Hold Me Close Read online

  “I’m sorry,” said Julia.

  “I won’t soon forget the horror of learning that news,” he said. “Good God.”

  “I’m very sorry. But that still doesn’t explain how you found me,” she insisted. “I thought for sure I was dead on that godforsaken road.”

  “Ah! Well, you have Lady Lambert to thank for that. She seemed utterly convinced by the state of your writing desk drawer, of all things, that you’d been taken to the dower house. And so Edgerton and I raced there as fast as our mounts would carry us. Once we arrived, it was a simple matter of tracking. The curricle left a clear trail of wheel marks in the mud. And Brayles is a distinctly terrible driver. This poor horse was clearly half out of its wits.”

  To his great satisfaction, Julia gave a little chuckle against his chest.

  The next bit of the story might be better left unsaid, he thought, at least while Edgerton was right here beside them. Marcus himself did not particularly care to relive those endless seconds in which they crept slowly closer to Brayles, having to watch him hold Julia by her hair and force her so treacherously close to the edge of that gorge, while they waited for a decent shot at him.

  In the end, it was Edgerton who had the proper angle.

  And the viscount was enough of a soldier to take his shot unflinchingly, and hit his target square.

  Poor man.

  Would the sight of his brother falling from that ledge ever leave off haunting him?

  Edgerton glanced over now, as though the exact same thoughts were running through his mind. “Lady Grantleigh” he said, in a very somber tone. “I hope someday you will be able to forgive my family. I hope some day you will be able to forgive me. I knew what kind of man my brother was. He had no character, even as a boy. I’d hoped sending him to India would force him to better himself, but it only brought out the worst. I should have clapped him in irons years ago. I should have turned him in to the authorities myself when your husband showed me those ledgers. But—he was my brother. And I love my two nieces more than anything in the world. I thought perhaps I could reform him. And—I waited too long.”

  Julia had gone very still on Marcus’s lap again. “He killed Christopher,” she said, her voice breaking. “He killed him.”

  Marcus found her hand with his and squeezed it tight. His own heart ached, and his throat constricted. “We heard that,” he said. “We heard all that Brayles said to you.”

  “Forgive me,” Edgerton pleaded once more. “I had no idea till tonight that George had done that, that George was capable of that. Grantleigh had been our friend, all our lives. And he was the very best of men.”

  Julia’s fingers clung so hard to Marcus’s, he thought she might crack them in two, and she sobbed softly into his shirt.

  But her other hand slid suddenly around Marcus’s waist, and she pulled herself even tighter against him.

  “One of the best,” she said quietly but surely.

  And—impossible at it seemed with all the awful things that had happened tonight, and with all the weight of their shared grief—Marcus sensed a sort of blossoming in the world around them, as if a whole new universe was suddenly springing to life, bright and full of hope.

  “Only one of the best,” Julia said again, and pressed a kiss to his throat.

  14

  Although it was still the dead of night when the curricle pulled up outside Grantleigh Hall, it was immediately clear that none of the residents had gone back to sleep.

  As Marcus swung Julia up in his arms again and carried her over the threshold of the Hall, Christopher’s aunts, Mr. Maji, the majority of the household servants, and quite a few members of the local militia, dressed in full uniform, crowded around her.

  One particular housemaid, a sour-faced girl named Louise, was nowhere to be seen, and Julia suspected the girl would never show her face in Devon again.

  Everyone clamored with questions, and she could hear Captain Lowell reporting to Lord Edgerton that Miss Brayles and the little girls and the servants who’d traveled with them had still not been found, despite several patrols being dispatched to search for them.

  “Try the Seaton Bridge,” Julia said, from the shelter of Marcus’s arms. “She was told to wait there under the willows.” But somehow she thought Miss Brayles might have disobeyed that order, too. The bridge was near enough to the river road that she might well have heard the rifle shot that killed her brother, and that may have convinced her to get herself and her nieces out of the country while she could, before the authorities relieved them of all that ill-gotten gold and silver.

  By this point, Marcus was clearly growing impatient with the crowd. She could feel the growing tension in his body as he held her. “Is the hearth lit in Lady Grantleigh’s chamber?” he asked Aunt Margaret.

  “Oh, yes,” said Margaret, patting him on the arm. “We thought we’d best keep the room warm in hopes she’d soon come safely home. And, see, Marcus, you have brought her. We knew you would, dear boy. We knew you would!”

  “I will carry her up,” said Marcus, his deep voice carrying over the cacophony of the crowd. “Lady Margaret, Lady Eleanor, if you will, please follow us so you can tend to her.”

  Oh, thought Julia. He wishes for the Aunts to tend me? Does he plan to leave me again?

  She didn’t want him to let go of her.

  But once the group of them had reached the upstairs hallway outside her room—Mr. Maji trailing behind his wife to join them, too—Marcus turned back to the trio of gray-haired folk. “Thank you,” he said, “for providing an appearance of respectability in front of all those witnesses downstairs. But I’ll ask all three of you to please return immediately to your own beds. I shall take good care of Lady Grantleigh now, I promise.”

  A hot blush spread over Julia’s face. Anyone with half a brain knew what sort of care a virile man was likely to offer a lonely widow in the privacy of her bedchamber.

  But none of the three older people so much as batted an eyelash.

  “Excellent thinking,” said Lady Eleanor, grinning. She took hold of Mr. Maji’s hand and cheerfully led him off down the hall.

  Margaret stayed beside them a moment longer, blushing a bit. She leaned in close to Marcus’s ear and whispered. “I’m all for it, lad. But you must promise me you’ll speak with the parson first thing tomorrow morning. This is not a house given to debauchery.”

  Julia couldn’t help herself—she laughed. “Oh, you have no idea, Aunt. You have no idea at all.”

  Margaret’s jaw dropped, and she clapped a hand over her gaping mouth, but thankfully there was twinkling amusement in her eyes.

  “I’ll make her an honest woman,” Marcus promised, “if she’ll let me.”

  And not pausing even to say goodnight, he carried her over the threshold of her room, pushed the door shut definitively behind them, and they were quite alone.

  And—at least at first—it seemed he really did mean that he was going to take care of her, just as the Aunts would have done. He stripped a blanket from the bed and carried her before the fire, ordering her to stand as close to the flames as she could tolerate.

  “Get out of those wet clothes,” he commanded, tugging loose the sash of her robe himself and stripping it from her shoulders. Before she could so much as reach for the hem of her nightdress, he seized that too in both fists, and made short work of pulling it up and over her head.

  For one quick moment, she was quite naked before his gaze, and suddenly she didn’t feel chilled in the slightest. But he was diligent in trying to warm her, and draped the big heavy blanket over her shoulders, pulling it closed over her front.

  And then he put his arms around her again, around her and the blanket both, and bear-hugged her as though the force of that alone could squeeze the heat and life back into her.

  She laughed to herself. She truly did appreciate the consideration he was showing her, but after all the events of the last day and night, what she most desperately needed from him right now was somethin
g else entirely.

  “Your clothes are wet, too,” she told him impishly, reaching out from under the blanket to run a hand down his damp back, and over the breeches that clung tightly to his buttocks. “I think you really must take them off.”

  He looked down at himself, his expression genuinely surprised. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to him that he also had been out in the wet and the cold and the wind. Or that he’d been riding hell for leather on horseback, charging through the dark on that dangerous ridge.

  “Get them off,” she said again. “I can help you with the boots, if you like. I’m actually quite talented at that.”

  The look he gave her was blazing hot. “Are you?” he said.

  “I’ll show you,” she said. “But shirt off first.”

  He smiled, and it was the sort of smile that made her toes curl. “You’re sure you won’t be mortified by the sight of my bare chest?”

  She bit at her lip. “I’ll try to contain my maidenly blushes.”

  And with an inhaled roar of breath, he seized his own hem and all but tore his shirt off over his head. And, oh, he really was unbelievably beautiful. His huge broad shoulders and the sculpted plains of his chest and stomach glowed like bronze in the firelight.

  “Goodness,” she said, “I feel much better already.”

  “So do I,” he said.

  Oh, Lord. She wanted to throw her arms around him right this moment and pull him down into a kiss. But she had to go about this properly. He was going to be well and truly naked this time, every inch of him.

  “Now sit in that chair.” She planted a palm on his chest as she had that night in the hothouse room, and shoved him backwards onto the seat. “I’ll need to get your boots off.”

  “How do you propose to do that, my lady, wrapped in a blanket as you are?” He leaned back, watching her lazily, his eyes hooded. But she saw the fire kindling in their dark depths.

  “Let’s see how I manage,” she said. And keeping the blanket closed around her with her left hand, she made a show of pulling at the first boot he proffered, using only her right.

  The boot didn’t budge, of course.

  “That’s not working so well,” he teased. “You might need the second hand.”

  “As you wish, sir,” she answered. She leaned down over the boot again, this time grasping the heel in one palm and the bit behind his calf with the other, and giving just the perfect combination of pull and twist she’d learned to use with Christopher, on those nights when he preferred to dismiss his valet early and spend more time alone with her.

  The boot slipped off quite neatly.

  As did her blanket.

  Marcus made a growling noise in his throat as his gaze trailed its way slowly down her naked body. The color had come up in his cheeks, and his breathing had gone rather rough, and it was very clear this time he had no intention of urging her to put the blanket back on.

  “Your other boot, sir?” she said insouciantly, and turned around this time, displaying her backside as she repeated her trick of twist and pull.

  That boot, too, slipped free.

  “Damn it all,” he swore.

  When she turned back around again, the front panel of Marcus’s breeches was quite remarkably transformed—the fall was stretched almost to bursting with the enormous evidence of his arousal.

  Her heartbeat stuttered and her throat went dry. Last time, she had felt him as he entered her, but she hadn’t had a chance to see him. The idea of having him displayed before her in his full masculine glory frightened her a little, and roused her almost beyond belief.

  “I believe it is time for you to get out of those wet breeches, sir.”

  She didn’t have to ask twice. He rose from the chair with confident swagger, and began to undo the buttons of his fall. Hell and blazes, how far they’d come from just last night, when watching him undo the buttons of his uniform coat had nearly sent her into an apoplexy.

  She still trembled now as she watched him, but it was a very different sort of trembling.

  Oh, how she wanted him inside her again.

  One button more, and his manhood sprang free. And he was indeed magnificent, all of him, his breadth, and his muscle, and his glowing flesh, and his huge, heavy arousal jutting forward as though it, too, longed for them to be joined again.

  He stripped his breeches and stockings quickly down his legs and kicked them away, stepping forward naked as the first man in the garden. And then she didn’t know which of them moved first—they seemed to be in each other’s arms before either had time to move, and their flesh pressed together along the full length of their bodies.

  Her arms were around his neck, and his mouth was on hers, his hands roaming down her back to fit themselves possessively around her buttocks. Gripping her with his two huge palms, he lifted her upwards, and for a moment, she thought he might just do as she’d fantasized for that brief moment when they were alone at the folly—urge her to wrap her legs around his waist and plunge inside her, standing just as they were. His arms were certainly more than strong enough.

  To her surprise, though, he set her back on her feet, and sank slowly to his own knees, trailing kisses down her throat, across her breasts, then over the curves of her waist and belly.

  “I didn’t get to see this part of you before,” he murmured, rocking back on his heels for a moment to gaze at her. His eyes followed as his fingers skimmed up and down the line of her waist and across to her navel, his feather-light touch sending waves of sensation coursing through her, making her nipples tighten, and the place between her thighs grow hot and wet.

  And then his mouth went lower, as his hands parted her legs.

  And, oh.

  His tongue was on her again, and she wasn’t sure she could take this standing up.

  If his fingers on her waist had created strong sensation, this hot, slick stroking was of another magnitude of intensity. Her eyes slid shut and her mouth fell open on a gasp, and renewed heat poured through her, making her begin to dissolve and melt as though she were made of sugar candy.

  How was he doing what he was doing, licking and sucking and kissing at her all at once? Even with her eyes tight closed, the world went scarlet, glowing brilliantly as embers, and all the melting heat inside her made her flesh seem fluid, pulses and waves of it surging through her so her breasts seemed to swell, her cheeks flushed, her hands and feet tingled. And then, suddenly, all of it drew downward, inward, pulling toward that place where his mouth was, immensely heavy and weightless at the same time.

  Her fingers gripped tight to the thickness of his hair as his mouth drove her to the brink of madness caress by caress.

  And she must have been closer to the brink than she thought, because before she was quite aware it was coming, the pleasure burst through her body in an overwhelming rush, as though the force of it had been building up forever behind a wall which buckled and came crashing down in the space of a moment. She spasmed against him, crying out. And if he hadn’t clutched her hips to hold her upright, she would have fallen straight through the floor. Straight through the crust of the earth, maybe.

  His mouth stayed on her, but more gently now, his tongue stroking more lightly as smaller shocks pulsed through her, one after the other.

  “Marcus,” she said, moaning. “Sweet Marcus.”

  After a few moments more, his palm went where his mouth had been, its less intense pressure shepherding her though a few more deep throbs of pleasure, each of which drew a new, soft cry from her lips.

  It seemed to go on and on and on.

  She’d never imagined such a thing was possible.

  When at last she had quieted, he kissed her tenderly on the inside of her thigh. “Not cold anymore, are you?” he asked.

  “Not cold,” she said, feeling too soft and languid to banter with him. “Not cold at all.”

  She rested her hands on his shoulders, still not quite trusting to the steadiness of her legs. And as she did so, she noticed her left wrist.<
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  “My bracelet!” she exclaimed. “My bracelet! It’s gone!”

  Marcus scrambled to his feet, taking her wrist in his fingers. They could both plainly see her wrist was bare.

  “What happened to it?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said, still staring at the place where it had been, scarcely able to adjust her mind to the idea that the gleaming gold circlet wasn’t there anymore. “I tried and tried so many times to take it off, and it wouldn’t move. And now I didn’t try, and—and it’s vanished.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Marcus.

  “Wait, though,” she said, thinking back over the wild events of the night. “When Brayles was with me in the parlor, I took hold of the fireplace poker and tried to knock him down.”

  “You what?”

  “It wasn’t a successful effort, believe me,” she said. “He grabbed me by the wrist, very roughly, and hit me on the back with his gun, and I fell onto an enormous traveling trunk that Miss Brayles had left open on the floor. My arm hit it so hard, I thought the bone might crack, and—well, I wasn’t thinking about the bracelet. I was thinking about Brayles with his pistol against my temple, about to shoot me and—”

  “I wish Edgerton hadn’t killed him!” Marcus said, his mouth gone hard with fury. “Now I want to go back and kill him myself.”

  “No, listen!” she said. “I think the bracelet must have come loose then. Brayles’ grabbing my wrist must have opened the mechanism somehow, and then my arm striking the edge of the trunk must have sent the bracelet flying off.” Suddenly, she was laughing. “Oh, Lord! I think it fell inside! I think Miss Brayles is going to get a very interesting surprise when she opens that trunk again!”

  “Miss Brayles? No!” said Marcus contemptuously. “She’s not worthy of that bracelet!”

  “Then someone else will find it,” said Julia, still giddily amused. “Someone who is worthy. Imagine that—the enchanted bracelet heading off to the New World. What would Bharati think?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sounding somewhat more mollified, as he drew her naked body back into his arms. “But I think she would be pleased.”