world is a big place when nothing ties you down.’ His easy drawl was so practised he almost believed his own indifference.
‘Just roll in and roll out, you mean, after ten years of no contact? I almost believe that you might do it. Well, brother, you have not bargained on the whims of my wife and I tell you now if I don’t bring you home after this Emerald will send Azziz and Toro to get you.’
‘Who?’
‘Men from the port of Kingston with rings in their ears and swords in their hands.’ Asher began to smile at his explanation.
‘As I remember it, you used to be less happy.’
Again he smiled.
‘I keep hearing rumours that your wife was a pirate.’
‘And you believe them?’
‘Her minions fit the description.’
‘Then it must be true.’
Cristo saw how he turned the golden ring on the third finger of his left hand with infinite care.
‘When I left you had just married Melanie.’
‘When you left you still had ten fingers on your hands and a hide on your back that was untarnished.’
‘Things change.’
‘And change again.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Second chances, Cristy.’
His old name. His nickname. He shook his head before he knew that he had and watched Ashe cross to the bed and sit down.
‘Falder offers redemption to wearied souls and from what I can see your soul is indeed wearied. Come home and heal.’
Cristo swallowed. Home in the company of his family? The secrets he needed hidden were so much more easily exposed there. ‘I can’t.’
‘Then you will be nursed in London by Emerald, Lucinda and Beatrice-Maude.’
‘No …’
‘Starting today.’
The pounding in his temple stopped him from arguing further and as he lay back against his pillows he knew that he was defeated. Closing his eyes, he slept.
Eleanor visited Cristo Wellingham on the second afternoon of his confinement. She had slept so badly for the past two nights that she had come to the conclusion some sense of resolution needed to be reached between them. He received her in the drawing room, the look on his face one of astonished surprise.
‘You have come alone?’
‘Indeed I have, my lord. I realise, of course, that such a thing is more than inappropriate, but I find I have reached the very end of my patience.’
‘A difficult place to be,’ he returned and gestured her to a sofa in the middle of the room. Today his hair was pulled back into a queue, and the blond looked almost ash. With his jacket cut in the French fashion and braided along one edge, he seemed much less of the English gentleman and far more of the stranger. Sitting in a wing chair opposite, he stretched out his long legs; when he did not speak, Eleanor felt the need to. ‘Are you recovered?’
‘Completely.’ His tone was distant, as if any more questions on the state of his health would be unwelcomed. Still, she was not deterred.
‘My reading on the subject of migraines suggests the case to be the exact opposite. Every tome I browsed made mention of a lack of a cure.’
‘A visitor to a sick room generally tries to bring more uplifting news, madame.’
The shadows beneath his eyes were visible and one still held the remains of redness. Neither a small ailment nor an easy one.
‘In truth, I am surprised to see you here at all, Lady Dromorne.’
The beat of her heart was so loud she felt sure that he must hear it. ‘I have prayed every morning and night for some guidance on how to handle our … situation. So far no answer has been forthcoming.’
He laughed. ‘How fortuitously honest.’
‘What is it you want of me?’ She looked him straight in the eye.
‘Everything.’ His tone was sharp, more honed than she had ever heard it, giving Eleanor the feeling that she was a fly who had tripped heedlessly into a well-laid and intricate web. ‘I want to know why every time we touch each other it feels as it did in Paris. I want to understand why you say one thing and mean another. I want to learn how a beautiful English girl masquerading as a whore in Paris can turn up in London five years later in the guise of the wife of an Earl three times older than she is.’
Eleanor stood, her head in a spin, but he had risen as well, amber eyes glinting.
‘What was in the letter, Eleanor?’
‘I told you once before that I had never read it. My grandfather said to deliver it. He said I could trust you. He said you were a good man …’
His laugh was bitter. ‘We both know how very wrong he was!’ The words lay between them laced with guilt.
‘The travesty at the Château Giraudon was not all your fault …’
‘You are more than gracious.’ Intent tumbled between the cracks of what was truly being said, and his eyes were fierce and predatory. ‘After you left I tried to find you.’
‘To entice me back into your bed?’
There it was, out and said, the night of her ruin plain between them, remembered in words and not just thoughts, the pull of flesh and the rush of release. No longer hidden. She could do nothing save wait.
‘I didn’t forget you, Eleanor.’
‘Lady Dromorne,’ she corrected.
‘I didn’t forget anything at all about you, Lady Dromorne.’ His stillness belied the words, honey soft and languid. Making love with his voice and his eyes and his hands.
The clock on the mantel struck the hour and outside the clatter of hooves on the cobbles could be heard. But here, now, all she felt lodged in her throat and in her stomach.
A magician. A trickster. A man who had been tutored well in the art of loving and in saying things that any woman might want to hear!
She did not move as he reached out and took her hand, his forefinger running along the lines of her inner palm, gently. Barely there! The breath left her body and the room fell away beneath them, the light streaming hot and golden. As she closed her eyes, the stretch of her belly was long as heat seared into quickness.
Mirrors and gauze and the satiny wet folds between her thighs. Rocking. Wanting. Hours when she had forgotten time and only lived. Desire became a roar as warmth coursed through her, loosening the tight, dry centre with dampness.
His silvered hair and velvet eyes, the smell of masculinity unfettered by age or illness. She revelled in the brown smooth skin on his hands and the strong muscles moving beneath the fabric of his jacket.
‘Cristo?’
Even the word was like a salvation, transformed in wonder, spilling from her lips in a lush and radiant question.
Leaning forwards he took her mouth, not gently either, but daring her to resist, a seductive naked want that carried the unsaid promise of all that had been lost between them.
But found again here in the ornate gilded front salon of his London town house, the very Englishness of the décor adding an unreal flavour to what had already been.
She could not stop,