Fanning the Flame (38 page)

"I hate to ask more of you, Michael, but there is another favor I need." Michael's dark brown eyes grew wider by the moment as she explained the situation, praying that he would agree.

Michael got up from the sofa in his parlor and began to pace the floor. "I said I would help you in any way I could, but . . ."

"I know it's a lot to ask." Jillian nervously toyed with the finger of her glove. "If you are worried about your reputation—"

"I’ll be leaving London in less than a week. Besides, I'm a man and merely a second son. As unfair as it may seem, it won't be a problem for me."

"What, then?"

"Are you certain this is what you want?"

She swallowed. "I have to do this, Michael." She told him that she had no other choice. She loved Adam Hawthorne and because she did, she refused to be the cause of the ruination of his family.

Michael had argued, but in the end, he had agreed.

By the time she had reboarded the waiting hack, her meeting had reached a successful conclusion. Michael would provide the excuse she needed to refuse Adam's offer of marriage. Later, he could simply pretend things hadn't worked out between them.

Her plan was set and by Saturday morning she was ready. Standing in front of the armoire, Jillian tried to calm the queasiness in her stomach. Her nerves were frayed, her eyes ringed with fatigue, her heart a shredded, bloody lump inside her chest. But she was prepared to do as she had promised Lady Sophia.

Swallowing against the painful ache in her throat, Jillian set off for Adam's town house, determined to play the hardest role of her life.

Adam finished cataloging his most recent acquisition, a mask from the time of Amenhotep III done in gold leaf with geometric patterns in brilliant reds and blues. Shoving his plumed pen back into the inkwell, he closed the heavy leather volume that documented the pieces he had acquired over the years and leaned back in his chair.

He could feel the small, square lump in the pocket of his navy blue tailcoat. Reaching down, he lifted the flap and pulled out an elegantly carved wooden box inlaid with mother of pearl and lifted the lid.

On a bed of white satin rested the diamond and ruby ring he had purchased from one of the half-dozen shops he had visited in the last several days. Until yesterday afternoon, he had almost given up hope of finding such a ring. Nothing had seemed quite right. The stones were either too large or too small, or the cut just didn't seem correct.

He wanted a ring that would reflect Jillian's beauty, a strong, clear stone that symbolized her courage and strength.

The ring he had found in the little shop Clay recommended in Ludgate Hill seemed perfect: a large, flawless, square-cut diamond, surrounded by smaller, perfectly faceted rubies that reminded him of the fire in her hair. He couldn't wait to see her face when he showed it to her.

Smiling, he watched the way the sun danced over the brilliant white diamond, then, at Reggie's soft knock, quickly returned the lid to the box and stuffed it back into the pocket of his tailcoat.

Reggie's homely face poked through the door. "Sorry to bother ye, Major, but Miss Whitney is come to see ye. I've shown her into the Gold Drawing Room."

Adam smiled. She wasn't supposed to be there. Everything had changed since the day she'd been cleared of the murder charges. She was the woman he intended to marry and he meant to treat her with the respect she deserved. Still, he hadn't cared about propriety before. He cared even less about it now. He simply wanted to see her.

He got up from his desk and followed Reggie down the hall. Jillian stood up as he walked in. Gowned in pale blue muslin sprigged with embroidered rosebuds, a bonnet hiding her glorious hair, she looked beautiful and innocent, and he felt a surge of love so strong, for an instant he couldn't speak.

"Jillian . . ." he said, nervous for no good reason, then he noticed the uncertain look on her face. "Sweeting, is everything all right?"

She nodded, smiled, and he thought that she was glad to see him, too. "I just needed to talk to you."

Catching both her gloved hands, he bent and kissed her cheek, though what he wanted to do was drag her into his arms and kiss her till neither of them could breathe.

"It's good to see you." He felt awkward as he never had before, as if he were suddenly wearing knee breeches and his tutor was about to tell his father he had sneaked off without doing his lessons.

"It's good to see you, too." She let him guide her over to the gold-striped sofa in front of the hearth, and he took a place beside her, still holding onto her hand. It was slender and delicate, and though her fingers should have been warmed by the gloves, they felt cold against his palm. He wondered if she might be feeling a little awkward, too.

"I hope you've been well," she said.

"I've missed you. I wish I'd never let you leave." But he had and now he just wanted her to marry him and come home where she belonged. He flashed her a smile brighter than most of the ones she had seen. They came easier since he had met her. He knew once she belonged to him, he would smile at her all the time.

"Yes, well . . . that is what I've come to talk to you about." For the first time he noticed how tense she was, the way her shoulders looked tight and straight, her chin angled up a little too high. It made his own nerves crank up a notch.

"You look pale. You aren't sick, are you? The last time I spoke to Clay, he said that you had been spending a lot of time up in your room, but he thought you were probably just recovering after all that you'd been through."

"I'm fine. Really. My health is not a problem, but . . . there is another matter we need to discuss." Her fingers gently curled around his hand. "First, I want to tell you how much I appreciate everything you've done for me. If it weren't for you, I would undoubtedly be spending the rest of my life in prison. I might even be facing the gallows."

Adam said nothing, but his instincts were telling him that something was very wrong and his heart jolted into a faster rhythm.

"I care for you greatly, Adam. I've never met a man I respect more than I do you. You're intelligent and kind and loyal. You're the best friend I've ever had."

He straightened a little, let go of her hand. He noticed that it trembled. "Is that all we are, Jillian? Friends?"

She swallowed, shook her head. "You know it isn't. We were . . . lovers. Making love to you wasn't something I did lightly."

He could see she was struggling. What amazed him was how much it bothered him to see her that way. "Why don't you just tell me what's going on?"

She swallowed, glanced down at the hands she clenched in her lap. "There are things I never told you. Things that happened in my life before I came to London." She looked back at him, her eyes as blue as the sea and yet there was something turbulent in them, like clouds building on the horizon.

"There was a man in my life once, someone that I loved. He was a friend of my father's. Just before my father died, he left for Oxford to complete some additional schooling. Then Father passed away. I moved to London and we . . . we lost touch with each other. I never thought I would ever see him again."

This last was said softly, as if the memory of losing the man still pained her.

"But you did see him," Adam prompted, coaxing her to continue, yet not really wanting to hear what he feared she might say. His heart was thudding. He didn't know exactly where this was leading, but Jillian’s lips were trembling and her eyes were filled with a deep regret.

"Yes . . . I saw him again. One day on the street outside your house. I told you about it; I mentioned running into a friend of my father's." He remembered, but he had been worried about the trial. "Two days ago I-I ran into him again . . . in Bond Street. It wasn't planned. I went shopping and there . . . there he was. He said he had been planning to call on me, now that the trial was over. His name is Michael Aimes."

A pressure was building in his chest. He could feel every sluggish beat of his heart. "Go on," was all he said.

"Michael had read about the trial in the newspapers. I didn't know he had come to London purposely to find me until he said so that day." She swallowed. "He loves me, Adam. He says he has loved me for years. H-he . . . wants to marry me."

I
want to marry you,
he thought, but not if she didn't love him.

Jillian reached over and gently took his hand.

"The days and nights we shared . . . they were wonderful. I-I told Michael about you. I couldn't lie about our friendship . . . or hide the fact that we were intimately involved. He says it doesn't matter. He says nothing matters, not as long as we're together."

Adam cleared his throat. It seemed to be squeezing off his air and it was getting hard to breathe. "You're telling me that you're in love with this man . . . this Michael Aimes?"

"I love him." She was shaking, forcing out each of her words. "I've loved him . . . for as long as I can remember." It occurred to him how difficult this was for her, how worried she was about him, how hard she was trying not to hurt him. She knew that she was and it was killing her.

He dragged in a steadying breath, willed his voice to come out even. "Well, if that is the case, then you are not in love with me." Adam got up from the sofa, paced over to the window, and stared out into the street. Clouds had begun to gather, hiding the sun and turning the morning cold and gray. A little boy played on the stoop of the house across the way. A door opened and his mother protectively scooped him back inside, out of the first drops of rain.

He turned back to Jillian. "I had hoped we might share a future together."

She nodded, swallowed. "There was a time I . . . I had hoped for that, too, but I would never have been happy as your mistress and now . . . now that I've found Michael again, I think this will be better for both of us."

There was a time he had wanted nothing so much as to be rid of her. He'd been afraid of his growing attachment, afraid she would hurt him. Even if it wasn't her intention, she was certainly doing that now.

She got up from the sofa and joined him at the window. "Please, Adam . . . please don't be angry. I'd never do anything to hurt you." Her voice broke. "I would have told you about Michael if I'd had the slightest notion he would ever have come back into my life." She glanced away for a moment and he caught the sheen of tears. "If I had known the way he felt . . . if he had come for me after my father died . . . none of this would ever have happened."

Adam looked into her anguished face. Her skin was ashen, her pretty blue eyes utterly bleak. She was hurting, he saw, hurting for him. He might not have known about Michael Aimes, but he knew a great deal about Jillian Whitney. He knew that when she cared about someone she cared about them deeply. And even if she thought of him only as a friend, she wouldn't want to hurt him.

She looked at him and her eyes welled with tears. He couldn't stand knowing that he was the cause, couldn't bear to see her suffer. Christ, hadn't she suffered enough already?

An odd calm settled over him. For the first time in his life he understood the true meaning of
love.
He understood that when you really loved someone, you cared about their happiness more than you did your own. He understood that you would do anything—anything—to save the person you loved from pain.

Even sacrifice everything you had ever wanted out of life.

Adam reached out, gently cupped her face in his hand. "If none of this had happened, I never would have met you. We would never have made love.  I wouldn't have missed being with you for anything in the world."

She fought to keep from crying, but tears slid down her cheeks. "I'm sorry things didn't work out."

"Will you be happy with him, Jillian?"

She swallowed, nodded, forced a tremulous smile. "He's everything I've ever wanted."

Adam bent and softy kissed her mouth. It was the last kiss they would ever share and his heart felt as if it were crumbling into little pieces. Jillian leaned against him, went up on her toes and for an instant kissed him back. She kissed him with all the feelings she had once held for him, kissed him as if he meant everything in the world to her, as if it were he that she loved and not Michael Aimes. Then she stepped away.

"Be happy for me, Adam."

"Take care of yourself, my love."

"Tell Kitt and Clay . . . tell them I'll never forget what they've done for me."

"I'll tell them."

She caught his hand, pressed it against her cheek, tipped her face into his palm. "Don't forget me."

"I won't forget," he said, his voice rough. His throat was aching. Moisture burned his eyes and he knew if she didn't leave soon, he was going to embarrass himself. "You'd better go."

She nodded, but made no move to leave.

"Have a good life, Jillian."

More tears slid down her cheeks. "You, too, Adam." And then she was gone.

Adam stared at the place she had been. He hadn't felt this deep, bottomless despair since the day he got news that his brother had died. He reached into his pocket and his fingers curled around the box that held the ring. It seemed to burn a hole through his hand. He took the box out, but he didn't open it.