Page 59 of To Seduce a Stranger

His fingers fidgeted absently at his throat. That emotion she had sometimes glimpsed in his eyes gleamed there now, and she understood why Mari called it fear. At last, she understood of what Edward had once been afraid, and why he had never fully recovered.

“Another moment, and he would have succeeded in getting me loose, I think, but someone must have alerted Keswick, for half the Pearl’s crew came pouring out of that pub, knives drawn, and surrounded us.”

In his words, she could feel the heat of the tropical sun, smell the stench of those villainous men. Despite herself, she leaned toward him, reminded him of what he seemed to be in danger of forgetting. “You got away.”

“Yes. Mr. Holderin stepped between me and them. Ugly words flew back and forth. While her father talked, Tempest worked at that knot with her clumsy little fingers. I didn’t know it then, but as I soon discovered, she never fails at what she sets out to do. Once I was free, Mr. Holderin reached into his pocket, took out a handful of coins, and scattered them on the cobblestones at the men’s feet. While they scrambled after them, Mr. Holderin grabbed my hand, picked up his daughter, and we ran.”

Her heart raced as if she had made the narrow escape with them. “He took you in?”

“More than that. He raised me like a son. A year or so later, he apprenticed me to a shipping company. Showed me how to take care of property. Taught me things. A bit of law—enough to make a sound contract and spot a bad one. Doctoring of one sort or another, when the need arose. Even,” he added, mustering something like a smile as he settled his gaze squarely on her for the first time in what felt like hours, “a smattering of French. And many years later, when he grew ill, he arranged to have me take over as manager of his father-in-law’s plantation, Harper’s Hill.”

“I understand that you felt you owed this man a great deal—”

“Everything,” Edward corrected. “I owed him my life.”

“But even so . . . twenty years? Why did you not try to come home, in all that time?”

She had not expected her question to strike a nerve. Pushing himself up from the makeshift bed, he strode to the rain-spattered window and stood looking out. When the firelight flickered over his skin, she saw the cross-hatched pattern of old scars on his back—a permanent reminder of his days aboard the Pearl, she could only guess. Certainly, she would never dare to ask.

“I couldn’t. You . . . you must understand. My father could be a vicious man, particularly to women. I sometimes thought, when I was in Antigua, that he would have fit in well there. He—he beat my mother. Many, many times. And one day, I overheard her telling the vicar’s wife that when I finally left home, went to school, she would leave too, would go live with her sister. I decided not to wait. I ran away the next day. I—I thought I was saving her life. I thought if I stayed away, she would be safe.”

She strained to catch every broken, whispered word. From the way his shoulders lifted and sank, she thought he must be fighting back sobs, but she hesitated to go to him. Would he even want her comfort?

“But he killed her just the same. And you have seen the proof.”

Mon Dieu. The room. The blood. No wonder . . .

She felt hot tears sting her eyes, the back of her throat. Struggling to her feet, she made her way to him, the blanket tangled around her body and trailing behind. When she stopped beside him, she stood in silence for a long moment before freeing one hand to lay it on his back. Beneath her fingertips, the old scars were faint ridges and valleys. Did they pain him still? What if—ah, c’est pas vrai—what if they had been made by his father?

Although everything beyond the window was black, he was staring fixedly in the direction of Little Norbury. “Was your mother a girl from the village?” she asked.

“No. She was his wife. And Jack is not the Earl of Beckley.” He shrugged away her touch and turned burning eyes on her. “I am.”

Truth be told, it was the least shocking of his many revelations, the last piece of a complicated puzzle falling into place. She managed, somehow, to nod.

A searing, searching look. “You would be well within your rights to doubt me. I have no proof. But before I—that is, before we—” His eyes darted uncertainly toward the rumpled bed and back again. “I wanted you to know the truth. Who I am. What I am.” Slowly, he raised his hands to cup her face. “Ah, Charlotte.”

Just as his palms were about to caress her cheeks, he froze. “In my veins runs the blood of a man who . . . who raped. And—killed. How dare I touch you with these hands?” With wild eyes, he inspected his work-roughened palms, as if aware, like Lady Macbeth, of the damned spots they bore, invisible though they might be to others. “I threw myself into the crucible of the West Indies, hoping to burn away the taint. If you can survive this place without being tempted to violence, I told myself, surely that will prove you have risen above your father’s nature. But what if it’s not been enough? What if—?” He clenched his hands into fists, the strain cording the muscles of his forearms and streaking his face with anguish. His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “What if I hurt you?”

Releasing her hold on the blanket, though she was still naked beneath it, she put her hands over his, gently coaxing his fingers to relent, until she could press his palms to either side of her face and hold them there. “These are the hands Thomas Holderin and his daughter took in theirs. Mari has told me what a kind, gentle man he was. It sounds to me as if he was the one responsible for shaping you into the man you have become. These are strong hands, capable hands,” she insisted, though they trembled now, like those of a man burning with fever. “For twenty years, you have been using them to keep others safe. I am not afraid of them. I am not afraid of you.”

He lowered his head and dragged her closer for a crushing kiss—fueled, she would have said, by a very different sort of passion than his earlier kisses had been. But was it? The pieces and parts of his life, of him—once scattered from the West Country to the West Indies—seemed suddenly to have coalesced into a single point, the place where their lips met. Yes, he could be gentle, careful, tender.

But this hardness—this desperate need—was him, too.

He dropped his hands to her shoulders—her bare shoulders, for the blanket had slithered unnoticed to the floor between their feet—and held her at not quite arm’s length, breaking the kiss. “Understand, Charlotte, that I may never be able to claim my title. And even if I can . . . well, you’ve seen Ravenswood.” His fingers slid higher, caressed her throat, tangled in her hair. “I wish—oh, how I wish—I could offer you something more . . .”

Something more? She did not want more, did she? Certainly not an offer of marriage. She had come here with the idea of testing her independence, of living for herself.

Drawing her closer, he leaned in as if for a kiss and whispered across her lips, “But perhaps you do not want anything at all from me, knowing what you do now.”

“I want what I asked for,” she said, pushing aside her doubt, slipping soft kisses between her words. “You.”

A wrinkle etched his brow, and he gave one slow, incredulous shake of his head, before lifting her into his arms and bearing her back to his bed.

The straw-filled mattress rustled beneath her weight, and before she could form a wish for the blanket to cover herself, he was lowering himself onto her, kissing her, skimming one hand over her hip, along her ribs, to her breast. The coy game of question and answer had been abandoned. Neither spoke, the room’s silence broken only by the occasional wordless murmur, gasps and groans of delight, and the pop and hiss of a dying fire.

His kiss was firm, hungry—his touch, more so. After ravaging her mouth, his lips descended to her breast, sucking her as he had the night before. Only this time there was no barrier between them. Then, she had been bewildered by the spark of sensation that had leapt from her nipple to the secret place between her legs. Now, last night’s mystery came clear. She shifted beneath him, ran one hand up his arm, craving his touch.