Our Wicked Mistake (7 page)

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Authors: Emma Wildes

BOOK: Our Wicked Mistake
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A lamp was still lit down the hallway, but he wasn’t surprised. Regina kept odd hours. He’d rather counted on it. She also always had a decanter of his favorite whiskey on hand for his visits, and he’d counted on that too.
She was in the library in her dressing gown, frowning over a series of drawings scattered all over the floor, her long hair in a veil over her face until she glanced up as he entered the room. The tall bookcases were shrouded, the furniture pushed to the side to give more space for the informal display of her work. “I thought I heard someone open the door. What time is it?”
“Late.” Luke smiled wryly. “Or early, depending on how you look at it.” Her unconcern for an unknown per son entering her home was all too typical. Luckily she had a competent housekeeper who looked after mun dane matters such as locking the doors at night.
“I don’t look at it at all.” Regina rose gracefully from the floor and smoothed her indigo silk dressing gown, a faint smile on her face. “My eclectic psyche doesn’t reg ister the movements of the sun, you know that.”
She was only half joking. His half sister was an art ist, and a free spirit extraordinaire. “I’ve noticed. Is this a new project?” He gestured at the charcoal sketches. “Usually you work in colors.”
“I’m always experimenting.” She walked over to a small table, lifted the crystal top of a decanter, dashed amber liquid into a faceted cut glass tumbler, and came over to hand it to him.
“I didn’t say I wanted a drink.” He looked around for a place to sit, since the chairs were arranged in a disor dered manner.
“You didn’t have to.” She sat down on a velvet covered chair at right angles to the collection of drawings, com pensating by draping her legs over the arm. “You only get that singularly hollow eyed look occasionally, and this seems to be one of those nights. Considering the time, I can’t imagine it takes great powers of deduction to figure out you can’t sleep.”
“Sleeping,” he muttered, and took a drink of the sharp beverage, “is part of the problem.” He decided to just go over and prop a shoulder against the closest bookcase.
Considering they’d had different mothers, Regina looked uncannily like Elizabeth, with the same large gray eyes and fragile features. However, their older sis ter had a statuesque build, unlike Elizabeth’s slender form, and had also inherited her mother’s disdain for convention. In her midthirties, she was unmarried and had shown no inclination to change that status. If she had lovers, she was discreet enough that Luke knew nothing about it.
“Bad dreams again?” She crossed her elegant bare an kles and regarded him with an unwavering, questioning gaze.
“Bad dream in the singular. It doesn’t vary.” His head ached, and the whiskey wasn’t likely to help, but he drank again anyway, the warmth curling in his stomach.
“Someday you’ll tell me?”
“No.” His voice was harsher than he’d intended, the memory of the dream hauntingly vivid. She had no idea what she was asking of him, nor did he want to involve her. It was best for his family, he’d decided before he ever set foot back on English soil, if they didn’t know.
“It might help.” Regina was unfazed by his curt re sponse.
His smile was devoid of humor. “It might give
you
nightmares. I’ve enough on my conscience as it is with out adding to the burden.”
“It strikes me you should worry a little more about yourself and a little less about the rest of us.”
“I’m Altea, remember?” One brow lifted in an ironic arch. “It is my duty to concern myself with my family.”
“Is it also your duty to inspire young rakehells to risk their entire portions on a single hand of cards?”
Luke rubbed his throbbing temple. “That single reck less moment is being vastly exaggerated.”
“Is it?” Regina lounged in her chair, her dark, silky hair in careless disarray. “Are you telling me you didn’t accept that wager and the entire affair is being romanti cized for the benefit of gossip?”
After a moment, he said with resignation, “I should never have gone to that questionable establishment in the first place. I was just restless, I suppose, that evening, and somehow I found myself in an untenable position.”
“You could have declined to wager such an outra geous sum.”
“I thought you understood the male of our species better than that.” Luke brooded at his glass for a mo ment. Then he sighed. “I’ve been playing deep lately, bringing the whole incident on my own head, I admit it. Can we change the subject?”
“If you wish.” Regina adjusted the folds of her dress ing gown. “What would you like to discuss in the wee hours before dawn?”
“Tell me about your newest work.” It wasn’t an origi nal ploy, but it always worked. His half sister’s enthusi asm for art bordered on single minded obsession.
She did, and he listened, admiring her passion for her calling as her lilting voice rose and fell with fervor, re galing him with the virtues of Leonardo da Vinci’s stud ies of the human form, and how she derived inspiration from them when traveling in Italy recently and viewing not only the museums, but also private collections. The new sketches, Regina informed him while he negligently sipped his drink and the first glimmer of light appeared outside the tall windows of the town house he’d given her on the day he’d inherited his father’s estate, were still life impressions: a single flower, the Greek cycla men, the buds just beginning to unfurl; a waterfall, the veil of water gliding over a cascade of ancient rocks, she’d seen in Cyprus; the facade of the Pantheon on a hot summer day, magnificent and timeless. Her talent was undeniable, and he was proud of her, just as he had never denied their relationship, even if she was the ille gitimate daughter of his father’s former mistress. The af fair had been before he’d married, and Luke didn’t fault his father’s indiscretion.
He’d made a wicked mistake or two of his own.
And he hadn’t been alone.
Madeline’s stricken face the other day wasn’t easy to banish. Maybe it had even brought on the dream. “I always envy you your passion,” he told his sister when she showed him her depiction of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice at night. The drawing captured perfectly the glint of moonlight on the water.
“And I envy you your detachment,” she replied as she let the picture drift back to the pile on the floor. “But when are you going to abandon it?”
“Abandon it?”
“Luke.” Her tone held gentle remonstration. “You are running away from something.”
If only he could. Still, he dissembled. “Running away? It seems to me I am right here.”
“Don’t be obtuse on purpose. I mean in a symbolic way.” She laughed, the sound as light as the coming dawn.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t run away. Not from his obligations to his family and fortune, and not from the memories that kept him frozen in the past. “Perhaps,” he said with a mirthless smile, “since you have my acquiescence on that point, tell me, what are you going to draw next? Have you thought about Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire? Or Whitby? England has some splendor also in her countryside.”
His sister wasn’t fooled, but she was also distracted by the notion of transepts and flying buttresses, and his discontent was quickly forgotten as they discussed monastic ruins and dramatic settings while the sun rose slowly, bathing the horizon in a pale wash of rose laced with streaks of gray.
 
“As I understand it,” Lady Hendricks said, sotto voce
,
“his lordship was brutally assaulted right in the street by footpads.”
Madeline kept a calm expression, difficult as it was, idly drinking her tea. “The story changes constantly. I do believe much of it is exaggerated.”
And, thanks be to God, the odious man doesn’t seem to remember what really happened
.
Luke had extracted the note she’d sent from Lord Fitch’s pocket, so his lordship wouldn’t have that to jog his foggy recollection of the evening, but even if he didn’t know who hit him or where he’d been at the time, he still had the journal. And until she got it back, he could continue to make his disgusting innuendos and vile suggestions.
Why, oh, why, hadn’t she followed her first inclination and had Colin’s precious scribbling buried with him? Of course, she’d had no inkling he’d been so
specific
in his writings either. Who would think he’d write down details of such personal moments anyway? A part of her was angry with him, but she knew he would be horrified to cause her distress or embarrassment, much less spur on the unsavory attentions of a man she detested, especially since he wasn’t there to protect her.
Luckily, she could call on Luke. Or was it lucky? Yes, for he’d certainly helped her, but she would have been better off keeping her distance.
The obligatory Tuesday-afternoon tea in her mother’s elegant drawing room was particularly trying this day, in light of recent events. Usually Madeline didn’t mind being decades or more younger than the other women in attendance, because she found their endless tittle-tattle amusing, but despite the golden sun coming through the windows and the cloudless sky outside, she felt a little cold.
Mrs. Pearce, who was a close friend of Madeline’s grandmother, wore her gray hair in a tidy bun, her amiable face reflecting a thoughtful frown. She said, “Quite frankly, Fitch isn’t my favorite person. Not that I would wish ill upon him, but he has a most grating manner at times. Too forward by half, if you ask me.”
Grate. Fireplace. Poker.
There was an ironic connection there, Madeline had to acknowledge with a cynical inner wince. “I don’t care for him,” she admitted, hoping her expression was bland. “But neither did I—er—do I wish him ill. Perhaps it was all an accident.”
“Brave of Altea to run off the footpads and take his lordship home.” Lady Hendricks reached for an other éclair. “His heroics aren’t confined to the war, apparently.”
Now, there was a variation on the story Madeline hadn’t heard yet. “I thought he found him lying there in an alley close to his club.”
That version was dismissed with an airy wave of plump fingers as not as interesting as a gang of murder ous ruffians. “Either way, going into a deserted, sordid pathway in the middle of the night cannot be a pleasant experience.”
If the infuriatingly nonchalant and detached Vis count Altea emerged from this debacle some sort of hero, and it looked like matters were going that way, it would just be salt on the wound. Madeline fought the urge to grind her teeth and acknowledged silently with cold common sense that if he truly retrieved the journal, he
was
a hero.
He’d come at once at her request, she had to grudg ingly admit. And effectively hauled off the unscrupu lous Fitch like so much baggage. It stung to owe the man who had once spurned her, but she
did
owe Luke, and his confidence in regaining the journal meant the debt might be deepened even more.
How would she repay it?
Madeline’s mother, who presided over tea like a queen, looked serene as she refilled her cup. “It isn’t unlike a Daudet to stumble headfirst into some sort of intrigue, and the viscount in particular. I remember his father. He was extremely dashing. Women adored him.”
Since all of this had to do with her and a possible scandal that was at the least mortifying, Madeline tried to change the subject. “I hear the Baltimore ball has been changed to next week.”
“Yes.” Lady Hendricks wasn’t impressed with the an nouncement, and unswervingly returned to a more sala cious topic. “I remember too the viscount’s father. He was almost as beautiful as his son.” Her smile was smug and feline. “Almost.”
Luke. Tall, so handsome, with those intense silver eyes and his dark blond hair . . .
That one night was imprinted so clearly on her mind that Madeline could almost taste his kiss, feel the hardness of muscle and sinew under her questing fingertips, not to mention the delicious erotic friction as he moved with seductive expertise between her legs. . . .
That was a memory better banished to a distant part of her mind that wouldn’t recall it when in a room full of matronly ladies. She delved into her cup, hiding her expression. Lately, she’d been thinking a great deal about the emptiness in her personal life, and the entire unpleasantness with Fitch had dredged up the past. Not just the intimacies she’d once shared with Colin, but also the combustible passion she’d experienced with the cynical but undeniably attractive Lord Altea. The strange ending to their conversation the other day in his carriage had fretted at the edge of her mind ever since, but what she remembered most was his admission that he still wanted her.
I desire you still. . . .
And as outrageous as the idea might be, she was starting to think she needed a lover. Perhaps a husband, but she’d been a widow for a while now, and no one had in the least appealed to her for such a permanent arrangement. Was it necessary she marry again to taste passion? The social whirl of society was entertaining, her son was the center of her world, and her family was warm and caring, but in the end, Madeline was beginning to realize that as each day passed, she was losing more and more of the woman inside her. She was Lady Brewer, she was a mother, she was a daughter and sister, but she didn’t feel like a
woman
.

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