Edith Layton (23 page)

T
he room was dimly lit, even for night. But it was a sultry summer’s night, so a fire in the hearth wasn’t necessary, and even the glow of a lamp would have made the room feel hotter. Even so, the curtains were drawn tight, closed against any breeze that might possibly be roving anywhere in London that night.

A man sat close to the empty hearth, staring into it, as though he needed it for warmth, and could see pictures in flames that weren’t there. The woman seated opposite him stared into the complete darkness at the edges of the room as though she could see moving shadows. Nothing moved except for the faint fluttering of the single candle in the room, set flickering by the slight motion of her hand as she idly plied her fan.

“We received an invitation in the post this morning,” she said into the stillness. “Unexpected. But then, perhaps not. The fellow seems willing to go to all lengths. Well, now, despite what I’d thought, it seems our old friend Sir Alasdair St. Erth has actually become
betrothed to our—your—cousin Katherine Corbet. He rescued her from that abduction, and so many will say it’s because he wished to save her name—as if a man with a name like his could do that. But whatever they say, now the thing is official, it was in the papers, and they’re planning a party to celebrate. We’ve been invited. How amusing.”

The gentleman didn’t react.

She spoke again. “So, shall we go?” She laughed when he didn’t answer. “Precisely. I think not. But he’s planning to marry her. What do you think of that, Richard?”

At the sound of his name, the man turned his head a fraction. He grunted.

“Yes,” the woman answered. “Just so. What can one say? He has evidence, Richard. Evidence that will ruin us. So why doesn’t he simply produce it and have done? Why should he go to such lengths, eh?”

The man laughed. It was a broken, bitter sound, with no humor in it.

“Yes, quite,” his wife said. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps he loves her? That would be to our advantage, were it so. If he does, he could be managed; certainly he wouldn’t want to cast shame on her family. But he has no shame of his own, and so that’s a remote possibility. Unlikely, as well, as he also has no heart. Still, though we may pass up this kind invitation, we shall be expected to invite them here. We are known to be social, you know.

“Damn him to hell,” she added conversationally, though her thin hand clenched to a claw on the handle of her fan. “He is undoubtedly already headed there. He wants us to crawl. It’s not enough to disgrace us, which he doubtless will. He wants to see us crawl to
him first. And
then
he will deny us. I imagine he’d find that amusing. I would, were I he. I expect his plan involves exposing us in front of the family,” she went on moodily. “Then he can cast off the girl, and his revenge will be complete. But, perhaps not. There may be an out for us. There might be a way, if he does care for the girl, there may yet be a way.”

The man waved a negligent hand at her, as though he was brushing away a gnat.

“No, I mean it,” she said. “It isn’t much of a hope, but it’s all we have left. With all his power, he’s only a man, and we know, God knows we know, he has his weaknesses. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t be in this predicament, would we? So, what’s to do? Shall we invite him here? As he expects? As the world expects? After eluding him so well for so long, shall we at last be forced to have him here? So we can crawl on our bellies in our own sanctuary?”

Her husband growled. He turned a livid face to hers, started to utter something, but sputtered on another snarl and began coughing. His face turned red, then crimson.

His wife rose from her chair, took a glass from the table and held it to her husband’s lips. He drank so greedily some of the liquid spilled out of his mouth and down his chin. He sat back when there was nothing left, gasping, his coughing subsiding.

The woman picked up a bell and rang it. A footman hurried into the room.

“My husband is having one of his attacks,” she told him in a calm, cold voice, averting her face. “You know what to do. Get his man and his medicine.” When the footman hurried out, she went to the door, too. She looked back at her husband, coughing fitfully, but with
less force. “We may not be quite dished. I will consider this carefully. We’ll speak of this again, Richard, when you’re better,” she said, and with a bitter smile, left him alone by the barren fireside.

“M
ama would like the wedding to be at home,” Kate reported, after she skimmed the letter she’d just opened.

Alasdair sat back, listening in silence, his hand loosely circled around the cup of tea she’d poured for him. He watched her closely, taking pleasure watching the way her hands moved when she opened a letter, how her eyes widened when she read something that interested her, and how the sunlight teased gold from her curls.

He smiled at how inane a smitten man could be. The smile grew rueful as he realized there was nothing else he could do but admire her from afar, even if that “afar” was only three feet. He was showing the Swansons how good, how virtuous, how ordinary the wicked St. Erth could be, even when tempted by the tasty tidbit who was his fiancée. He had no choice. They’d been engaged for two weeks, and only now did the Swansons permit him to sit alone with her—at
teatime, in the salon, and with the door ajar, he thought with amused resignation.

“And you?” he asked. “What would you like?”

“I’d like it if we’d been married at that inn instead of just compromised there.” She colored because of the look that flashed in his eyes.

He noted it. “Does my continuing interest in that ’compromise’ distress you?” he asked mildly. “I hope not. I thought you felt the same, and hope it’s only your notion of propriety that prevents you from admitting it. Believe me, I’d think it
very
proper if you did.”

“It’s not that…exactly. Well, maybe it is,” she admitted. “What I think of what we do—did—isn’t something I’m comfortable talking about yet.”

“You will be,” he promised. “I realize marriage entails decades of dealing with thousands of mundane things that will make up our lives. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that what compromised us is of greatest interest to me right now.” He saw her embarrassment and relented. “It’s not just the longing for pleasure, Kate. I find myself longing simply to lie with you in my arms, peacefully, talking about how good our life is. It will be. But this isn’t getting us anywhere. Warm talk over cold tea isn’t much use to a man in a heated condition. No”—he laughed, putting his hand over the cup—“I don’t want any more, thank you. What were you saying?”

It took her a minute to remember. She flourished the letter, frowning again. “Plans for our marriage. My cousins say we should wait until next spring, and they’re pushing for a fine wedding here, at St. George’s. Now here’s Mama telling me she’s thinking of a wedding in high summer! In our church at home. I don’t much care where we’re wed, do you? I thought
not. But wherever we chose, that’s a year away, either way,” she said plaintively.

“Even if I didn’t mind that, which I do,” she added hastily, “what am I supposed to do until then? I don’t want to stay here with the Swansons, sweet as they are—and truly, Harriet, Frances, and Chloe are much nicer to me now. But if I go home, you’ll have to travel for days to see me, and I won’t see you even half as often as I do now—oh, this is impossible. Why should something so simple be getting so baroque!” she asked in frustration. “Why should there be so much time between the decision and the deed? I’m not some giddy young chit, so why don’t they trust my judgment? My parents, at least, used to. What’s come over them?”

“I believe they may be worried about what people may think came over you—literally,” he said wryly. Reaching over the table and taking her hand, he added, “Dear ninny mine, they want the guests at your wedding to see that the wedding isn’t strictly necessary. They want it to look like a consummation devoutly to be wished—instead of one that had to be hastily covered up.”

She stared at him, perplexed.

He sighed. “We two were away together overnight, at an inn. Even if we hadn’t been, there’s the matter of who you were away with. Dear Kate,” he said gently, to her dawning distress, “they want everyone to see you aren’t increasing. The Swansons believe a wedding nine months hence, with you still svelte, should be enough to do the trick. Your parents are more discreet. They don’t want the reason for the long engagement to be that obvious. And they might also want to give you enough time to change your mind.”

Now she glared. “Never!” she said. “Not my par
ents at least. They believe what I tell them. Besides, I’ve been judge, jury, and referee in our family long enough for them not only to believe in my good sense, but to depend on it utterly.” She paused, and added in a smaller voice, “That’s just the problem, and why there may be something in what you say. I doubt they worry about you—not in the way you mean. I think, deep down, even old as I am, they aren’t ready to let me go to anyone.”

She slipped her hand from his and used her finger to skim the letter, running it across the crisscrossing lines. “They say things like…ah, here:
‘We sent you to London to have a good time, and hope you don’t think we were trying to be rid of you. We’ve always mocked parents desperate to pop their girls off, don’t you remember?’
And here:
’Dearest girl, you know how well we all rub on together here, never think we sent you to visit your cousins because we wanted to marry you off. You’re welcome to stay on here with us as you are, forever.’

“There,” she said with sad satisfaction, looking up at him again, resting her hand on top of his, as if to comfort him, “‘Forever,’ that’s the key word. You see? It isn’t you. You could be an archbishop for all they care.”

He chuckled, but she went on, “It’s me, and how much they need me. But much as I love them, I’d rather not stay home a year, missing you all the time, with nothing to do but dream of our marriage. What’s the purpose? So I can assemble some monstrous trousseau? I can buy linens after I’m married. So I can arrange for an extra armful of roses at the wedding, and wait for answers to invitations from relatives in the Antipodes? Nonsense. All that time at home will make it harder to leave my family. And they know it. They want to keep things just as they are. I’m useful to
them. I don’t want to sound like an undutiful daughter, but the thing is that now I want to be useful to
you
.”

He picked up her hand and brought it to his lips. She was touched, tingling, enchanted, so pleased with him that she forgot what she’d just been complaining about. But it was so comforting to have him sitting there beside her in the afternoon. So domestic, so fulfilling, and Lord, the man looked good in daylight. Night made him seem dramatic, like a great black cat on the stalk. The afternoon sun showed him to be just as virile, equally dangerous but a hundred times more accessible. She yearned to jump from her chair, fling herself into his arms, sit on his lap, and try to discover how long a person could kiss without breathing. Because he’d become as vital to her as breathing.

It wasn’t just what he did to her senses. She had enough of them left to realize that marrying a man for one attribute, however agreeable, would be folly. Just as a woman who married for money was a fool because if the fellow lost his fortune, she’d be stuck with the man, physical attraction was very fine but it might also be fleeting. Then, if it ever paled or was somehow lost, she’d be stuck with the man behind the male. But Alasdair was man and male enough for any woman.

He said he longed to lie with her as much as talk with her. She certainly understood that. She was delighted simply to sit and talk with him. She valued his opinion and sought his good opinion of herself. He was reserved, but warm, cool but caring, a mass of contradictions that fascinated her. And she loved to laugh with him. Of course, he lured her senses, too, and though she wasn’t sure just what she’d be getting into, she couldn’t wait to find out. In all, and in truth, she’d never known she was incomplete until she’d grown to know him. Now she didn’t know if she could
ever be whole again without him. He lent balance and weight to her life.

So the thought of having to sit so far from his arms and yet so near to him for another hour, much less another year, horrified her. And the suggestion that she might have to sit a hundred miles away from him for that whole year, only dreaming of even this frustrating closeness, devastated her.

She wondered if he felt the same way, and was suddenly afraid to ask. Because maybe he did want her to take that year away from him. Because maybe, in spite of his kiss, and those yearning looks, he wasn’t ready for marriage—at least, not to her.

He saw her expression change from frustrated chagrin to something too much like fear. He saw the shadow come into her eyes, her lips parting in a suddenly indrawn breath as she looked at him with worried speculation. And then he saw her small, white teeth begin to worry at her plump lower lip.

A man could only take so much.

He pushed back his chair and surged to his feet. He reached for her, and didn’t have to take a step forward because suddenly she was on her feet and in his arms. He held her close and rocked her, one hand clipped round her waist, the other splayed on her back, pressing her near as he whispered, “What? What is it? What’s the matter, Kate? Tell me, please.”

He felt the breath hitch in her chest, “Oh, Alasdair. Have I presumed? What do I know of such things? Maybe it’s only right to wait a year. I don’t want to step wrong, I don’t know how to go right—Lord, when it comes to you, I don’t know a thing! Tell me the right thing to do, please, Alasdair.”

He did.

He drew back and cupped her face in both hands.
He searched her eyes and saw no fear of him, but only some deep disquiet that slowly changed to the same helpless, hopeless longing that he felt as he stared at her. Satisfied, he brought his lips to hers.

There was nothing like her kiss. He marveled at it. There was nothing like the sweetness of her mouth, the special essential taste of Kate, the touch of her tongue that sent shivers along his neck, where her hands were now clutching him, locking him right where he wanted to be. He was a man who knew infinite and intricate variations of lovemaking. He knew the ways of the human body at lovemaking better than most physicians did, because he’d been taught much and discovered more in many lands, from expert partners, and yet he’d never felt anything so good as her kiss. It made him want more, but it was so incredibly delicious that even if he were never permitted more, he thought her kiss would be enough.

…for a few minutes.

Because, as if of its own accord, now one of his hands sought the roundness of her bottom. She willingly pressed closer. Her hand touched his hair as his mouth sought to taste the corner of her ear. “Kate,” he murmured into that ear, delighting at how his breath caused her dainty shudders, “Not a year. Never a year. My God, not a minute more, but certainly not a year.”

“Because of…this?” she asked, and he could feel her body tense and hear the trace of sorrow in her voice.

“Of course.” He laughed and kissed her neck. “And this, and this,” he added as he drew a line of kisses down to her shoulder. He was a very tall man, but had no trouble doubling over so he could avail himself of what she offered. He cupped her breast, drawing the neck of her gown down so he could kiss more of her
perfumed, rising flesh. “And this…But also because I do love you.”

He drew back, marginally, and locked both hands behind her back, holding her as though they were connected at the waist. Tilting back a fraction so he could watch her expression, he added softly, “I don’t want to sit in stasis for a calendar year, just to placate the gossips. Nor will it matter. Be sure, my reputation will precede me, even if we pass this test, there will be others.

“Kate,” he said seriously, “I’ll never be able to smile at another female without there being suspicion. I won’t be able to come home late to dinner without causing gossip. I promised you before, I’ll do it again: I will never betray you. I hope you continue to believe me, but I assure you others will always doubt me. If you can accept that, then, yes, accept me now. A year won’t make a difference, except to torment us more. Ten, twenty, won’t matter either. I’m flattered and relieved that you want to marry now. Nothing could please me more. Let’s do it.”

She smiled up at him. He let out a sigh of relief. She closed her eyes. His lips were only centimeters from hers, he lowered his head to remedy that miscalculation.

“Kate!” a shocked voice said.

Alasdair’s head went up, and he stepped back. He kept one hand around Kate’s waist, but the other fell to his side. Kate turned a flushed, dazed face to her cousin, Lady Swanson. Sibyl and Henrietta were by their mother’s side. They all stared. Kate’s lips were swollen, her curls mussed, her gown askew. She looked confused, as though she’d just been pulled out of bed during an erotic dream.

“Kate and I have decided that we’d like our wedding to go forth as soon as possible after the banns
have been read,” Alasdair said. He looked cool and collected—if one ignored the strain in his eyes, and the slightly elevated color on his lean cheeks.

Sibyl was big-eyed; her sister Henrietta stared at the couple enviously.

“So soon?” Lady Swanson said in a faltering voice, gazing from one flushed face to the other.

Alasdair drew himself up. “As there’s no reason for a hasty wedding except for our own eagerness to begin a life together, I’d think that those three weeks, plus the two since our adventure, and perhaps three more, should be enough to eventually quell the gossips. And if not, we simply don’t give a damn, madam.”

“Yes, so I see,” Lady Swanson said. “And so, discretion being the better part of valor, I find I must agree. Because speak of discretion! If there’s not a problem now, there may be one tomorrow.
At tea!
Sir Alasdair, it is simply not done.”

“I agree,” he said, wooden-faced. “Nor would I have guessed I’d do it. So, eight weeks of waiting is certainly long enough, you’ll agree?”

“Only if the waiting is observed during those weeks, sir,” she said sternly.

He winced. “You’ve my word on it,” he said. “Kate?”

“What? Oh, yes,” she said, blinking like an owl at sunrise. “Oh my! Eight weeks, yes, please.”

Alasdair sat in the bath with a cigarillo clenched between his teeth, and scrubbed at his back with a sponge. “Yes, it’s six weeks from now,” he muttered through his cigarillo. “The invitation was waiting when you got back to London because we sent them soon as they were ready. We got them out today. The
ink must still be wet. You were out of town when it was decided. I sent a letter telling you, but it must have been delivered to Boxwood as you were leaving it. Nothing amiss, was there?”