A Wicked Pursuit (20 page)

“They say she has gone to Norwich for the day, my lord,” Tewkes said, maddeningly unperturbed. “She is not expected to return until late this afternoon.”

“Why would she wish to go to Norwich?” Harry continued to demand, his indignation rising. “What could she possibly want that is in
Norwich
?”

“Candles, my lord,” Tewkes said. “They say she was intending to purchase candles.”

“Candles,” Harry repeated in disbelief. How could Gus go riding off to Norwich when he wanted—no, he needed—to speak with her?

He was angry that she wasn’t here, but he was also worried. He truly hadn’t intended to kiss her last night, but he had, and he knew damned well she’d kissed him back. Further, she’d curled up next to him, sweet as could be, and fallen asleep there beside him in the most companionable way possible. It had, hands down, been the best evening of his life in a good long while. So what reason could she have this morning for not just keeping away from him, but bolting from the very house?

No, he didn’t have to ask that question. He knew the answer.
In vino veritas
was an old Latin saying he’d learned at school, but he’d always thought it should be
In vino amor:
in wine there is love. Wine—and they had drunk a great deal of wine, too—made everyone and everything agreeable.

But in the clear light of day, and doubtless with an aching head as an additional truth serum, Gus was bound to see things differently. To her he must appear an invalid, a cripple, an incomplete man. How could he not? She’d seen him at his very worst, delirious with fever and pain. Gus had more kindness and generosity than any other woman he’d known, but not even Gus would be able to forget what she’d seen, and think of him otherwise. He might have kissed her last night, but he’d also been incapable of helping her up from the floor when she’d fallen. He’d had to call Tewkes.

He couldn’t fault her for having second thoughts, either. He’d assured her that all he’d sought was friendship, and to prove she believed him, she’d dressed like the lady she was. He’d told her she’d taken his breath away, and she had. She’d been a luminous, enchanting version of Gus, and so effortlessly desirable he’d been shocked by the intensity of it.

How had he responded? He’d betrayed her trust and lunged at her like some sottish tinker, and sullied the innocence of her kiss. He would ask her forgiveness, of course, and try to explain as best he could, but he didn’t have much hope. She’d be justified in wanting nothing more to do with him, exactly as her sister had before her.

And he would be the loser. To be deprived of her company, her laughter, her wit, and her compassion—hell, even the adorable freckles scattered over her nose and cheeks—that would be his punishment.

He had survived the broken leg, survived the fever, survived being jilted by her sister. But he wasn’t certain how he’d survive his days here without Gus in them.

Gus leaned
back in the corner of the carriage’s seat, her hat in her lap, as at last they turned off the Norwich road onto the one that curved through her father’s land. Dusk had fallen, with murky shadows beneath the trees and mist already beginning to settle around the edges of their pond.

She had stayed in Norwich much longer than she’d intended. In the mercer’s shop, she had met an old friend of hers, a friend who was so caught up with her new husband and newer baby that she’d asked only the most cursory questions about Julia and her father, and the unusual noble houseguest at the abbey.

With relief, Gus had listened eagerly to her friend’s tales of this prodigious infant, and had accepted an invitation to tea so that she might view the baby for herself. The poor baby had not performed to his mother’s standards, being cranky with colic, but Gus had been so happy to have anything to take her mind from Harry that she’d praised the baby to the skies, even after he’d spit up on the front of her habit, much to the mortification of his mother and nursemaid.

Now she was looking forward to a light supper in her own rooms and going straight to bed afterward. It was too late to see Harry now, and besides, that conversation could wait until the morning. She slowly walked up the front steps and into the house as Royce himself held the door open for her. She
was
late: A footman had just lit the oil in the large blue-glass night-lantern and was carefully raising it back into place.

“Good evening, Miss Augusta,” Royce murmured.

“Good evening, Royce,” she said, barely stifling a yawn as she headed up the staircase. “Please have Mrs. Buchanan send a light supper and tea up to my room.”

“If you please, Miss Augusta,” the butler said with uncharacteristic emphasis, “his lordship is expecting you to dine with him.”

She paused on the top stair and looked back over the rail. “He is? In his bedchamber?”

“He is, Miss Augusta,” Royce said. “If you wish, I shall convey your regrets to his lordship, but I can safely say he shall be disappointed to see me instead of you.”

She bowed her head, struggling to decide what next to do. Over the course of the day, she’d convinced herself that he would want nothing more to do with her after last night. Rejecting his further advances would be easy because there wouldn’t be any to reject. She hadn’t dreamed that he’d actually expect her to dine with him again, not after last night. Why didn’t
he
have any remorse, anyway?

She sighed deeply. The conversation would be difficult, whether they had it tonight or tomorrow morning. He’d have to see her as she was now, though, in her plain gray woolen riding habit. She wasn’t going to go through the rigmarole of dressing again, and she didn’t plan on staying to dine with him, either. No, she had to stand firm.

She looked back to Royce, waiting expectantly for her reply. “I’ll go to his lordship myself, Royce. But I still wish tea brought to my room in, oh, ten minutes.”

“Very good, Miss Augusta.” Royce smiled, more satisfied than he’d any right to be.

With another sigh, Augusta headed up the last steps and down the hall toward Harry’s room. She paused to pull off her gloves and untie her hat, leaving them for now on one of the hall tables, and paused again to smooth her hair before one of the looking glasses.

She was stalling, and she knew it. She also knew she was being cowardly, but she did not want to see him. No, she must be honest: She didn’t want this conversation because she
did
want to see him, very much, and she didn’t trust herself to be strong and say what was necessary.

Be virtuous
, she told herself with each trudging, reluctant step.
Be respectable, be honorable, be a lady. Do what is virtuous and
right.

But as soon as she passed the last footman and entered Harry’s room, she knew that all the virtuous good intentions in the world weren’t going to stand a chance against Harry himself.

He was sitting in the bed exactly as he had last night, exactly as he had for weeks now. His dark hair was once again sleeked back from his face, his jaw shaven, his white linen nightshirt impeccable over his broad shoulders and chest. Once again, too, the room was ablaze with candles, their flickering light casting dancing shadows over the hard planes of his face. She never quite recalled what an impossibly handsome man he was, and each time she saw him again she was struck by it, a visceral blow against which she had no defense.

But this time, he wasn’t smiling. His expression was serious, his blue eyes so dark and somber that she dreaded what might come next.

“Good evening, Gus,” he said, his voice warm and welcoming, but reserved as well. Patch and Potch dragged themselves awake and lumbered to their feet, ambling over to greet Gus with their feathered tails wagging sleepily. “I’m honored that you decided to join me once again.”

“I can’t stay, Harry,” she said quickly. She bent to pet the dogs, then straightened with determination, not so much clasping her hands before her as clutching them. “There are a few things I wish to say after last night, and then—and then I must go.”

“I trust you’ll stay long enough to hear what I’ve to say, too,” he said. “Then you may decide if you wish to join me for supper again.”

He gestured toward the table. Clearly he’d again planned a meal for her with the assistance of Mrs. Buchanan and the others. The table was even more beautifully set, with the Wetherby porcelain that her grandfather had had specially made in China and the Venetian blown-glass goblets that Andrew had brought home from his Grand Tour. Rising up from the center of the table like a delicate little tree was Mama’s silver epergne, with a different, miniature fruit fashioned from marzipan poised on the end of each curving branch.

Gus blinked back a sudden wave of tears. If anyone else had ransacked through her family’s personal treasures while she’d been out, she would have been furious.

But Harry was different. He hadn’t coerced her servants—in fact, they seemed like willing conspirators—and he hadn’t ordered them to bring out these precious things for the sake of making an impressive show. He’d done it because he understood how much they meant to her, not as costly objects, but as extensions of her family. He understood family; she’d realized that when she’d heard him speak of his mother and father and his brothers. He’d assembled all these things on this little table just for her, a special kind of personal gift. Considering that he couldn’t leave the bed, but had been forced to create this through others made it all the more meaningful.

Harry wasn’t by nature a patient man, yet he’d waited here for her while she’d been purposefully staying away from him. No wonder seeing the little table like this charmed her, even as it made her feel guilty and selfish and utterly unworthy.

“This is beautiful, Harry,” she said softly, at a loss for more words. All the arguments, all the careful reasoning that she’d rehearsed earlier in the carriage disappeared from her head. “Beautiful.”

He nodded in acknowledgment but still didn’t smile.

“You will note there is no wine on our table tonight,” he said. “I want everything I have to say to be clear and unclouded.”

“That is wise,” she agreed quickly, relieved. “I welcome clarity, too.”

Harry nodded, praying she couldn’t tell how fast his heart was beating. He’d been waiting for her with everything ready for hours, listening for the sound of her carriage wheels on the gravel drive outside his window—not that he wished her to know that, either. This could be the last time he saw her like this, alone with him as she stood beside his bed, and he wanted to remember everything about her, in case memories were all he’d have left.

She was dressed in a sensible gray wool riding habit whose close-fitting, masculine jacket somehow made her seem more feminine by displaying her narrow waist. The dove-colored wool set off her pale complexion, and her once-severe hair had loosened during the day, with charming little wisps around her cheeks.

Her expression had been daunting when she’d first entered the room, her gray eyes as serious as storm clouds, but they had softened when she’d seen the table. He was glad, for it hadn’t been easy to arrange everything through servants he didn’t know, and he’d worried, too, that she might be angry at him for having them haul so much upstairs from the dining room. But it was clear she’d seen it exactly as he’d intended, and he let himself feel a tiny bit of hope that she might forgive him after all.

“I’m glad you approve, Gus,” he said, hoping, too, that she’d soon approve of him as well. “I’ll be a proper host and let you speak first.”

“Me?” Her eyes widened, and her voice squeaked upward. “That is, I’d rather wait, Harry. You go first.”

He hadn’t expected that. “Will you at least sit?”

She hesitated briefly, then came and perched on the edge of the chair like a nervous little bird ready to fly away. She might do it, too, if he didn’t say the right things.

He cleared his throat momentously, feeling as if he were making an important recitation in school, and one he didn’t quite have by rote, either.

“Gus,” he began. “Miss Augusta. I invited you here to dine with me last night in the guise of friendship. Unfortunately, what happened before the evening’s end was not what I had planned, or what you deserved. I can fault my overindulgence, true, but most of the blame must lie on my own selfish and impulsive behavior, and I am heartily sorry for it.”

“Oh, Harry,” she said. “You needn’t—”

“I do,” he said bluntly. “I must. Because I know I’m on the thinnest of thin ice with you, Gus. I know how you must see me: not as a man, but as a cripple, an invalid, and an inconvenience. I’m your sister’s wretched castoff.”

She winced, which he didn’t interpret as a good sign. Was he really so distasteful to her? So repulsive? He’d no choice now but to plunge onward, and say everything as he’d planned.

“You’ve been the one good thing to come into my life from this damnable mess, Gus,” he said. “If I have shamed myself so grievously by my boorish behavior that you no longer wish my acquaintance, then I will understand. If you decide to shed me as your sister has, then I will understand that as well. I’ll never forgive myself for driving you away, but I’ll understand. I won’t—”

“No more, Harry, no
more
!” She flew from the chair like the little bird he’d first thought her, but instead of flying away, she flew straight to stand beside the bed. “You are good and kind and brave and generous and if my sister cast you off, then she was a fool, and—and—oh, no more!”

Swiftly she bent forward and seized his face in her hands, her palms warm against his cheeks, and kissed him. Last night might have been her first kiss, but she’d clearly learned from the experience. She slanted her lips over his, pressing so deliciously that he’d no choice but to kiss her in return.

Choice, hell. This wasn’t about a choice. This was about wanting to kiss her more than he wanted anything else in his life at that moment. He’d been so sure that he’d lost her, that he’d driven her away, and he hadn’t, which made this kiss as full of joy as it was of passion. He forgot his well-prepared speech of contrition and apology, forgot his misgivings, forgot his worries, forgot his broken leg propped up on the pillow. All that mattered was kissing Gus.