Taming the Beast (25 page)

“You already are.” Pulling apart his breeches fully, his manhood sprung free, Michaela threw her leg over Roderick's hips. She took him in her hand, despite his strangled, “Michaela, wait,” and without giving herself time to be afraid, Michaela sank onto him.

Her cry mingled with Roderick's—pain and wonder and fear. She settled onto his length with difficulty, but did not relent until she had taken him all. She paused for a moment as the throbbing pain receded and then slowly, she began to ride him, the link around her neck swinging in time to her movements, out over Roderick's face, making a warped ring of shadow when the lightning flashed.

He caught it in his hand, pulled her forward onto his chest once more.

Michaela writhed atop Roderick, keeping him enslaved by her body. Bringing her hands to her neck, she lifted the chain over her head and placed it over Roderick's in one fluid motion. She kissed him deeply before pushing herself aright and sinking onto him fully once more.

Roderick brought his hands up, his arms crooked at the elbows, as if in surrender to her, and Michaela laced her fingers in his. The metal link rested in the center of his breastbone, and seemed to glow brighter with each flash of lightning, bright white rays bursting from it like a small, fantastic sun. With each ebb and flow of movement, Roderick kept time with his sighs, his groans, and the vulnerability of him sped Michaela's passion, prompted her to rock her hips faster. Making love to Roderick tonight was not for Michaela's pleasure, but she could feel a tightness winding in her, an urgent need for something, something…and she raced toward it.

She felt him grow inside her, heard his groans drawing out, longer and longer, his panting taking his words and tying them into unintelligible knots, and she knew that his time was very near. She was close, too, so close, and so she rode faster, deeper, letting loose her own throaty cries as she felt him in her very core, it seemed.

And then it started for her, an expanding around his length, slowly, infinitely, as if time had stopped, and then in a wink, her whole body, her whole world collapsed in with a crash and she cried out, froze.

Roderick gave a guttural yell and strained his hips upward, driving into her one time on his own, deeply, and his passion, too, erupted.

The link fell dim once more.

Michaela slumped to Roderick's side, feeling him slip erotically from her body. They lay in the dark together, without words, chasing their own breaths, for a long time.

Finally, Roderick spoke.

“Why did you give me the link? Your mother told you—”

“To never take it off, I know,” Michaela finished quietly. “But that was before I had you to protect me. Remember, on the cliff, you promised to protect me. And I believe you will.”

“I remember. But, Michaela, I cannot protect you as a proper husband should. I…it is the same reason why I would not make love to you. Why I abhor the thought of being naked in your—”

“Roderick, I know,” she whispered.

“No, you don't. You can't possibly—”

“I know.”
Michaela pulled his head to look at her. “I know about your leg.” He simply stared at her, and she saw his throat working as he swallowed. “Hugh told me.”

“You knew…you knew before—” He let the question trail away, but Michaela knew what he was asking.

“Yes, I knew before we made love.”

Roderick made a growling sound, and looked away from her. “Why?” he rasped. “Why have you done this?”

Michaela sat up, propped on one arm. “Because I love you, Roderick. And I wanted to show you are a man,
the man
, to me and for me. The man I want as my husband, in every way. Your scars, your injuries, they make you perfect to me.”

“Stop!”

“No, I won't stop,” she said gently. “You must know this before either of us can continue. I made love to you tonight so that you could see that you are not just a weighty purse to me, or a more noble title, or a grand keep. I want you for who you are, right now. And if you want me, then you will take me for who I am, right now. You will love me as a wife, true. If you can not do that, after all that we have shared, then I can not and will not marry you.”

He was quiet for a long time. “You leave me with a very difficult decision.”

“Oh, I hope it is not so very difficult.” She tried to smile in the darkness. “My parents should arrive on the morrow—mayhap the day after. Either we wed, or I return home with them. It is your choice.” She kissed his cheek, the closest part of his face to her, and then rolled over and rose from the bed.

“Where are you going?” he demanded, and Michaela wanted to think she detected a note of longing in his voice.

She pulled her gown over her head. “To my chamber, to wash and to sleep. You need your time to think, as do I. I will see you in the morn.”

He humphed, and this time Michaela's smile was genuine. She came around the side of the bed and kissed his mouth properly.

“Good night, Roderick. Sleep well. I love you.”

He didn't answer her, but she hadn't expected him to, and so she turned and quietly left his room.

 

Roderick lay for a long time in cold, sweaty fear after Michaela had left. Perhaps what she said was true. Perhaps she could accept him for what he was, and perhaps he was even some sort of a man still, in her eyes, at least.

Fear made him sick at his stomach. Fear of losing all that was wonderfully appearing just within his reach.

He tugged the sides of his ruined breeches together as best he could and rose to a sit. Michaela had missed cutting the bottom two rungs of lace and so he restrung the leather together sufficient to retain his modesty, then swung his legs over the side of the bed. He pushed with his arms and stood.

His left boot crunched sideways under his weight and Roderick spun his arms madly in the air, black dread rushing up his throat and blinding him as he began to topple to the floor. The feeling in his leg was gone, gone! He turned and grabbed at the bed with a cry, but clutched only at gossamer throws that slid with him to the ground.

Roderick's head struck the frame of the bed painfully, dazzling him for a moment, his right ankle twisted under him and as he at last crashed fully to the floor, Roderick realized that he had lost his leg once more.

The metal link around his neck was the last thing to hit, and it did so with a tiny, echoing clink before his wide-staring, disbelieving eyes.

Michaela was sore and aching and more hopeful than she had ever been in her life as she made her way down the black corridor to her chamber.

She had made love to Roderick, and he had let her. Things were going to be all right, after all. She realized then that it was Yule's Eve. They would be wed in a matter of days—perhaps she could even count the time in hours—and then she and he and Leo would become a family. It gave her an instant's frown about what was to come of the situation with Hugh—Michaela had spoken true when she'd told him she didn't wish for him to go, but she also knew what it was like to care for someone who did not return the emotion. Michaela could not have stayed at Tornfield Manor after Alan and Juliette wed, so it was very unlikely that Hugh could withstand seeing Michaela and Roderick together, as man and wife, for the rest of his days.

It would devastate Roderick if Hugh left.

She wondered for a moment if perhaps Hugh's feelings for Roderick might one day fade, change, as her own feelings for Alan had. But then she shook her head with a sad smile. Michaela knew her feelings had changed because of Roderick and distance, time to see who Alan really was, and that he was not the man she'd daydreamed into being. Hugh held no such illusions about Roderick—he knew his warts, and loved him in spite of them. Mayhap because of them. And Leo…heavens, how Leo loved his Hoo.

But now was not the time to think of such depressing possibilities. Michaela wanted a wash and a bite to eat and the rest of the evening to herself. She walked past her own door to head toward the hall and give instructions for water and a tray to be brought up. Perhaps she would have the same sent to Roderick's chamber, as well. A small gift for him.

She was nearly to the top of the stairs when she heard the commotion: a man shouting, a woman—the voice sounded like one of the maidservants—arguing fiercely with him.

“You can't go up there, my lord!”

“Get out of my way, woman, or I shall dash you down the stairs! I'll search this entire keep alone if I must! I know she is here!”

Michaela froze, a hand to her throat.

The man's voice belonged to Alan Tornfield.

He came upon the upper floor just then, and Michaela saw his wild, rain-soaked hair and clothes, the stricken look in his eyes as his gaze fell upon her. The maidservant was hanging on to the back of his cloak as if pulling vainly on a stubborn mule.

“Michaela, thank God! They're with you, aren't they? Say they are!”

“Alan, what in heaven's—it's all right,” she said to the maid and waved her away. “Who are with me? My God, you're soaked through!”

“Elizabeth!” Alan gasped, trying to gulp down great breaths of air. “And Harliss, as well. They're here, aren't they?”

“Of course not. Why would they be? Harliss is banned from Cherbon.” The tiniest drip of fear fell onto Michaela's neck, as if snuck through the stones by the powerful storm still raging beyond Cherbon's walls, or flung from Alan's drenched form. She stepped toward him, reached out a hand to take his arm. “Come downstairs with me and you can explain. I'm sure—”

“There's no time!” Alan shouted, flinging her hand away. “If they're not here, they must be in the storm somewhere, lost!”

“What are you talking about?” Michaela's dread increased. “Weren't they with you on the way back to Tornfield?”

Alan fell back onto the corridor wall, his eyes squeezed shut. “Elizabeth ran off again, presumably to you. Harliss seemed to be close on her heels when they disappeared into the storm.”

“Juliette?” Michaela asked, the reality of what Alan was telling her not quite sinking in.

Alan opened his eyes and his head came away from the wall, his face sickly pale in the flickering gloom of the corridor. “We were closer to Tornfield so I sent her on. In the black, the rain, I couldn't track Elizabeth and Harliss while keeping Juliette safe. She…she feels Elizabeth is gone because of her and now…I've lost them all!” His chest hitched under his soaked clothes.

“My God,” Michaela breathed, hearing each rumble and flash beyond the keep as if amplified now. “All right. It will be all right. I'll go and alert Lord R—”

But her decisive speech was cut off by another voice in the blackness. “There you are, Miss Fortune.” It was Hugh, and in a moment he materialized in the circle of candlelight. “Leo with you, then?”

“What?” Michaela said, her heart freezing to a halt.

Hugh frowned at Alan Tornfield, still leaning against the wall as if unable to stand by his own power. “It was
you!
I'll have you whipped, dog, for invading the lord's son's chamber!”

Alan gasped a strangled breath and slid down the wall to a slumping seat.

“Alan hasn't been to Leo's room, Hugh,” Michaela choked, and she prayed her horrific suspicions were wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Well, someone was there who's only just come in from the rain—the floor is a deluge.” Hugh's frown deepened as he looked between Michaela and Alan. “Where is Leo?”

Alan cried out and shook his fist. “Elizabeth, why? How could you?”

“The Tornfield girl's abducted Leo?” Hugh shouted, but before Alan could admit to the possibility, Michaela stepped to Hugh, her hands out.

“No, Hugh, I think it is much worse than that, I'm afraid—Elizabeth's run off, but Harliss was with her.”

A squealing breath came from Hugh.

“Nurse will protect them,” Alan argued. “She loves them both and—”

“I tried to tell you in the wood, Alan!” Michaela shouted. “Harliss is mad! She is mad for revenge on us all, and the surest way to get that revenge is through our children! She is evil, deranged!”

Alan was sobbing quietly in his heap on the floor and Michaela turned from him in disgust. She expected to see Hugh crazed with worry, but the man's beautiful eyes were hard, determined. His jaw was set and he seemed poised to action.

It was little wonder Hugh had saved Roderick's life in the Holy Land. How had she ever thought this man insincere?

“Take this blubbering mess and go search,” Hugh commanded. “Call to any servants you see en route, but do not tarry to rally more. I will warn Roderick and we shall join you.”

“Yes. All right, Hugh,” Michaela readily agreed, so thankful that Hugh Gilbert was who he was.

He looked to Alan. “I vow to you, Tornfield, I vow to you by all that I hold holy in heaven and on earth, if Leo bears one bruise, one scratch—if he has so much as caught the sniffles from your asinine judgment, I will see your blood spilled over my boots by my own hand!” He looked back to Michaela, and she knew in that moment that Hugh meant every word to the center of his soul. “Go!” Hugh shouted as he turned on his own heel and raced into the black.

Michaela ran to Alan's side and yanked on his elbow. “Get up, Alan. If you value those children's lives and your own,
come on!
”

 

Roderick had forgotten how to walk with his cane and in his heavy prosthesis in two short days, as if he had only just lost his leg for the first time.

He lurched and crashed his way through the maze of dark passages of Cherbon, dizzy from the bash on his skull he'd suffered, and also the shock of the night.

Michaela had made love to him. She loved him. And she wanted him in spite of his hideousness, but now he could no longer pretend. What had happened to the power of the old boot he still wore? Why had it failed him, now of all times, when he had started to believe that he could pretend he was whole, could love Michaela as she deserved to be loved, as he wanted to love her? For those short, sweet days, Roderick had been a man once more, and now…now—

He was nothing but a beast again. A pathetic, growling, thrashing animal, unfit to love. Unfit for a family. Unfit to live.

He stopped, braced his forearm on a wall and waited with his eyes closed for the paralyzing trembling to ease. He could never face her like this again. Not when he had shown her he could walk, mount a horse, swing Leo about and toss him in the air with ease. Hell, the way he'd improved the last two days, Roderick was beginning to fancy a battle again, and thought of challenging Hugh to a mock contest. Roderick pulled away from the wall and lurched on down the corridor aimlessly.

But not now. No, now he could do none of those things, and it made him useless. Impotent. Pathetic. She had said she loved him, but that would change. In time, she would grow tired of his indigent state, his tottering, and she would seek her comfort elsewhere.

And now that Roderick loved her, had tasted her as the wife she would certainly be—warm and loyal and passionate—he felt his guts were being pulled slowly from his abdomen.

Perhaps this was how his mother had felt, before she walked into the sea and left him forever. She too had been ill, tired. She too had left someone she loved behind, thinking perhaps he was better off without her.

Had
he been better off? Had Dorian Cherbon done the right thing in taking her own life?

A cold chill swept up Roderick's spine and Michaela's metal link, forgotten beneath his hastily donned shirt until now, began to itch against his skin. He stopped to scratch at it mindlessly, and then looked at where his crippled leg had dragged him to. The candles eternally guttering to either side of the ornately carved doors, the Latin words accusing from the lintel:

From the gate of hell deliver their souls, O Lord.

A rage built in Roderick, unlike any he had ever known, at his father, at his infirmities, at Aurelia for being ill, at Leo for being so innocent, at his mother for leaving him, at Miss Fortune for having the stupidity to come to Cherbon in the first place, to love him.

Roderick flung open the double doors with a roar and threw himself into the dark chapel, as if charging down the throat of a dragon.

 

Michaela knew she was a fool for dashing into the storm in nothing more than her gown and slippers, but she could not bring herself to pause even long enough to find some sort of cloak to throw about her.

Leo was out there. Leo and Elizabeth, both in Harliss's clutches.

Thankfully, Alan had recovered from his self-pitying puddle in the corridor and now ran at Michaela's side, the two of them clutching hands to maintain some sort of reference in the crashing, black world of water that was the storm around them. The terrain was treacherous in the freezing downpour, turning ditches of dying winter grass into deadly sluices, where rabbit holes and animal paths gaped suddenly underfoot, as if to take the desperate pair by surprise and swallow them whole.

As the lightning flashed, they could see the sea beyond, tempest and foaming, the waves lashing up the height of the cliffs themselves, it seemed. The sight of the black water, slashed with foamy gray arms grasping blindly for prey, any prey, caused Michaela's blood to run colder than the rain.

Alan jerked her to a stop. “Michaela!” he shouted, and crouched down. He picked up some small object and rose, holding it toward her. It was a tiny leather slipper.

Leo's shoe.

No soos!

Alan must have known by her face that the shoe belonged to Leo for he did not hesitate a moment more, tugging Michaela's shocked body into motion again.

“They must have gone toward the cliff,” he shouted as they both ran and slid through the narrow valley. “Is there aught about for shelter there? A fishing hut perhaps?”

Michaela shook her head, but then realized he could not see her in the darkness. “No! There's a path that leads down to the water, but…nothing else!” Behind her, Michaela could feel the graves on the knoll watching them. Perhaps Dorian Cherbon particularly, as one who had taken this path long ago, to her own death. “There is little beach, Alan, and if the tide—”

Alan pulled her forward once more. “There is no other place they could have gone. They may be trapped on the cliff face!” They stumbled toward the rocky V, where the path disappeared over the cliff and down its jagged skirt to the thrashing hem of the sea.

Once at the head of the steep, zigzagging path, they stopped to look down. The tide was indeed on its way in, and the slender strip of rocky beach that was often visible was now covered over by a depth of foamy water. Michaela knew it would rise to the middle of the cliff at its highest point.

The children would not have gone this way on their own.

When the lightning flashed again, Alan gave a hoarse cry. He tore his hand free from Michaela's and dropped over the edge of the cliff onto the path, scrambling over the sharp, loose stone.

“Alan!” Michaela cried into the screaming wind, but he did not stop, did not slow. Why hadn't Roderick come yet? Michaela was terrified, and in need of his solid presence.

She swiped at the streams of icy water dripping into her eyes and followed Alan, keeping close watch on the boundary of water and rock that rose steadily with each crashing wave, rolling ever upward to meet them. The wind howled around the cliff like ghostly, hunting hounds.