Heartless (The House of Rohan 5)

It was enough to startle Brandon out of his brooding, and he even cracked a smile. “That’s more ‘bloodies’ than I’ve ever heard in one speech. I’m impressed, old man.”

“I’ll impress me bloody boot into your bloody backside,” Noonan snarled. “It’s that woman, isn’t it? She’s leading you around by the cock hairs and you’re like a randy boy with his first taste of quim. Get over it! Take her or don’t—I don’t give a royal fuck. Just get it out of your system so life can get back to normal. No piece of scrumhole is worth this much fuss.”

“Don’t talk about her like that!” Brandon snapped before he could stop himself.

Noonan looked at him with a combination of affronted dignity and pure pity. “By the cock hairs,” he repeated. “I’m sleeping in the stable.” The door slammed behind him.

Brandon stood in the center of the room, frozen. He’d actually considered hitting Noonan at his coarse term for Emma. The old man was right—he had lost his bloody mind.

He stalked back across the room, looking out into the courtyard. The moon had set, and everything was dark and deserted. He was alone in the main part of the inn with the woman he’d wanted so badly it had kept him alive.

He still wanted her.

He tried to remember the aphorisms his nanny had drilled into him. Beauty is only skin deep, pretty is as pretty does, looks fade but character persists. Nanny had had to deal with the way-too-beautiful Rohans, whose looks and wildness touched every generation. Emma’s loveliness hadn’t faded in the years since he’d last seen her—if anything she looked even more luminous, and she would be beautiful, to him at least, when she was seventy years old.

He heard her soft footsteps on the stairs. She’d been barefoot again, he’d noticed, despising the fact that he found her long, perfect toes erotic. She was as quiet as a mouse creeping around, but she was far from mouse like. She would be hoping he would be in bed by now, and that was exactly where he should be. He should let her float silently by his door, up the narrow stairs to her bedroom. It would be best for both of them.

It wasn’t going to happen. He moved to the door.

Chapter 20

Emma didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath as she tiptoed past Brandon’s bedroom. She’d almost made it when the door was shoved open, into her. She let out a panicked squawk, jumping backward, and if he hadn’t caught her arm she would have gone tumbling backward down the stairs.

He yanked her up, then released her with unflattering speed, and she put an instinctive hand to her breast, trying to catch her breath. He was watching her with that same, cynical expression, the one she had learned to hate so much in just one short day.

“You scared me,” she said crossly. “Now I’ve probably gone and woken the household.”

“I doubt it. Noonan went to join Tillerson in the stable, and the Bosomworths live in a wing off the back of the kitchen. No one would hear you if you scream.”

Her eyes shot up to his cool face. “That sounds like a threat, my lord. Is it, by any chance?”

“No. I was thinking about making you scream in pleasure.”

She glared at him. “You don’t know me very well, then, do you?”

She didn’t like that small, sardonic smile that twisted his face, the ruined half as well as the beautiful one, the face that once held such a different smile. “Oh, rather better than you might expect,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She wanted to edge away from him—he hadn’t moved any closer since he’d released her, but he was too big in the small, shadowy hallway. If she moved backward she’d hit the stairs, and this time he might not stop her from falling. The door to his room was between her and the small stairway that led to the upper floor, and she wasn’t going to count on latent manners to get him out of the way. Most gentlemen didn’t consider manners necessary for women with her past, no matter how punctilious they were with their friends and wives and daughters.

“Take it however you want it. I’m very good at reading women. I’ve had a great deal of experience.” Oddly enough it didn’t sound boastful—more a simple statement of fact.

“I’m not an ordinary woman,” she shot back.

“On that we’re agreed.”

Thank God he couldn’t see the flush that had risen to her face. Another veiled insult—why wouldn’t he leave her alone? She drew herself up to her full height, usually imposing enough, but little defense against Brandon Rohan’s. “Did you open your door for a reason, my lord?” She used the title deliberately. “Or did you simply not want to miss a chance to insult me?”

She could see the look of frustration twist his face, and for an odd moment she wanted to reach up and touch the scarred side, to stroke him gently, and it must have shown in her eyes.

Of course he misread it. “Feeling sorry for me, Mrs. Cadbury? If I’m with a woman I do my best to keep the good side of my face in the forefront. I know people have delicate constitutions and they’re not interested in the souvenirs of war.”

His words distracted her from her need to escape. She wrinkled her brow, remembering. “You do keep your face turned, don’t you?” she said. “I don’t think I noticed.” Indeed, he was a man of two sides, and she saw both of them equally, accepting both.

“Again, we’re agreed that you’re no ordinary woman. My fiancée can’t bear to be in the same room with me, much less be forced to look at my scars. I don’t imagine she’ll find my body any more reassuring once she’s in my bed.”

A host of emotions swept through her, anger at Frances Bonham, sorrow at the burden he bore, and sheer, unadulterated pain at the thought of him, stripping off his clothes and taking that cold little girl to bed with his big, strong body.

She was far from an idiot—she had a very good idea where her own pain was coming from. Later, alone, she’d take it out and examine it like a laboratory specimen, looking for signs that she could cut out. For now she could do nothing but ache.