CHARLES HAD TO BE CONTENT WITH THAT. ASIDE FROM ANYthing else, Nicholas was exhausted and needed to rest.
Returning with Penny to her room, he checked that no villain was lurking, then locked her in and went to check on his patrols. All was quiet, yet the silence was rife with anxiety. After chatting to the four men presently on watch, he slipped back into Penny’s room, stripped, and slid under the covers.
She turned to him and tugged him close. He went, found her lips with his, kissed. Grumbled, “What is the matter with your family? It’s never your story, and you all want twenty-four damned hours….”
Penny looked into his dark eyes, softly smiled. “It’s not us—it’s you. It’s obvious that once we tell you, all control will be out of our hands.”
He humphed, and kissed her again.
She let him, met him, then encouraged him. Not just invited but dared him to take her, to give himself, let her give back to him and so reassure them both. To touch again and share the comfort they now found in each other, through the physical to reach further once again, onto that other plane.
Responding, accepting, he rose over her, pressed her thighs wide, sank between, and with one powerful stroke sheathed himself in her softness, joined them, and set them careening on their now familiar wild ride. She gasped, clung, and rode with him, absorbed, drawn wholly into the moment, yet dimly aware of the contradiction between his nature and his behavior with her.
He never pushed, cajoled, pressured; he never had. In this arena, he’d always been the supplicant, and she his…not mistress, but perhaps empress, dispensing her favors as she chose. As she decided and deemed him worthy.
And he’d never once argued with that. Never once sought to change their status quo, to demand or simply seize control and take.
A wall of flames rose before them, a surging, greedy conflagration; they plunged into it, rode through it, fell into it. Wrapped in each other’s arms, they let the fire have them, consume them, weld them, leaving them at the last clinging to the edge of the world. Gasping, shuddering, gazes meeting, locking, holding…
Then that too-brief instant of absolute communion faded; lids falling, all tension released, they tumbled headlong into the void.
They settled to sleep, him sprawled beside her, one arm slung possessively over her waist. Her thoughts circled, spiraling down, yet despite her languid state, they didn’t stop.
His breathing deepened and slid into the cadence of sleep.
Her mind continued to drift.
His willingness to cede the reins to her, to allow her to dictate their play, continued to nag, to register as, if not suspicious, then certainly significant, but in what way she couldn’t tell. She’d already asked him why. He’d replied with words she’d interpreted as a challenge: Whatever you wish, however you wish. I’m yours. Take me.
She mentally paused, through half-closed eyes stared unseeing into the darkness as she replayed those words in her mind. What if they hadn’t been a challenge, but instead an honest reply?
Her instinctive reaction was to scoff, but she could hear his voice in her head; he hadn’t spoken lightly. What if…?
The possibility shook her, tightened her nerves, sharpened her wits. Her mind whirled and drew another puzzle piece into her mental picture.
The link that had opened between them, that emotional communion that had somehow become an integral part of their joining, was still there, consistently there, and very real. She’d been stunned initially, shocked that he of all men would reveal so much of himself in such a way. That first moment, so intense, had taken her aback, left her momentarily uncertain. Now, however…she needed and wanted to learn more, to explore that connection and see where it led, learn what it meant.
He wanted her, not just physically but on some deeper, more emotion-laden level. That was what that connection, by its very existence, conveyed; she’d seen the yearning, the longing, woven through it.
She accepted he couldn’t pretend to such emotions; she couldn’t recall that he ever had, not with her. But he could conceal; he was a past master at hiding what he felt, one of his most spyworthy talents. While she could sense and be sure of his wanting her, of the sincerity of his belief that he needed her, she couldn’t see what was driving it, what lay behind it. What, indeed, had given rise to it.
One thing she knew beyond question. At twenty, he’d neither wanted nor needed her, not as he did now. She’d been right in defining how the years had changed him—at twenty, the superficial, the obvious, had been all there was; now he was a complex, complicated man, one with hidden depths, still ruled by intense and powerful emotions, but those emotions were now harnessed, controlled, often screened.
The man behind the superficial mask had grown in many ways, had developed depths he hadn’t previously possessed. What drove him to want her was new, one of those facets the years had wrought in him. But what was it?
Her thoughts continued to circle, examining that question from every possible angle…until sleep crept up on her and dragged her down.
The next morning, Nicholas remained confined to his bed awaiting a visit from Dr. Kenton, who Penny had summoned over Nicholas’s protests to check his wounds. When Nicholas appealed to Charles, wordlessly man-to-man, Charles met his gaze stoically and refused to countermand Penny. If it made her feel better to have the doctor call, so be it.
They left Nicholas still weak, but now sulking. Charles hoped he’d grow restless and consent to speak sooner; he was very conscious of wasting the day. He filled the morning writing reports; the first, to Dalziel, he dispatched by rider, the second, a succinct note to Culver informing him of the attack on Nicholas, he left on Norris’s salver.
Culver would be shocked. He would sit in his library and tut-tut, then retreat into his books. He was one person whose reactions Charles could predict with confidence. Not so others in this game.
Once both reports were gone, there was little else for him to do. Dr. Kenton came and went, gravely noting how lucky Nicholas was that neither knife thrust had nicked anything vital. After commending Em’s ointment and Figgs’s bandaging, Kenton advised Nicholas that rest was all he required for a complete recovery.
After seeing Kenton off, Charles prowled around the house. Penny was still in conference with Figgs. He wandered through the library, now cleared of the debris from the smashed display cases, then circled the ground floor, growing ever more restless and edgy. The combination was familiar, the prelude to battle; patience had never been his strong suit.
Yet the battle to come would not come today. Everyone at the house was alert, watchful, careful, very much on guard. While he might have thought to surprise them by returning last night, the French agent—Charles felt confident in dubbing him that—would not call today. Soon, yes, but no