The Scandalous Miss Howard Page 17

  Aware she was tossing pride and decency to the wind, Laurette choked, “Yes, Sutton. Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” he coolly tormented her.

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t. You must tell me what you want.”

  “You know what I want,” she breathlessly declared.

  “Then say it,” he whispered, “I want to hear you say it aloud. Tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

  On a sob, she managed to reply, “I—I want you to…kiss me.”

  “Where?”

  More aroused than she’d ever been in her life, Laurette told Sutton exactly where she wanted to be kissed, and in the most graphic of terms. Never noticing the cruel curl of satisfaction on his lips, she breathed her thanks and sank back on her bent elbows when he lowered his handsome face to her belly and teasingly nuzzled his nose in the blond coils of her groin. He parted the curls with his tongue and then, before he kissed her, he opened his mouth over her exposed flesh and exhaled a long, hot breath against her.

  It felt good.

  So unbelievably good Laurette began to slowly sag down to the mattress. Never lifting his head, Sutton said, “No. Don’t lie down. I want you to watch while I love you. It will make your climax more intense.”

  Before she could reply, he was kissing her and with the first touch of his sleek tongue on her pulsing flesh, she began to murmur his name over and over.

  “Sutton, Sutton, Sutton,” she panted, the pleasure so fantastic she couldn’t believe it. “Sutton, Sutton,” she continued to murmur and sob.

  She pushed more fully up onto her elbows to watch, just as he had suggested. Blinking in the shadowy darkness, glad now for the ambient light from the sitting room, she could clearly see his handsome face buried between her open thighs. What an erotic sight it was.

  His silky black beard was meshed with the pale blond curls of her groin. His beautiful eyes were closed, the long sooty lashes resting on his lean, dark cheeks. He was kissing her as if he were kissing her mouth. His hot, open lips were gently sucking, his tongue was licking and circling that point of pure sensation where all her hot desire was centered.

  Wild, immoral thoughts drifted through Laurette’s feverish brain as she watched her passionate lover kissing her where she’d never been kissed before. She would, she decided in that instant, keep him just where he was for a long, long time. Perhaps all night. She wouldn’t let him up. She would demand that his marvelous mouth stay fused to her ultrasensitive flesh for hours and hours and hours.

  But, just as those wild thoughts were running through her sex-hazed mind, Sutton’s gentle lips and tongue became more assertive, the plucking of his lips became stronger, the licking of his tongue more aggressive.

  It was pure heaven.

  Laurette cried out with joy and urged him on. “Yes, yes, don’t stop, don’t ever stop!”

  He didn’t stop. He licked and lashed and loved her until the explosion that had been steadily building inside her began to erupt into an erotic crescendo.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” she cried out and, in a sexual frenzy, reached down, grabbed the hair of his head, pressed his face closer and began to scream as the deep, powerful orgasm claimed her.

  Sutton dutifully stayed with Laurette as she bucked and shrieked and quivered. After several long seconds of sexual hysteria, she had finally gotten it all out. She frantically pushed his hot face away and sank, sated and dazed, down onto her back.

  Sutton raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes were closed, her face was flushed. Her breasts were moving up and down with her labored breaths, but her pale body was as limp as a rag doll’s.

  She made no move to cover herself. She felt no shame, only deep fulfillment. She had the look of a woman well loved and utterly content. And that was exactly how he intended to keep her.

  Sutton ducked as he lifted her limp leg back up over his head and then he quickly moved up beside her. He kissed her open lips and Laurette tasted herself on his mouth. She was momentarily appalled. But then she opened her eyes and looked at his handsome face. His beautiful sculptured lips were gleaming wet with the liquid he had so skillfully coaxed from her own passion-heated body. She raised her lips to his, kissed him again, then sighed with serenity and allowed her head to fall back onto the pillow.

  Laurette had no idea that Sutton was equally satisfied. Just in a different way. He had so successfully aroused and excited this lovely naked woman that he had been able to bring her to an incredible climax without so much as removing his black satin cravat and pearl stickpin. He was still fully dressed in evening attire.

  He had kept his own passion carefully in check. He had, in his long prison years, learned how to control both his mind and his body. He had intended tonight’s ecstasy to be hers alone. He had seen to it that she not be distracted from her own selfish pleasure.

  A master at physically pleasing a woman, Sutton had silently conveyed, throughout the lovemaking, the subtle message that he enjoyed nothing more than being allowed to adore her soft, pale body in this intimate fashion.

  Smiling now, he tugged a long golden lock of hair and said, “Why don’t you take a nice hot bath in my big marble tub while I retrieve your discarded clothes.”

  Laurette’s eyes opened. She smiled, nodded, waited until he had left the room, then went into the black marble bath and relaxed in a tub of hot sudsy water. When she got out, she wrapped herself in a big thirsty towel and came back into the bedroom wondering if Sutton would now be in the bed, naked.

  She found him, still fully dressed, seated in a leather easy chair, drinking a brandy. Her clothes lay on a side table at his elbow.

  “Come here,” he said and she did.

  When she stood before him, he offered her a drink. She took the crystal snifter, sipped and felt the brandy burn its pleasant way down into her chest and out into her arms. She flushed when Sutton reached out and casually yanked her covering towel away.

  Smiling, he leaned up, put his hands to her waist and drew her down astride his lap, tucking her knees in close to his sides. Locking his wrists behind her waist, he said, “I undressed you. Now I will dress you. And I will do it sitting here in this chair with you on my lap.”

  Which he did.

  And it was almost as exciting as when he’d undressed her.

  Twenty-Five

  At midmorning, Willard Gordon Keyes sat across the large mahogany desk from his boss. The heavy drapes had not yet been opened and the only light in the darkly paneled study was from a lamp atop the desk, a lamp that had a unique gunmetal-gray globe. An eerie, diffused light radiated from it, illuminating only a small portion of the desk.

  In deep shadow was the face of Sutton Vane. Also in shadow were the tall, locked mahogany file cabinets directly behind him. The cabinets contained notes, letters, telegrams, newspaper clippings—each item carefully filed under one of the names on his infamous list.

  Willard Keyes, who’d been known as Bones for as long as he could remember, squinted in an attempt to see the expression on the face of the man with whom he had spent the last five years. It was impossible, Sutton’s face was completely concealed in shadow.

  Bones remained respectfully silent as Sutton carefully read through the pages of information contained in the envelope Bones had picked up at the post office downtown. As he studied the material before him, Sutton suddenly leaned halfway up into the light, stifling a yawn. Bones knew the reason Sutton was sleepy this morning.

  He was aware that his boss had stayed up very late, entertaining Laurette Howard Tigart.

  Sutton had informed Bones as he was leaving last night that he was bringing Mrs. Tigart to the mansion after the opera and he wanted total privacy. Bones was to see to it that all the servants were safely in their quarters and were not to venture out for any reason.

  Bones had heard the pair when they came in last night around eleven, heard the carriage roll up the pebble drive. And, later, he had awakened as Mrs. Tigart was leaving. He had glanced at th
e clock. It had been 2:00 a.m.

  Bones frowned, wondering if Sutton’s seduction of Mrs. Tigart had taken place last night. Bones didn’t approve of Sutton taking advantage of the unsuspecting lady. He had met Mrs. Tigart and he had immediately liked her. He hated to see her get hurt, but when he had tried to intervene on her behalf, he had received only silence from Sutton.

  In many ways Sutton was as kind and compassionate a man as Bones had ever known. But he could be calculatedly cruel to those he felt had done him wrong. Not that Bones blamed him for punishing James Tigart.

  Tigart had deserved what he’d gotten and worse for having Sutton thrown into the prison dungeon so that he could steal his sweetheart. Bones had told Sutton that if he wanted Tigart dead, he’d be more than willing to do the honors. It would, he’d said, give him great satisfaction to snap Tigart’s cowardly neck.

  Sutton had declined the offer and Bones felt sure he knew the reason. Sutton just could not forget that Tigart had saved his life when they were young boys. He couldn’t bring himself to kill Tigart.

  “I want Tigart to live to be an old, old man, alone abroad, missing his home and his beautiful wife. May his days be as empty and lonely as mine were at Devil’s Castle,” he had explained.

  Another on the list who was to suffer for his sins was the prison guard who had made Sutton’s life a hell on earth—Gilbert LaKid. In Bones’s opinion, LaKid deserved an even worse fate than Tigart. And he would surely get it once he was located. Sutton’s men checked regularly with the authorities and made inquiries on their own, but so far the elusive LaKid had not been found. Once he was, Sutton was to be informed immediately. It would be he and no one else who meted out LaKid’s punishment. Sutton had a special plan for the evil Gilbert LaKid.

  And it wasn’t death.

  It was something far, far worse.

  Gazing at his boss now, Bones thought the man a baffling paradox. As unforgiving as he was of his enemies, Sutton had a heart of gold where his friends or the downtrodden were concerned.

  When Sutton had learned the sad fate of his parents, that his father had been killed in the war in ’63 and that his mother, while living in New Orleans, had succumbed to yellow fever in the summer of ’74, he had been in no hurry to return to Mobile.

  Instead, the first thing he and Bones had done was to go in search of the two men who had befriended Sutton in prison, before he’d been tossed into the dungeon. Sutton had never forgotten the kindness and friendship of Captain Andrew Scott and Private Duncan Cain.

  To Sutton’s despair, he learned, when they visited the Charleston, South Carolina home of Andrew Scott, that Scott had starved to death in Devil’s Castle prison in the cold winter of 1864. His tired-looking widow had remarried, to a man twice her age. Sutton had seen in her sad eyes that she’d had no choice; she couldn’t have fed her three children alone.

  In Birmingham, Alabama, Sutton easily found the healthy-looking Duncan Cain. Cain was shocked to see Sutton.

  “We were told you died,” said the blond, muscular Cain.

  Sutton nodded. “They did their best, but I refused.”

  “Me, too!” said Duncan. “I kept seeing my red-haired sweetheart, Mary, and knew I had to get home to her. What about you, Ladd? You and Laurette married yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Sutton and changed the subject.

  Through gentle questioning, Sutton learned that Cain was having a rough go of it, financially. He and his red-haired wife, now pregnant with their third child, were living with Cain’s aged parents in a shack at the edge of the property they had once owned. Cain was doing what he could to bring in a little money, odd jobs, hiring out by the day, hunting steady employment. But he had no complaints, he was quick to point out. He was lucky and he knew it. He had lived through the war and the prettiest, sweetest girl in Alabama had been waiting when he got home.

  Bones recalled with admiration how Sutton had helped young Cain without Cain’s knowledge. Sutton had wasted no time. He had, using the Bay Minette Corporation, purchased the Cain property back from the carpetbaggers who had bought it. He hired Cain, at a generous salary, as the manager of the huge paper mill that was being built on a portion of the property. As the mill’s manager, Cain, his wife, their children and Cain’s mother and father were moved back into the old family mansion.

  Yes, Sutton was a kind man and Bones knew firsthand how unselfish he could be. From the minute he’d fished the half-drowned prison escapee out of Chesapeake Bay, Sutton had shown his generosity. Trust had been established immediately between the two and not a week after they had met, the convalescing Sutton told Bones about the Yankee gold and revealed to him where it was buried. A less trusting man would never have divulged such a secret. In his weakened state, Sutton could have done nothing to stop him had Bones decided to leave him alone to die and go after the gold for himself.

  When he hadn’t, when he’d patiently nursed Sutton back to health in a cheap, rented hotel room, Sutton had told him he would never regret it.

  “I won’t forget what you’ve done for me,” Sutton had said. “Help me look for the gold. If we find it, your life will be one of comfort and ease.”

  “If we never find the gold, I’ll stay with you,” Bones had replied.

  Bones was thirty-three years old when he’d pulled Sutton out of the bay, and he had never been more alone and lonely in his life. He’d had no purpose. No home. Nothing. He was the next thing to a derelict. And it was his fault. But he hadn’t cared about anything or anyone since he’d lost the only woman he had ever loved.

  He had never been able to understand how such a small, sweet-tempered, pretty girl could have actually been in love with him, a big, brawny three-hundred pound seaman. But his Amanda had loved him with all her heart and he had worshipped her. Her horrified parents had disowned her when she’d agreed to become his wife. She could have done much better, they’d said. Could have married a man of wealth and position, not some big, ugly sailor who could never give her a proper home.

  It might not have been a proper one, but their rented rooms near the Maryland waterfront had been a happy home. That joy had increased when the fragile Amanda learned that she was carrying their first child. Oh, how beautiful she’d been during the pregnancy. And how happy he’d been when she’d climb up onto his lap, put her arms around his neck and declare that she was going to give him a perfect son. Those few precious months were the happiest of his entire life.

  The idyll ended when Amanda, alone while he was at sea, went into an early and painful labor. A neighbor down the hall, hearing Amanda’s screams, came to her aid. The neighbor sent her son to fetch the doctor, but it had done no good. After a long agonizing night of labor, Amanda delivered a perfect, tiny boy, but the infant lived for only a few short hours. Amanda died minutes later. She had forced herself to hold on for her baby’s sake.

  Bones had come home to an empty house and an empty life. Grief stricken, he had gone into a rage, broke every piece of furniture in the two rented rooms and crashed every dish in the cupboard. He was thrown in jail, and when he got out, he headed straight for the banks of the bay. His intent was to leap into the cold, rushing waters and end it all.

  Before he could carry out his plan, he saw the thin, struggling Sutton, in danger of drowning. He saved Sutton and Sutton saved him.

  Bones was brought back to the present when Sutton abruptly refolded the missive and returned it to the envelope. It, too, would go into the files under Tigart’s name. Leaning forward into the light, he smiled up at Bones. The packet beneath his hands had been sent from his agent overseas—an operative who had been hired exclusively to keep a keen eye on Tigart. His job was to report any movement Tigart made, to make sure that Tigart didn’t try slipping down to the docks somewhere and boarding a liner for home.

  “Good news?” Bones inquired.

  “The best,” Sutton replied. “Tigart is out of work and without a farthing to his name. He begs on the streets of London and sleeps in the alleys.
” Sutton paused, tapped his fingertips together and added, “I do hope England is having a cold winter.”

  Bones nodded and rose. “Anything else, boss?”

  “Yes,” Sutton said, “there is something else.”

  “Name it.”

  “Get that look of censure off your face.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You know what happened here last night and you don’t like it.”

  “No, I don’t like it,” Bones admitted. “Mrs. Tigart has been through so much and—”

  “Mrs. Tigart brought this on herself,” Sutton interrupted, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. He moved across the room and yanked open the cut-velvet drapes. For a long moment he stood looking out at the heavy gray clouds that threatened rain. His bearded jaw hardened and his blue eyes narrowed when he turned and added, “And she’s been through nothing compared with what she will go through before I’m finished with her.”

  Twenty-Six

  All day Laurette had vacillated.

  One moment she was happy and starry-eyed and tingling from head to toe. The next, she was upset; filled with remorse and guilt for what she had done. As she went about her routine chores at the Confederate Veteran’s Convalescent Hospital, she knew that she was alternating between blushing scarlet with shame and grinning foolishly with pleasure, but she simply couldn’t help herself.

  Sutton had dominated her thoughts since she’d awakened this morning. The minute she had opened her eyes, she had remembered everything that had happened between them and she had flushed hotly at the vivid recollection of his thrilling lovemaking. Scolding herself sharply for behaving like such a disgraceful wanton, she nonetheless lay in bed for a few lazy moments, drawing her knees up, savoring the sweet memory of last night’s incredible bliss, stretching and purring like a satisfied feline.