Falling for Anthony tg-1 Read online

  When had her movements become so sensual? Was it deliberate?

  Do not be a fool, he admonished himself. He was unsuitable. Considering the hopelessness of a match between them, only a witless idiot would think there was a possibility of his having her.

  And the proof, he supposed, was that the most brainless part of his body liked the idea of having her very much.

  "Are you upset with my father?" she asked softly—too softly. As if she were planning something.

  He answered her carefully, uncertain of the motive behind her question. "No," he said finally. "I'm disappointed in myself for expecting too much."

  She nodded, and her cool smile did not fade. "I did, too. We make quite a pair." She tapped the sword with her fingernail and then stepped away from the desk. "Perhaps I should find a way to let him know how disappointed I am."

  Anthony nodded absently, disliking the direction the conversation was taking and searching wildly for a topic that would ease the icy tension that lingered in the room, that would leave them on a better footing before he left.

  Before he could speak, Emily said, "I did have one other astounding revelation today. A rumor came to my attention, and I had to ascertain its truth for myself. I have just come from Cranborne Street, off Leicester Square."

  Grateful that he would not have to come up with a subject, and relieved that she had shifted her attention to gossip, Anthony grinned slightly and prepared to laugh at some entertaining on dit.

  Her color high, she added, "While I was there, I learned that if a woman takes a man's organ into her mouth, she can make him do anything she wishes."

  He blinked, his smile paralyzed on his face, his mind unable to comprehend that the statement had come from her, his body, however, understood perfectly. The sudden, superb ache of his erection broke through the numbing hold shock had placed on his other emotions: jealousy, concern, and desire fought to place words on his tongue.

  Emily stole them away by lifting her skirts, straddling him, and capturing his lips with hers.

  Chapter Two

  There is not always a choice; alternatives are not always to be had;

  there is not always a decision to make.

  — The Doyen Scrolls

  Surprise held Anthony's mouth immobile and closed under hers, and she slid her tongue along his bottom lip, demanding entry. The practiced caress brought Anthony to his senses; Emily shouldn't know how to kiss like that, and she certainly shouldn't be on his lap with her hemline bunched around her thighs.

  He grasped her wrists tightly and pushed her upper body away from his. Her weight shifted against his rigid sex, and her name was a hoarse groan instead of a stern warning. "Emily!"

  She stared at him, her face set. Her lips glistened from the kiss, but her expression was determined rather than passionate.

  Deliberately, she rocked against him.

  His breath hissed out from between clenched teeth as he fought for control. He should have tumbled her onto the floor, removed her from his person, and stopped this madness. He couldn't; she was a lady, a friend, and should be treated as such-even when she behaved as shockingly as this. Instead, he gave her a shake. "Do you wish to bring ruin to your family? Who taught you this?"

  "A little bird," she replied; he shook her again for her flippancy and had to grit his teeth. Each movement of her body ground against his erection. "A bird of paradise," she added, her eyes flashing as if she dared him to reprimand her. "I had questions; she answered them."

  "You went to a courtesan?" He couldn't begin to fathom it. He recalled her mention of a visit to Cranborne Street; though no longer a fashionable part of London, it had some claim to respectability. A courtesan—a very discreet one—could possibly pose as a widow and live among the gentry there. "Why?"

  Her mouth pressed into a firm line. She turned her head and pulled against his grip.

  Torn between relief and regret that she'd apparently abandoned her attempt at seduction, Anthony released her wrists. Her hands fell to her sides, drawing his gaze down; a strangled sound caught in his throat.

  An ivory stripe of bare thigh peeked out above a garter of white ribbon. Pink silk stockings embraced her slim legs and trim ankles. As he watched, Emily's fingers curled around her hem, and she raised the dress higher, fine muslin sliding over satin skin.

  Realizing that her seduction hadn't ceased and his resistance would soon fail, he wrapped his hands around her waist and began lifting her away from him. She countered by slipping her hand between them, firmly stroking his length, up and down.

  Even with two layers of clothing between her palm and his shaft, he felt every inch of the scandalous caress burning into him. His hips jerked, nearly unseating her; he steadied her automatically, his hands trembling against her waist.

  "Good God, Emily," he said desperately. "Stop this."

  Her fingers plunged beneath the placket at the front of his breeches; without his being aware of it, she'd unfastened the buttons. She pulled at the front of his drawers as she nimbly untied the tapes.

  "Stop!" he repeated—and then his erection was in her hand and his voice failed him. With quick fingers, she worked his arching sex from its confines. It rose up against the tousled folds of their clothing. She held it carefully, though with the strength of his arousal, it needed no support. At the sight of her pale hand surrounding the base of his shaft, his defiance fled.

  And in the back of his mind, where his self-pity and disappointment lingered, a desire long suppressed emerged: She'll have to marry you. She'll be yours.

  Possession—an emotion unfamiliar and heady—ripped through him, left him breathless, and mingled with self-disgust that he would ever use such a method, that he was participating in this calculated ruin. Emily rose higher on her knees, her eyes cold with purpose. She guided his tip to her entrance; he immediately recognized that she wasn't ready, but she began to sink onto him before he could implore her to wait.

  The pleasure of being enveloped by her heated depths overwhelmed the discomfort of his entry until she whimpered softly in distress. He realized that despite her practiced kiss and her knowledgeable fingers, she didn't know more than the mechanics of intercourse.

  With clinical detachment, he heard himself say, "Lift yourself up, then push back down. Slowly."

  Her face blazed with color, but she followed his instruction. Considering that she had been bold enough to instigate this, Anthony had a moment to wonder at her embarrassment—was it caused by their actions, his frank instruction… or because it was him? — before the leisurely drag of her inner muscles up his length captured every bit of his attention.

  She took him in again, more easily than before; her body had begun producing moisture. With a small, relieved sigh, she began riding him in slow, shallow strokes.

  It was torture, but he dared not force her all the way onto him for tear of hurting her. To keep himself from thrusting deep, he leaned forward and buried his face between her breasts, biting the bodice of her dress. He inhaled sharply, letting the dark, warm scent of her fill his senses.

  She suddenly paused with his shaft halfway inside her, and his teeth threatened to tear through lace trim. "Anthony?"

  He hoped she would take his choked grunt as an answer; at that moment, nothing he could have said would have been sensible.

  After a brief hesitation, she said, "Do not spill your seed inside me."

  That brought his head up. Uncertainty and fear pinched her mouth.

  "I won't," he promised.

  "Will you spill it soon?" she said, with a fleeting, pained expression.

  "Not immediately." Chagrin flushed his cheeks. When he had become a willing participant, he should have seen to her pleasure. "Have you exhausted yourself? Do you want to stop?"

  She shook her head. "I will finish this," she said, rising up with determined vigor. She dropped, earned down by her weight.

  She cried out in surprise at his full penetration; Anthony, unable to help himself, held her
locked against him with his hands on her hips. His boot heels dug into the carpet. Fire licked at his spine, drawing his muscles taut.

  After a long, shaky sigh, she began to move again, and he drew her hands to his shoulders so she could brace herself against him. Slipping his fingers between them, he sought the tiny organ at the apex of her sex. His thumb stroked; she gasped and tried to pull away; he followed, briefly triumphing in the soft sounds of pleasure she began to make low in her throat.

  Not immediately, he had told her, but the slick glide of his fingers against her, of his shaft skimming against his hand with every thrust into her, undid him. His body tightened, trembled. He fought it, trying to wait for her, ringing the base of his cock and squeezing in a hopeless attempt to slow his orgasm. The urge to find his release inside her, to make his possession complete, almost overwhelmed the memory of his promise—but at the last moment he withdrew.

  Grabbing for the first piece of cloth at hand—her chemise—he wrapped it over his glans as his orgasm tore through him, clenching his teeth against a shout.

  And when the last shudder faded, the enormity of what they'd done hit him.

  He stared down at the semen-soaked linen in his hand. Oh, God. Had he really been stupid enough to imagine that Norbridge would allow him to marry Emily? That he would be a match for an earl's daughter, just because he'd compromised her? More likely, if he discovered Anthony had made love to his daughter, Norbridge would ruin him, make it impossible for Anthony to live or work amongst polite society.

  Had he only believed it for that moment so he could allow himself to yield to her? If I had been a man, instead of a boy searching for ease and pleasure, wouldn't I have kept us both from ruination?

  Shame stiffened his tongue, but he knew he had to apologize. He lifted his gaze; she was staring at him, her expression arrested on his face.

  "Don't… blame yourself," she said. Her voice trembled, and she closed her eyes. "I told you I would hurt you."

  Unsure how to respond, he gestured to their clothing and said the first thing that came to his mind. "I've not been hurt—only mussed." He attempted a smile. "Colin will be severely displeased by my state of dishevelment tonight; I hardly think he'll let me accompany him to his gentleman's club now."

  To his horror, tears started in her eyes. As if she hadn't heard his jest, she said brokenly, "I have been an idiot to think love means anything. It is a fraud, isn't it?"

  Without waiting for his answer, she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed. His concerned queries yielded no answer. At a loss, he could only hold her, stroking her hair in a vain attempt to soothe her unrelenting despair.

  Self-recrimination tore at him—why had he allowed her to do this? The answers that came to his mind were not pleasant, and in the end, he could only murmur against her temple his apologies, and his promise to return from the Peninsula and make reparations for the wrong he'd done her, to take away the troubles that plagued her.

  He repeated the vow again and again as she cried, and he felt the weight of it settle over him. His life had never had a purpose, but one sat before him now. It would not be a grand purpose, but it would be his.

  He would return and make it right—and she would be happy again.

  "I promise," he said.

  Albuera, Spain

  May 1811

  A soft breeze had swept away the haze of burnt gunpowder enveloping the fields, but the acrid odor lingered. The moonlight made formless lumps and shadows of the soldiers lying on the ground; its dim glow erased their identities, the blue and green and red of their uniforms showing gray and black.

  Anthony raised his lantern high, trying to peer past the circle of light it cast, silently urging the dead men around him to moan or call out for help. None would—he'd checked each still form in the field, bending hundreds of times to feel for a pulse that was almost never there. Earlier, he'd seen medical personnel and soldiers from both sides scouring the battlefields for survivors and collecting weapons. Now, as it neared midnight, the search for survivors had waned until the only living beings in that wretched place were him, the two hospital mates he'd accompanied, and the handful of soldiers they'd found and treated and who now waited in a medical cart for transport back to the hospital.

  Across the ridge that ran the length of the Albuera River, the wagons carrying the dead back for burial were still at work, slowly taking the course the battle had followed and collecting its casualties. It would be early morning before they reached this field.

  "Doctor?"

  With a resigned sigh, Anthony lowered his lantern. A few paces away, Assistant Surgeon Dilby stood wiping his hands with a blood-streaked cloth. The skin around the young surgeon's face looked as if it had been stretched and released, hanging tiredly under his eyes and chin.

  Suddenly feeling his own exhaustion, Anthony looked past him. On the edge of the field, the cart was visible only as a dim outline, the lanterns hanging from its bench seat two feeble spots of light. "Is the last one settled?"

  Dilby nodded and tucked the end of his rag into his leather apron. "Phillips is still with him. He's stabilized; he might make it to the hospital. I don't know if the major will. He woke up that once, but…" He shrugged. "I'm surprised he lasted this long, what with his guts on the outside."

  Anthony smiled faintly as they began their trek back to the cart. In only two months of war, he'd seen men live through worse and die from less. "He hasn't cocked up his toes vet, Dilby—perhaps he'll survive to let Surgeon Guthrie perform his magic."

  "Skill and instinct, not magic," Dilby retorted quickly, and Anthony grinned. The young mate's adoration of the Principal Medical Officer had been clear since they'd met. Glancing sidelong at Anthony from narrowed, baggy eyes, he added, "But a personal physician wouldn't know that."

  Anthony didn't take offense at the deliberate insult; he knew his service in the war was not a heroic effort but simply a way of repaying a debt. He'd rather have done anything but practice medicine and amateur surgery on the battlefield, and would rather have been anywhere but the Peninsula. Dilby deserved some reply, however, so he forced humor into his tone and said, "Convince Cole of my uselessness on a day when his gout is particularly painful, and I'll apprentice myself in the surgery tomorrow."

  Chuckling, Dilby veered away from Anthony to avoid the corpse of one of Napoleon's soldiers. His tone became wistful. "I suppose when the war is over, you won't be his personal physician any longer. You'll set up a practice in London, join society, and treat ladies' nerves."

  With only the slightest break in his stride, Anthony stooped and felt for a pulse. Half of the soldier's face had been torn away, probably victim to English shrapnel. "Hardly appropriate work for a gentleman," he said softly. They were familiar words; Anthony's mother and sisters never failed to remind him of it in the letters he received.

  When Anthony caught up to him a moment later, Dilby continued, "At least when you marry, you will be able to present your wife at court. My Sarah would have liked that." The folds on his face creased into the tender smile that appeared whenever he mentioned his wife or their young daughter.

  Anthony tried to return the smile and to keep the doubts that had plagued him for two months from squeezing at him, but the words made his chest tighten nonetheless. When you marry. His promise to Emily hadn't been an understanding, and yet he could not help but hope that his vow had touched her, that she would consider his unspoken offer of marriage.

  Would she wait for him? Likely not.

  But as Colin's brief letters never contained information about her entering into an engagement, he saw no reason to give up that hope. There was little other pleasure to be had on the Peninsula.

  With his gaze focused on the ground and his thoughts far from a bloodstained battlefield in Spain, it took Anthony a moment to realize that Dilby had stopped abruptly and was staring ahead, his eyes wide.

  Anthony's question died on his lips as the light from the cart's two lanterns winked out, follo
wed by the sound of crumpling metal. Surprise kept him rooted briefly to the spot—the medical cart was clearly marked to let medical personnel work unmolested, even in the heat of battle—until Phillips's sharp, terrified cry spurred him forward.

  He broke into a run, the racing of his heart echoed by his pounding feet. Behind him, Dilby shouted, "We are medics! Docker!"

  The lantern swung wildly in his hand. Its erratic illumination prevented him from clearly seeing the cart, but the half moon limned the shape of a man—too big to be Phillips—scrambling atop the cart and bending over until he was hidden by its wooden sides.

  Suddenly cautious, Anthony slowed his pace to a jog, forcing himself to take deep breaths, and to think instead of blindly react. He hadn't heard a firearm, but the man could be armed—and Anthony was not. He had to assume that the only rifle the medical team carried with them, which had been in the cart with Phillips, was under their assailant's control. He was uncertain if the man had been wearing a uniform; perhaps a soldier needed help but was crazed from the battle and acting irrationally?

  Fifteen feet from the cart, he stopped and steadied the lamp, staring at the scene and trying to make sense of it: the brown, gory lump at the front of the cart, the smaller one beside it. His stomach clenched as he realized the mule's head had been torn from its body, the ragged cavity at the top of its shoulders still steaming.

  Fear shivered over his skin, slick and cold.

  Dilby came up beside him, panting from exertion. Metal glinted in his hand. "I found this… oh, God Almighty save us!"

  Anthony silently repeated the prayer. Even amidst the terrible carnage of the battlefield, this violence struck him as unnatural, a malevolent perversion. A man, even a madman, couldn't have done that to the mule.