Page 75 of Souvenir Heart

“Of course I don’t like it. But not for the reasons you’re thinking.” His eyes were the color of cognac lit by a flame. His voice softened. “I’ve been where you are. In pain. Lashing out. The anger feels good, doesn’t it? Strong emotions. They remind you that you’re alive. That you’ve survived.”

Marguerite’s mouth went dry. She could only nod.

“When you get to England,” he continued. “You can be angry all you want. “Rage against the world, if that’s what you want. Against all you’ve been through and all that you’ve lost. Rage against me, if you’d like.” One corner of his mouth crooked up. “God and the two gentlemen downstairs know I’m far from perfect.”

He leaned closer. Her nostrils filled with the scent of him. “But for now, you need to stop. Because until we meet the sloop that will take us to England, we have to work together. Survival isn’t easy. It takes strength, determination, and an insatiable hunger for more...”

Letting go of the twisted towel, Marguerite slid her hand up the column of his neck. Felt Marcus shudder as she traced the line of his jaw, the unshaven stubble prickling her fingertips, the softness of his lips. Then, rising from the chair, she wrapped her arms around his neck and fed her rising hunger for more.

Forty-Six

Marcus Tyndale was terrible with words. He’d been trying to explain to Marguerite that she was vulnerable, easy prey to her emotions. That she needed to keep them in check.

He should never have opened his mouth. He drew her bewitching face closer, fingers twining in her hair, tracing the line of her lips with his tongue.

She opened for him then, and his tongue tangled with hers.

Warm and sweet. So invitingly warm.

He needed to rethink his strategy. But all he could focus on was how his mouth felt on hers, how she tasted. How close the bed was, and that she was warm, willing and wearing only the thinnest nightdress.

Her shawl slipped from her shoulders and fell to the floor. Her hands slid from his neck, down to his chest. She was vulnerable. After everything she’d been through, she wasn’t thinking clearly.

He caught her wrists before her fingertips found his bare skin. He stepped back. It was damn hard. He was hard. He’d chosen to be celibate; but he wasn’t a eunuch.

That was two hours ago.

Even now, his body was still protesting his choice.

A loud snore interrupted his disturbed thoughts; he glanced over at the other side of the mattress where Andre lay tangled in the majority of the sheets. The house was a modest one; his choice of sleeping arrangements had been a bed with Scott, the mews with David, inside his beloved coach, or…

He tried not to picture Marguerite in that thin linen night dress, waves of honeysuckle-scented hair tangled around her, and failed.

He needed sleep. Exhaustion clouded a man’s brain and eroded his judgment. Commanders who failed to rest made critical blunders on the battlefield.

He closed his eyes. Ordered his brain to quiet. It responded by filling his head with erotic lines merging into inviting curves. Her neck, with a hollow where it met her shoulder that seemed designed for a man’s tongue. The rise of her breasts that would fit neatly into his hand. The valley of her thighs…

Marcus reached over and yanked at a length of sheet caught under Andre’s bent leg. No point in trying to fight for the pillows piled under the man’s head. Turning on his side, Marcus wrapped himself in his hard-won covers.

Not that he was cold. Blood pounded in his veins. His skin felt feverish, burning.

He opened his eyes and sat up. Andre rolled over, taking a goodly portion of the sheet with him.

Was Marguerite asleep, too? Or was she, like him, restlessly, relentlessly awake?

He gazed irritably around the room at the nightstand, the washstand, the chair piled with clothes in the corner by the fireplace. The night air was humid and heavy. The room was close and hot. He was so damned hot.

A plunge in the December waters of the Seine, even with all the filth, would be more than welcome at the moment.

He ran a hand through his unbound hair; it was damp with sweat.

Marguerite’s rage, her pain, had been like a shower of glass slivers. Slicing her, slicing him. He’d wanted to make it stop. He understood their irrational power all too well.

It had been what fueled her escape from the prison. What had made her keep running even when she was free. Where had she been headed?

What if she left now? She was rested, had a change of clothes and a purse full of money.

Marcus swung his legs off the mattress and stood. Andre snuffled and rolled over. He flung out an arm, claiming the remainder of the sheets.