By Desire Bound Read online

  "Roger said you thought it was real, and that you knew where to look. And that's why you gave up the company, the mines, everything."

  "Just like that? Some businessman I was." "Or a romantic," she said, and the words dropped like falling stones between them and settled into the sudden, startling silence.

  She met his steady gaze, and it was so eerie to be look­ing into his eyes that could see nothing— Or was it nothing?

  Was he that clever? Was she? She still had the sense that he could see everything. Or was he learning to use his power in other, more disconcerting ways? God, he was formidable, but without his sight, he was defenseless, and that was the endgame.

  He needed her. And he knew it. "An eye for an eye," she said softly, "My eyes for a piece of the diamond."

  "And she barters too; what a splendid trade, Darcie, and all on the strength of your belief I'm this Con Pengellis. Who are you, I wonder."

  "I'm a gambler," she said bluntly. "I always have been."

  31

  BY DESIRE BOUND

  "Or maybe you're a bigger fool," he said roughly, "and much more of a romantic than I."

  His words hung between them, truths she didn't want to admit.

  A romantic? No ... a pragmatist, maybe, doing what­ever was expedient to get what she wanted. She wasn't accustomed to viewing herself through someone else's eyes; she sounded like a madwoman. Worse, her scheme sounded like a hoax.

  His hands tightened gently on her neck. She felt as if her skin were singed by his touch. His dark eyes bored into hers. His skepticism was palpable. "Why should I believe you, Darcie Boulton?"

  But he had no choice. She might be a lunatic, but she had a plan, whereas he had no memory of anything prior to waking up in this room. Not anything.

  A crazy woman. But she meant it about the jewel. That was real, and he felt her intensity, and the underlying greed to possess it, in her words.

  "You have to trust me," Darcie whispered, watching as he considered every angle. This was the throw of the dice, and he had no idea what was at stake. "You can't leave without me. And I can't go without you."

  He rolled it over and over in his mind. But she could go without him. She would be stronger, move faster, go further without a blind man hanging onto her skirts. If he let her go, she could disappear in a minute, leaving him at the mercy of any stranger.

  His gut knotted. This wasn't a duel of wits. He either put himself in the hands of a madwoman, or he fended for himself. That was his only choice because he didn't know how to reclaim his life.

  Yet.

  He moved closer to her, sensing a desperation in her. There was something more here, but she wasn't ready

  32

  Thea Devine

  to tell him. For the moment, he could trust her. She needed him.

  "I'll be your memory," she whispered. "I'll be your

  eyes."

  "What else will you be?" he murmured, leaning into her so that again, his face was inches away from hers. This was the way. Maybe the only way he could tell any-thing about her motives and her desires. He needed her irrevocably bound to him and he would do what he had to do to insure it.

  He knew women; he felt it viscerally. And she didn't fight him, she didn't plead for her virtue. She stayed still as stone as he felt for the soft lush lips he had touched with his fingers.

  And then his mouth settled on hers with a surety and possessiveness that jolted him. She opened to him with a keening little sigh of surrender that sparked a spiralling need deep in his belly. The taste of her was electrifying, and almost catapulted him out of control. He wanted to live in her mouth, surround himself with that hot wet heat forever.

  It told him everything he needed to know, and more. Miss Darcie Boulton had feelings for this Con Pengellis. And that suited him just fine. He was perfectly willing to be Con Pengellis until he got back his memory.

  He pulled away from her slowly, softly before he drowned in her honey. "We have a bargain, Darcie Boul­ton. An eye for an Eye."

  A kiss for a kiss. He felt her relief, her surge of energy, and suddenly everything became clear. Darcie had more than feelings for Con Pengellis. She was in love with him.

  She had thought she had another whole day to plan out their escape. "But the first thing we have to do is get you some clothes."

  33

  BY DESIRE BOUND

  He had untied her, and she was massaging her wrists as she talked. "There has to be a laundry in this place. Those men didn't arrive here buck naked. And we have to get some food. I'm starving. Being nearly choked to death gives you an appetite." She stopped abruptly. "Con?"

  He didn't respond. "Con?" she said more insistently. He turned then, with the sheet wrapped around his lower torso. "I have to get used to your calling me that." "It's your name," she said briskly. "Listen. I'm going to find the laundry, we're going to eat, rest and in the morning, we're going to get out of here."

  "It's a plan," he agreed, eyeing her warily as he eased down onto the bed. She loves Con Pengettis; she won't aban­don me now.

  She slipped out into the hallway and down the back stairs. She heard laughter, voices, moans; inhaled the scent of whiskey and musky sex. Found the door under the stairs that led to the basement.

  Heard the pounding at Madame's front door, and froze.

  "Open up! Open! Now, Madame!" "Yes?" Madame's smooth continental tones. "What can I do for you?"

  "We are looking for this woman." Asilence, Darcie edged toward the basement door and opened it a crack.

  "I do not know this woman," Madame said. The door banged against the wall, as if her questioner had thrown it open and entered without Madame's in­vitation. And what could she do? She could not call the police.

  "And what's this?" a burly voice demanded. "Payment," Madame said, but her voice was less cer­tain now. "Silver."

  34

  Thea Devine

  "You know whose silver," the voice said. Darcie fled down the stairs, as Madame told them, "A young woman like the one you described, came and left in one night. She did not give me her name, I did not ask. Indeed, my clientele trusts me to be discreet. She paid for the evening with the silver."

  Madame's lies might buy them an hour, Darcie thought in a panic, but if she had to give back the silver, she wouldn't scruple to give them up altogether, Suddenly, she had no time at all and she had no idea where to find him clothing. She whirled, racing from one end of the belowstairs hallvay to the other, and al­most knocking down a maid who had emerged from one of the doors.

  "Where's the laundry?"

  She must have sounded crazed; the woman opened her mouth, closed it, and pointed to one of the doors. No time, no time. Lavinia's henchmen were already climbing the stairs. They wouldn't find her, but they might recognize Con.

  Oh God. She burst into the laundry and scanned the room. A fat old woman lounged by the washtub. In the corner, a maid was fitfully ironing a shirt.

  "I need ... I need—" She raced around the room, piling clothes into her arms. And shoes. Where did Ma-dame store the shoes?

  "Where are the shoes?" The younger maid looked up from the shirt, her eyes wide as saucers.

  "In the cupboard, my lady," she whispered, pointing to a built-in cabinet along one wall. Darcie threw open the doors to find shelf upon shelf of shoes and boots of all shapes and sizes.

  She grabbed the largest pair of boots and ran. Down the hall. Up the steps. Easing into the parlor hallway and around to the back staircase. Not thinking.

  35

  BY DESIRE BOUND

  Acting on pure instinct. Frantic that Lavinia's men had already found Con and had dragged him from the room.

  She raced up the stairs, flattening herself against the first floor landing wall as she heard a loud thumping on a nearby door.

  "Open up!"

  The same authoritarian voice. Protests from within the room at the untimely interruption.

  Darcie jumped and took the steps two by two. There was still
time. Just a little time. She almost fell into the room, weak with relief that Con was still there, and that his expression mirrored her own.

  She had come back for him, she had kept to the bar­gain.

  "We have to hurry," she whispered, tossing the clothes at him. "Lavinia's men are after me. I brought you some clothes."

  He rummaged through them quickly, picking out a shirt, trousers and a coat, and began dressing hurriedly.

  A kiss for a kiss. An eye for an eye.

  She had meant what she said: they were in this to­gether, for better or for worse, and the journey had al­ready started.

  BY DESIRE BOUND

  37

  Three

  Goole Abbey loomed up in the darkness like a mon­ster, a hulk of a building set on a dreary crag, surrounded by winter-weary trees with branches reaching to the sky like skeletal fingers. Her prison. Her nightmare.

  She shivered at the sight of the tower outlined men­acingly against the light of the moon, the dead stillness, the frigid cold, the soulless windows, dark and shuttered. Lavinia was not at home.

  Danger lurked, she felt it in her bones. The price of saving Con Pengellis was already too steep. She wasn't sure at the moment she wanted to pay it

  And yet, she had planned to bring him to Goole be­fore he had shocked her with the feet of his blindness. It could still work, she thought. They could hide in the tower—no one would think to look for her there. Not now.

  She could retrench, take stock. Try to jog his memory with the smells, the sounds, the familiarity of Goole. She could steal food and clothes and more things to sell, and then, in a few days, they could be on their way.

  It didn't matter where. Anywhere. Until he got his memory back.

  India, perhaps, where he was alleged to have died .. . An owl screeched above them, and she jumped. He

  felt the movement and grasped her arm tightly. "Where are we?"

  "We are at Goole," she whispered. "Can't you tell?" He breathed deeply and all he inhaled was the cold

  night air and the sense of eerie dislocation. This was

  the devil's own quest, and he was still wondering how

  he had let her talk him into it. Diamonds. Death. Dust.

  The stuff of a thousand and one nights, just as he'd said.

  And yet—yet . . .

  He was disturbed by it, an indefinable something that felt familiar and just skimmed the edge of his conscious­ness. It was within reach, and he cursed his sight, his memory, his clumsiness, his stupidity that he couldn't quite . . . quite. . . grasp it.

  In the dark, there was an obliterating nothingness, and he hated it; he would die before he gave in to it. He was certain he had been a man of action once; now he was a creature of the senses, as weakened as Samson with­out his hair. And he had no idea how it had happened— how he had let it happen.

  The woman was insane. But he was in no position to disclaim a savior. Even a lunatic.

  And then there was that simmering sense of familiar­ity.

  She slipped her arm around his waist. "There doesn't seem to be anyone around. We can go to the tower now. It's tricky here, in the dark."

  He cursed the fetes that had killed his sight as he slipped and tripped down the path beside her. Her body was almost too fragile to support him; and he could feel how elegant her bones were. Touch was a marvelous thing. He had imprinted her face, her shoulders, her throat, in the very tips of his fingers.

  40

  Thea

  41

  BY DESIRE BOUND

  forward, crawling past the bed, and all around the pe­rimeter of the room.

  It was larger than the empty place in his conscious­ness. It was furnished with a clothes press, a table and chair, a washstand. A palace in comparison to ... what? Where he had been—

  What? Mist. A moment of clarity, and then that god­damned everlasting mist. And he couldn't see through it. Just the musky edge of something— Dark. Dirt. Dank. His memory playing tricks.

  He stood up, and inched his way back to the bed again.

  Nothing familiar. And yet—yet . . .

  Maybe it was the feeling of helplessness; and the sense that he'd fallen headlong into a pit. . . . , . a pit—

  Something about that. . . He sank onto the bed. Deep—

  Something about that . . . To hell and gone-—

  Hell—life without sight was hell on earth . . . It was a puzzle with pieces that didn't fit, and a flirty sense of familiarity that beckoned him like a lover. God­dammit, why couldn't he remember? He pounded the mattress. No memory even of the moment before he woke up in the brothel. Just a thick fog, and a mind-numbing sense of desolation.

  He shrank back against the wall as if something were threatening him. Fool. He was falling headlong, suddenly, into an abyss—helpless, hapless, furious, in his mind, with his body, dizzying, endless— HEAL. . . "NO-O-OO-O-O!!!!"

  Dead . . .

  He jerked awake violently and opened his eyes to the isolating darkness. Sweat poured down his face and he gripped the edge of the mattress, trying to shake off the bone-jarring sense of tumbling into nothingness. He felt as if he were weightless, mindless, and he was the only soul in a sea of oblivion.

  It scared him all to hell. He couldn't conceive of it. Some­place in the blankness of his mind, he knew—he knew—he had had a life before the nothingness. It was like a blank canvas with shadings here and there that might form into recognizable shapes. But his brain refused to fill in the shadows or the colors. There was just the dark, the inde­finable, shapeless, hopeless dead dark ...

  "I'm back."

  Reality ... he swam up up up toward the voice, Dar-cie's voice, an anchor in the void.

  "Here." Her touch. He wasn't dead, not yet. He grasped her hand and felt something cold spill onto his leg. "Water."

  He sipped, the elixir of life. He lived. He drank greedily.

  "Lavinia isn't in residence." She spoke in a whisper. "The servants ... we have to get by the servants so I can take you around the house. I think our best chance is to do it tonight. We're risking a lot just by being here. We have to get out by tomorrow. I brought you some­thing to eat." She pushed something into his hands.

  Bread. Staff of life. He tore off a piece and stuffed it into his mouth. His stomach growled. He wasn't dead yet.

  "And what exacdy are we trying to accomplish on this midnight foray?" We... he thought of them as we.

  "I'm not sure. I thought something might jar your memory." It has to, she thought; she was counting on it, depending on it, on him, and his strength and his ferocious will to remember. He would remember.

  42

  Then Dgvine

  BY DESIRE BOUND

  43

  She would make him remember. And then she could forget that devastating kiss.

  "And we need things . . ." she went on.

  "... we...

  "Things we can wear. Things we can sell. We're going to need money. Papers, if we travel . . ." ... we...

  She had thought of everything. We.

  "When?"

  "Soon." It had to be tonight. Lavinia could return at any time. A servant could be keeping watch. She would have to be very clever with him. Take him to the areas of the abbey that Con Pengellis would have lived in. The entry hall with the portrait. The great long par­lor with its beamed ceiling and massive fireplace. The dining room. The library. She was sure that he, of all of them, had used the library . . .

  She shivered. This was the biggest gamble she had ever made: staking both of their lives on his regaining some of his memory.

  "I want us out of here soon. I spent too much time here after . . ." After she had found out the truth. After Roger had caught her listening, and hauled her into the dining room for a thorough cross-examination.

  She hadn't understood what she was dealing with, that they had been holding him prisoner for nine years while they tried to coerce out of him the location of the diamond.

  And now it was only Lavi
nia. Unless . . . unless they had plotted and planned the unthinkable ruse that he had suggested.

  It was too complicated to even think about. Roger wasn't that devious. He had just wanted his brother's wealth, his title, his life.

  But Lavinia was . . .

  She shivered. Lavinia was evil, and she had felt the force of it all around her as she prowled the house to­night. How did you escape the evil? What if Lavinia al­ready knew she was there?

  "After . . . ?" he prompted.

  "This is where they put me after I found out you were still alive."

  "Con Pengellis was still alive," he amended.

  She didn't argue. Time was going slowly enough with­out engaging him in a war of semantics. And so much tonight depended on time. Where she could take him, what she could appropriate that she could turn into money, if she could swipe some of Roger's clothes for him. Whether they could stay safe and undetected in the tower for just this one precious night.

  She couldn't let herself think of the alternatives. It would work. It had to work. Something about Goole would rewaken a memory in him. And then they could go on from there.

  A clock somewhere in the distance struck midnight.

  He reacted, an involuntary movement in response to sound of the sonorous gong.

  "What? . . . What?" she whispered urgently.

  "I don't know. I don't know."

  She heard the frustration in his voice, felt the tension in his body. "You've heard this clock."

  "I don't know. I don't remember." He sounded an­gry, confused. There was something—and once again, it curled around the edges of his body, and then just drifted away.

  "We have to go."

  He wanted to go, he wanted to do something tangible and concrete to help him grasp the wisps and turn them into something real.

  "I have a candle. We don't need much light."

  44

  45

  BY DESIRE BOUND

  Then Devine

  No, a blind man didn't need light to see, he thought angrily, as she led him slowly down the tower stairs.

  "There's a way to the house from the tower. Down some steps and underground."