The Haunting of a Duke(70)

She licked and sucked, milking him, until he thought the pleasure would kill him. When the last of the shudders ceased to rack his body, he pulled her to her feet. He lifted her and carried her to the bed, where they both collapsed, sated and weak.

They lay there for some time, her head on his chest, as his hands stroked her now tangled hair and the silky line of her back.

It was Emme who broke the silence. “Will it always be like this?"

He paused. “I wish I could say yes, but this is not something I have ever experienced before. I've never felt this way with anyone."

Emme sighed and snuggled closer. It was not the admission she had wanted from him, but it would do for now. She had recognized that somewhere along the way she had fallen hopelessly in love with him. It was a precarious thing to fall in love with one's husband. If her feelings were not returned, if he did not come to love her, there would be no escape from it. What greater hell could there be, she wondered, than to love someone, to know that she stirred his blood, and to live with him, day after day, knowing that she would never stir his heart?

He stood in the darkness of the passageway and listened, watching through the peephole. He couldn't see everything, but he had seen enough. He'd heard their moans and cries. She was a whore, just like the other ones. He'd recognized it from the moment he'd first spied her. She would pay he thought. She would service him, just as she'd serviced the duke. It was his due after all.

As he thought of it, the fantasy began to grow in his mind. He could hear her crying out, but it wouldn't be cries of pleasure. No. She would cry out with agony and fear. She would plead with him to stop. She would beg him for mercy and when he had taken her in every way imaginable, when he had used her body and sated his every desire, then she would plead for her life.

He slid his hand into his pocket and felt the length of wide satin ribbon. He'd taken it from her dressing table days earlier. The black ribbon would look lovely as it tightened about her white neck. Her face would flush and her lips would part as she gasped for air, for a breath that would not come.

With his other hand, he clumsily freed the buttons of his breeches, popping one in his haste. It landed on the stone floor with a solid ping, but the sound did not carry to the couple on the bed, so engrossed were they in one another. He eyed the length of her legs as she stretched. He could see the swell of one breast. He took his engorged member into his hand and began to stroke, pulling roughly, almost violently. In his mind she was lying in that bed, naked as she was now, but the black ribbon was tightening about her delicate throat and her eyes were going wide and sightless as the breath left her body.

Two more quick jerks of his hand and his seed spilled into the waiting handkerchief. Soon, he thought, it would not be his hand bringing him pleasure, but her lithe, supple body in the throes of death.

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Chapter Thirteen

Several days had lapsed without incident and a hush had fallen over the household. Rhys had revisited Elise's journal again, hoping that perhaps he had missed something. He had forbidden Emme to search the tunnels beneath the house in spite of the fact that she felt sure something would be discovered there.

Emme was in the library when Lord Ellersleigh was announced. He had returned for the holidays. He looked, Emme thought, haggard. His color was slightly off and she could only imagine that he had drunk himself to near oblivion during his weeks in town. “Hello, Michael,” she said, kissing his cheek warmly as he entered the library. “I would ask you how you've been, but then you would tell me. I would be scandalized and my husband would undoubtedly be furious. Suffice to say, I'm glad you've come to Briarwood to recuperate from your excesses."

He chuckled in spite of the splitting headache that plagued him. “It happens from time to time. Excess."

Michael observed her for a moment, taking note of the healthy glow that illuminated her porcelain skin. He also noted that her bosom was significantly fuller, and that the new abundance was not the product of her artfully cut gown. “You're with child,” he said.

Emme's jaw dropped. “Don't be silly!"

Could she really not know, he wondered? “My dear, you have been married for six weeks. Not to be indelicate or to embarrass you, but have you missed your flow?"

Emme's face flamed at the mere mention. “How do you know about these things?"

Michael cursed. “While we were in the army, Emme, Rhys might have been a soldier but my duties were as a physician. There were numerous women in our camp."

The prostitutes and fallen women who followed the soldiers were no secret. Emme was aware of them. She didn't have to speak. The truth was written on her face as the startling realization assailed her.