrape of his knife on wood irritated her beyond measure.
‘Do you not grow weary of spying on me, Reeves?’ she shouted.
‘No,’ he replied, not looking up from his labour.
‘Yet you insist on following me everywhere, like some lurking ghoul, a shadow I cannot shake, no matter that I stand in the sunshine.’
‘For my lurking, I beg forgiveness, but I am no spy. Rawden, I mean, the Earl, sent me to have a care for your person.’
