My Heart's Desire (Barrett 1)

Alex nodded. “I know. But he answered me by saying that I had it backwards, that it was he who would kill…” She swallowed nervously. “He never finished the sentence, because that was when you came to my rescue. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything, Drake,” she added quickly, seeing the flicker of suspicion in Drake’s eyes. “He was foxed at the time.”

Drake was not so sure. But, seeing the worry on Alex’s face, he decided that enough was enough. She was exhausted; it had been an emotionally draining day, and she needed to sleep.

“It’s time to rest, love.” He drew the bedcovers up, tenderly tucking them around Alex’s shoulders. “You look utterly spent.”

“But, Drake,” she protested, voicing the fear that gnawed at her nerves and crept, unbidden, into her mind like some horrid, poisonous insect, “what if he tries to … hurt you again.” She could not even bring herself to say the word “murder.”

Drake kissed her delicately arched eyebrows, smoothing away the worried pucker between them with his lips. “No one is going to harm me,” he assured her, giving Alex the words she needed to hear. “I promise you that. I have far too much to live for to let anything happen.” He saw her visibly relax, and he pressed her head gently to his chest. “The mystery will still be here for us to solve in the morning, sweetheart. But for now you and my child need to rest. So go to sleep.”

Alex nodded, settling herself fully atop Drake, snuggling against him. He was here, he was safe, and he loved her. Alex was whole. “Stay with me,” she whispered, unwilling to relinquish the security his nearness brought her.

Drake rested his chin on her head, lightly stroking her back in slow, soothing motions. “Always,” he promised, wondering how he was going to endure lying beneath her all night without making love to her again. His mind knew that she needed to sleep, but his throbbing body was equally insistent about its own needs, and he didn’t seem able to dissuade it.

Alex shifted slightly, trailing her silky hair across Drake’s pounding chest and unknowingly rubbing her lower body against his rigid erection. She then settled herself against him with a sigh, the movement bringing his hardened manhood to rest between her soft, inner thighs.

A low moan escaped Drake’s lips, as he instinctively sought the warm haven in which he longed to be. His mind warred with his body, insisting that only an unfeeling cad would attempt to seduce his half-sleeping, pregnant wife. But, God … she was so warm, so soft, her gently rounded body so lush. Drake gritted his teeth and strove for control.

Alex lifted her head, staring up at Drake with seductive, smoky eyes.

“You disappoint me, your grace,” she said in a husky whisper. “And here I thought this was the one area in which you needed no instruction.”

At her words a slow smile spread across Drake’s handsome face. In one exquisite motion he raised Alex’s hips and lowered her onto his seeking shaft, until he had impaled her completely and was buried deep inside her quivering softness.

“I humbly submit to your learned ministrations, princess,” he managed, and then abandoned himself to his wife’s magic.

Alex slept peacefully in Drake’s arms, the soft rise and fall of her breathing a soothing caress against Drake’s fevered skin. Tenderly he looked down at her, stroked the stray locks of hair from her face. Alex did not even stir. She was too deep in slumber to notice even an invasion of Napoleon’s troops.

Drake’s own body was possessed of a deep, ringing weariness, which tugged at him, insisting that he, too, sleep. But the events of the night weighed heavily upon him.

He and Sebastian were related by blood … but in all ways that mattered, they were neither brothers nor friends. Within Sebastian, Drake had always sensed an inner core of cruelty, of resentment, penetrating so deep that Drake had been unwilling to explore its magnitude. Until now. Now Drake was forced to consider the most abhorrent possibility of all. Was Sebastian’s hatred so strong that he would actually kill his own brother?

There was no concrete evidence, but what alarmed and sickened Drake was that he could not, with certainty, dismiss the questions that bombarded his mind. A man who was capable of raping his brother’s wife was capable of anything, even cold-blooded murder.

A dark feeling of foreboding drove the aftermath of warm lethargy from Drake’s limbs. The questions would continue to plague him until they were answered. He had to know. Now.

Very gently, so as not to disturb her, Drake lifted Alex’s arm from across his chest and disentangled her slender legs from his muscular ones. He rose from the bed and pulled on his breeches, shirt, and boots. Leaving the sole lamp burning in Alex’s bedchamber, Drake left quietly, closing the door behind him. He glanced up and down the dark, deserted hallway, reluctant to leave Alex unattended without knowing Sebastian’s whereabouts. The problem was solved when he spotted a nervous footman standing on the second-floor landing, peering down into the hallway below.

Drake strode toward him. At the echoing sound of Drake’s booted footsteps on the polished floor, the footman jumped.

“Oh, yer grace, ‘tis ye.” He looked relieved, “I was wonderin’ what ye’d be wantin’ me t’ do about dousin’ the lights.”

Drake frowned. “I don?

?t understand the problem. There is no one about. Why would you need to leave the first floor lit?”

The footman shifted from one foot to the other. He was relatively new to Allonshire, and the last thing he wanted was to come between his grace and Lord Sebastian.

“I’m sorry, yer grace, but Lord Sebastian is … usin’ the library.” His pleading look and the accompanying crash from below told Drake that “using the library” in fact meant “destroying the library.”

“Should I be waitin’ fer ’im t’ retire?” the footman continued.

Drake shook his head, feeling sympathy for the uncomfortable servant. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” He paused. “You are new here, are you not?”

Eyes filled with apprehension, the footman nodded. “My name’s Richards, yer grace; I’ve been at Allonshire fer three months.”

Drake studied the anxious little man. “And are you loyal to my family, Richards?”

“Oh, yes, yer grace, I am!” He winced at another crash from beneath them.