Dark Gothic: His Dark Kiss Part 21

A raspy laugh escaped him. Rolling with her, he tumbled her back, pulled the clothes from her body, tossed them carelessly aside, kissed her, wet and openmouthed and deep. One hand tangled in her hair, and his mouth pressed to hers, rough with pa.s.sion, his naked chest brus.h.i.+ng her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He bent his head, suckled one nipple as he squeezed and stroked the other with his fingers, and she moaned, lost in the wet heat of his mouth and the pinch of his fingers, her nipples hard and aching.

"Now," she whispered, and then louder, "Now."

And, dear heaven, he was pus.h.i.+ng himself up into her, stretching her, filling her as she moaned her pleasure, her body closing around him, her fingers grasping his b.u.t.tocks.

The feeling was unearthly perfection. Wicked torment and unutterable pleasure. She wanted him so desperately she was trembling with it, burning, half sobbing as he filled her, smooth and slick and hot, and she arched up, her knees bent, heels digging into the sheets as she struggled to draw ever closer, ever tighter, to make them one.

He went deeper still, each move a slow climb to madness, withdrawing then thrusting until she cried out, a high keening sound of wicked pleasure and aching need.

"Oh, please..." She panted, whimpered, every nerve so sensitized she thought surely she would go mad with longing.

Wrapping her legs tight around him, she angled to meet each thrust, gasping as he moved harder, faster, every muscle taut, and then he came into her and held still, his body rigid as a bow. With a cry, Emma shattered, and she felt the pulsing release of him, there, with her.

And for that moment, she could pretend to forget that he had not said he loved her in return.

As the hour drew close to midnight, Emma snuggled against Anthony's side, wrapped in the soft cloak of her contentment and the warmth of his embrace.

"Emma, we must talk. About..."

Ah. Her wayward tongue had betrayed her, and now he would speak of it. I love you. I love you. Oh, why had she let the words escape?

A frantic tapping came at her door, forestalling their conversation. Dragging the thick coverlet about her naked body, Emma tiptoed to the portal, relieved that her words of love, her frantic avowal, would not yet be opened to his denial.

She opened the door to find Mrs. Bolifer standing in the dark hallway, her hair falling wildly about her shoulders, her face white with strain.

"Meg's time has come," she said tightly. "And she's in a bad way. The babe's breach, and her being a wee thing, I have a fear for her life. Her sister's come for me. Alice. And she's dreadful afraid." She looked past Emma into the dim room, her expression indicating that she felt neither surprise nor censure at the discovery of her master in Emma's bed. "You must come."

Turning, Emma saw that Anthony was sitting on the edge of the bed, the sheet draped across his loins. He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head. "I can offer her nothing."

Emma's heart twisted at his words.

"You must come," Mrs. Bolifer insisted.

"I will come, but I will not touch her. You know that I cannot. There is nothing I can do. We both know that now." He heaved a sigh. "You will be a far greater comfort and help to the girl, Mrs. Bolifer."

The housekeeper stared at him, her expression bleak, and then she nodded once before hurrying away.

"You can offer her something," Emma whispered, stricken by his refusal. "You are a doctor. A healer."

"No longer, Emma mine. I am a researcher, a scientist."

"You can save her," she insisted, her voice rising. "At least, you can try!"

"Try? And fail?" He shook his head. "Never again."

Anthony tugged on his clothes and came to stand by her side. He ran the backs of his fingers gently across her cheek. "I cannot. Stay here in case Nicky wakes. There is nothing you can do for Meg."

Sinking down onto window seat, Emma stared at the empty doorway long after he had left the room, a feeling of indescribable sadness was.h.i.+ng over her. She had won a measure of his affection, perhaps even a small corner of his heart, but she had not healed his wounded soul, had not chased away that demons that gnawed at him.

Only he could do that. And until he did, until he healed himself, what hope was there that he would come to love her?

The clatter of hooves on the cobbled drive announced his departure. She thought he must have taken Mrs. Bolifer in the coach and left for Bosherton. She could only hope he would choose rightly once he saw Meg.

She frowned, rubbing her hands along her arms, feeling chilled. Reaching for her gown, she slipped it on first, and then her stockings to warm her cold toes. Something felt wrong. The coldness came from inside of her, clawing icy talons along her limbs. s.h.i.+vering, she rose and crossed the room.

Silently she eased open the door that joined her chamber to Nicky's and moved to his bedside. She let out a gasp. The chill intensified, numbing her.

Nicky was not there.

"Nicky!" she called, hurrying to check the hallway. It was empty.

With mounting concern, she returned to her own chamber, wondering if he might have come in after his father left and crawled into her bed, though how he would have done so without her notice she could not say. But no, her chamber was empty as well. She realized she had expected that. Every instinct cried out at his absence. Something was terribly wrong.

Thoughts in turmoil, Emma crossed to the small table, intent on lighting the candle that rested there. She would need light to carry out a search of the house. Perhaps she should wake Cookie and Glynnis, the downstairs maid. Her gaze skimmed the window, and a subtle movement outside caught her attention. She leaned closer, peering through the gla.s.s. Two shapes emerged from the shadows, a child and a man dressed in pale breeches. Together they hurried along the drive toward the gate.

Alarm made her stomach pitch. Without pausing to think, she hurried from the room, down the stairs, and out into the night, her breath coming in harsh gasps as she gave chase.

"Nicky!" Emma cried, running now, stumbling at the sharp bite of stones into the soles of her stockinged feet.

The soft nicker of a horse carried on the breeze. An enclosed carriage waited just beyond Manorbrier's crumbling wall, its hulking shape somehow threatening in the darkness. She watched in horror as the man yanked open the carriage door and lifted the child inside.

"Stop!" she yelled, panic rising in a sickening surge. Oh, G.o.d! This was a nightmare. "Stop! Nicky!"

The man's head jerked up at her cries, and he melted into the shadows. Dr. Smythe, she thought. Dr. Smythe was stealing Nicky away in the dead of night.

Skidding to a halt directly before the carriage door, Emma curled her fingers around the handle. She tugged frantically on the door.

"Climb up beside me on the box," a voice whispered from directly beside her right ear. "We must be away. There is danger here."

Not Dr. Smythe.

"Cookie!" Emma spun toward the voice, her relief so acute that she slumped under the force of it, pressing one hand to the side of the carriage. "Oh, thank heaven. I thought"-she shook her head-"never mind what I thought. What are you doing out here at this time of night?"

"Hurry, now. Up onto the box," Cookie urged. "We must be away as quickly as possible."

"Why? What is amiss?" Suddenly, she thought of the night she had gone to the portrait gallery, and her certainty that someone had entered the house. "Is there someone in the house? Do you take Nicky to his father?"

"To his father. Yes. A child should be with their true parent." Cookie's voice was urgent, harsh. "Hurry!"

Frowning, Emma clambered up the side of the coach. The vehicle rocked and swayed as Cookie came up beside her onto the small bench meant to hold the coachman. Taking up the leads, the cook set the carriage in motion.

Fingers curled over the edge of the seat, pressing against the hard wood as the vehicle jolted wildly along the rutted road, Emma wondered at the sharp coil of unease that looped in her belly. Twisting, she sent glance at the road behind her, watching as Manorbrier receded in the distance, a dark smudge against the night sky. Wrong. Wrong. The night felt wrong.

She turned forward once more, trying to calm her racing heart. A thin glow diffused from the face of the moon, lighting their way. She pressed her fingers harder against the wooden seat, welcoming the pain, focusing on it instead of on her growing distress. Turning her head, she glanced at Cookie. Her expression was intense, lips compressed in a thin line, eyes staring fixedly at the road ahead.

Emma glanced down. Cookie wore breeches. Buff breeches. And polished black boots.

And the smell of lemon mixed with horseradish and turpentine.

Oh, dear heaven.

Pulling away, Emma slid to the farthest edge of the hard little bench, but there was nowhere to go other than over the side and into the black void. Were she alone, she would fling herself from the seat and hope that she could land with little more than a bruising. But she was not alone. There was Nicky, her precious boy, locked in the carriage.

Emma struggled to stem the surge of mindless panic that swelled to monstrous proportions. Clearing her throat against the knot that had lodged there, she raised her voice to overcome the pounding of the horses' hooves. "I...I should ride with Nicky. I do not wish for him to be afraid."

The cook did not answer. Instead, she stared impa.s.sively ahead, flicking the reins and encouraging the horses to greater speed. Emma thought they were traveling at a most dangerous pace already, but when she tried to bring the matter to Cookie's attention, the woman ignored her and flicked the reins anew.

As the carriage careened wildly to one side, she yelled, "Cookie, please slow down! This is dangerous! The carriage will overturn!"

Emma fought the urge to grab Cookie's arm, fearful that any sudden movement might cause her to lose control of the team. As if her thoughts became reality, the carriage wove precariously from side to side as it lurched around a curve in the road.

"Miss Emma! Miss Emma!" Nicky's panicked cries were m.u.f.fled by the walls of the coach, the din of the horses, and the rising wind. But some maternal instinct allowed Emma to hear the terror in his voice. The sound of his fear mirrored her own.

"Please!" she cried frantically.

Perhaps it was her own desperation that reached the other woman, or the child's frantic cries, but at last Cookie eased their wild pace.

"Why are you doing this?" Emma asked. "Where do you take us?"

"A child should be with his true parent. Do you not see? His true parent. No child should be separated from his parent." A broken sob escaped the cook. "My child was taken from me, separated from me. It isn't right, isn't natural."

"Cookie, please. Take us back to Manorbrier. Take us home." Emma eyed the taut leather reins, wondering if she could safely s.n.a.t.c.h them away from Cookie's grasp. And then what? She had never driven a coach in her life. Dear heaven, she could kill them all.

"Not his home." Cookie sent her a dark glance. "You read the diary. You know. Manorbrier is not Nicky's home."

The diary, Delia's diary. So it was Cookie who had taken it. Suddenly, the puzzle solved itself. The boots and breeches she had glimpsed in the hedge outside the icehouse. The medicinal lemony scent that had haunted her. She recalled Mrs. Bolifer telling her that Cookie prepared her liniment. And Cookie had been nowhere to be found that day when Emma returned to the kitchen from the icehouse, and the night she had sensed an intruder in the portrait gallery, Cookie had been wandering about. It was Cookie. All of it. Cookie.

"Tell me about the diary. I never read to the end. Tell me," Emma urged, desperate to sway the cook's attention, hoping to make her slow the coach still more.

"Lord Anthony is not Nicky's father."

Emma gasped, and reared back in shock. "Not his father? What do you mean?"

But even as she asked, she knew the answer. Words from the diary, written in flowing feminine script drifted through her thoughts. The time has come to face the terrible truth. I am pregnant. Pregnant. The terrible, astonis.h.i.+ng wonder of it. After the choices I made, I had not thought it possible. He was so angry when I told him. Oh, G.o.d, nothing is as it seems. Nothing.

Delia became pregnant, not by Anthony, but by some other man. The breath left Emma in a rush and she wrapped her arms around her waist, trying to hold in the wild emotions that tore through her. Did Anthony know?

Yes. Oh G.o.d, yes. He knew, and that had been the cause of love turned to hate, the reason that he had been so bitterly angry with Delia. And still, he loved Nicky as his own. Loved him with all his heart. A father's love, granted freely and unconditionally.

"Oh, Anthony," she whispered.

Cookie snapped the reins, driving the horses back to their earlier frenzied pace, and then surpa.s.sing it until Emma thought the carriage must surely overturn.

She pressed back against the seat, her throat closing. She thought she could hear Nicky sobbing inside the coach, the sound harsh and wretched to her ears.

"We could be killed. You and I, and the child as well. 'Tis not safe here. Please, Cookie, please, let us return to Manorbrier." She raised her voice to be heard as they rushed on, striving to keep the panic from her tone, though it welled inside her, dark and sticky like the sucking mud of a bog, threatening to draw her in and suffocate her.

The carriage rocked and swayed, but the mad pace did not slow.

"And if we are killed, then he will suffer all the more as he stares at the boy's broken body." Cookie's words resounded with a maniacal glee, and spittle sprayed from her mouth. "He kept me from my son. Bound my b.l.o.o.d.y wrists and kept me from my son. All this time, I thought Nicky his, but he lied...oh, he lied..."

Mad. Truly mad. All the times Emma had thought Manorbrier a nest of Bedlamites, she had never truly thought to face such as this. Poor, poor Cookie, unhinged by the death of her son, pushed beyond reason now by...by what?

"Well, I'll fix it. Make it right." Cookie's laughter swelled, a wild, crazed noise that rose and spread until it was nearly tangible, wrapping around Emma as she shrank away. She gasped, smelling lemons and turpentine.

As Emma shrank away, Cookie's hand shot out and tangled in a fistful of Emma's skirt. With unexpected strength she yanked Emma closer, barely guiding the horses with one hand while she held fast to the cloth with the other. Suddenly, she sawed on the reins, drawing the lathered beasts to a halt. The carriage rocked precariously, and Emma clutched at the seat, nearly sliding off the side.

Cookie turned to face her, and in her eyes Emma saw no reason, no soul, only cold, bitter hatred and terrifying madness.

"What do you think happened to Delia?" Cookie leaned close, her face a pale mask. Emma could feel her hot breath on her cheek as she spoke, smell the odor that rose from her. Rank sweat and lemon.

Emma pulled away, saying nothing, her eyes flicking back and forth between the other woman's twisted expression and the dark landscape as she tried to formulate some plan of escape. The sound of her own panicked breaths filled her ears.

Cookie snickered, her eyes rolling this way and that. She yanked Emma closer still.

"What happened to Delia?" she asked again, her voice high and shrill.

"I do not know."

"Don't you, lovey? Don't you?"

"Oh, please! Nicky! I must get to Nicky. I beg you, let me go to him."

Cookie laughed, the sound harsh, reminiscent of the protest of rusted hinges on an old gate.

"Delia. She told me what she'd done. Didn't want to spoil her pretty figure and so she ended her pregnancy-"

"What?" Emma cried.

"Not her second one. Her first. She got pregnant on her wedding night and she didn't want it. So she killed it. And I killed her. Pushed her to the bottom of a great long staircase. It was the only way. But she took a long time to die, a very long time, her belly writhing as she struggled to push forth the babe. One born living, the other dead." Cookie's tone rose and fell with an eerie singsong cadence, then she slanted Emma a frighteningly cold glance. "Perfect justice. One babe to stay with the father, the other gone into death with the mother. A child must stay with its parent, don't you see?"

Oh, dear sweet G.o.d. No. This was too terrible to believe. Oh, Anthony, Anthony. Emma swallowed the bitter terror that rose inside her, rearing its ugly head, threatening to destroy her composure.

She raised her head, glanced about, wondering if help would come. No. No one knew they were gone. She would have to rely on her own ingenuity to save herself and Nicky both.

The thought was cold comfort.

Cookie's hand was still wound in the material of Emma's skirt. She tugged on it, as though sensing that Emma was contemplating clambering over the edge of the seat to get to Nicky.

"Please," Emma whispered, struggling to pull free. Nicky's piteous cries, growing weaker now, ate at her heart.

"Don't be afraid," Cookie crooned. "I won't make it hurt." She stroked one hand along Emma's cheek. Emma flinched, then curled her hands into fists and struck out, landing a blow to the other woman's cheek and another to her shoulder. Free. She had torn free!

With a cry, she made to leap from the seat, but Cookie caught her hair and yanked her back, then lashed the horses to resume their course. Again she whipped them, and again, until their speed surpa.s.sed all caution, all reason.

I won't make it hurt. Her attention divided between the danger of the runaway coach and her fear for Nicky, Emma barely registered the cook's meaning. She knew only that the other woman was mad as a hatter, dangerously so, and that she blamed Anthony for all the sorrows of her loss because he had saved her life, thereby separating her from her dead son. The carriage tilted precariously and Emma heard a sickening thud as the wheels on her right left the ground, then crashed back to the hard-packed road.