How to Marry a Marble Marquis(22)

Now she stood across the room, looking out the glass wall to the garden courtyard beyond, but her expression as she turned made his own smile falter. She looked stricken. Some nameless emotion crossed over her face, darkening her eyes and making her smile resemble a grimace. Silas had no idea what it was or what caused it, only that he had the peculiar impulse to kiss it away and banish it forever.

“I’m likely to be a tad too rusty for that, my lord.” She’d recovered well enough, but her smile was strained, and her eyes downcast.

“I highly doubt that. I remember your performance that night in Paris. You are magnificent. There was a table of ladies next to me, and all three of them were sniffling. I won’t require an elaborate opera scene, merely a —“

“Please don’t ask it of me.”

The misery in her voice, cutting him off, made the words die in his mouth. Her eyes were bright with tears, and he nearly swallowed his clumsy tongue. His feet moved without his permission, crossing the room to her in two long strides, pulling her into his arms.

“Don’t sully these lovely cheeks with tears, my dear. I can’t bear to see you look so melancholy.”

She turned against him, pressing her face to the place where his heart was tripping in his chest, and he wondered if she could feel its uneven syncopation. It was an inappropriate position, too familiar, too close, and not nearly close enough. Silas took the opportunity to lower his face to her hair. Lilac water, soft and lovely, the singular smell of her skin beneath, the sweetest thing he’d ever smelled in his life.

“Why does something that brought you so much joy now bring only sorrow, my lovely Miss Eastwick?”

For a long moment, she said nothing. Shaking her head slowly, her eyes pressed closed, tears trapped between the fringe of her dark lashes. “That’s not my life anymore. It won’t ever be again. I won’t ever sing like that again. I won’t ever perform again. I’ll probably never see Paris again. My parents will never be alive again. There’s no sense in living in the past, Lord Stride. Not when the future looks so terribly different.”

There was nothing he could say to dispute her words. There was nothing he could say that would make it better, nothing he could do that would make her circumstances any different, he told himself. He was a rake, a profligate, unable to even fulfill his own life path. He couldn’t change hers as much as he wanted to. All he could do was kiss the miserable look off her face, and so he did. Her lips were soft and yielded easily to his mouth, and he swallowed the sound of her choked sob when it escaped her, sucking up her sorrow, easing her burden, at least for a little while.

Her hands were tight in his hair, nails scoring his scalp and around the base of his horns, and it was too easy to scoop her into his arms. She put up no resistance, clinging to his neck as he carried her to the chaise on the other end of the room. Unlike the handful of other times he had kissed her, she was a fully active participant just then. No longer timid, shy violet shrinking from his touch, she pulled his hair and scratched his skin, her small teeth glancing off his fangs. Lips and tongue and breath, her head dropping back as his mouth moved over her jaw, her hands tightening around him as he laid her down, his body overtop hers, wings covering them like a great black canopy. There was nothing he could do to keep her from being so upset, but he could take her mind off it with this, and he had never wanted anyone as much as he wanted her at that moment.

“Let me have you, little moth.”

The sensation of her nails dragging down his back was blunted by the fabric of his coat, and suddenly the layers of clothing he wore – his fine linen shirt, beautifully brocade waistcoat, his velveteen flocked cutaway tailcoat — were too much. He wanted to take her to his bed, strip her bare, and feel her soft skin pressed to his for the fleeting few hours when his skin would be as receptive before he turned to hard, unyielding marble. He wanted to stretch her legs open for him, bury himself within her plush heat, and inhale the sweet smell of her until he had made her scream, spending himself within her. Madness.

“Is-is it going to hurt? It is, isn’t it?”

She keened again as he sucked the pulse point in her throat, letting his fangs graze her tender skin. “I shall do my best, little moth, to make sure you enjoy every moment. Remember, the skilled butterfly has no need to injure the flower.”

A sharp intake of breath beneath him, another hard kiss, her hands mussing his cravat to search for his skin. “Then have me, Lord Stride.”

The journey from the conservatory to his bed had never seemed farther. Gargoyles were capable of flying great distances once they were already airborne and after they’d had a full day of sun, but he could not simply launch himself into the sky like a damnable bird. They needed to catch the wind, needed to jump and let their wings lift on the downdraft, and so it was with that in mind that he turned out the conservatory doors into the courtyard, Eleanor Eastwick aloft in his arms. She clung to his neck as he ascended the steps that led to the second-floor garden, her face to his chest as he turned to the balcony, and her scream ringing in his ears when he jumped.

It was a dangerously short distance, and he’d broken many bones in his youth learning that lesson, but Silas wasn’t worried. Cadmus had always been the one to instigate such experimentation, being unable to fly himself, and as a result of always bucking under the pressure of his older brothers cajoling, Silas had learned exactly how he needed to lift his wings, how to elongate and arch his body, how to catch the wind. And failing that, he had learned how to fall with the least amount of corporeal damage. He would curl himself around Eleanor and shield her from any harm, absorbing the full impact if necessary. He would heal in the sun, no matter how broken he might be, and everything would be fine. Another scream as his wings caught the wind like great, leathery sails, pulling them up, up, up and over the house, around to the upper floor where his bedroom balcony was located, landing with a soft thump.