The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (24 page)

“I shall try not to make it necessary,” she said.

His face remained immobile. But his eyes smiled. It was a wicked, knee-weakening expression. She should, she thought very much too late, have allowed him to hurry her back to London as he had wanted to do earlier.

She need not have worried about the dance. After the first few faltering steps she picked up the rhythm of the waltz without any trouble at all. How could she not do so when she had such a superb partner? He twirled her about the perimeter of the ballroom and she could almost imagine that her feet did not touch the floor. She had never in her life felt so exhilarated, she was sure. And not just exhilarated. His eyes held hers, breaking contact only occasionally to roam over her face and her shoulders. And that strange smile lingered there. Those very dark eyes of his had lost their disturbing opaque quality again.

“Has anyone reserved the next set with you?” he asked when she was beginning to feel regret at the knowledge that the set must be almost at an end.

She shook her head. She had not missed a single set, but apart from this one, none had been reserved ahead of time.

“Then you will remain with me,” he said. “And since at Enfield strict rules of etiquette must be observed and
I dare not dance a third set even with my wife, we will go outside, my lady. We will stroll down to the lake. Unless you are reluctant to drag yourself from the festivities for half an hour, that is.”

Her first foolish thought was that it would be quite improper to be alone with him. For she knew from long experience when a gentleman merely wanted to take a little air with the lady of his choice and when he hoped to take more than just a little air. The Marquess of Staunton intended to take liberties with her person.

Her second foolish thought was that she was afraid to let him kiss her. It was extremely foolish in light of what they had done together in the privacy of his bed the night before—three separate times—and in light of the fact that she was his wife. But somehow, strangely—she would not at all have been able to explain the feeling—there was something vastly different about lying with her husband and walking out into the moonlight with him while a ball was in progress. Walking out was infinitely more dangerous.

And every bit as tempting.

And just as impossible to resist.

“Fresh air and a stroll will be very pleasant, my lord,” she said.

That smile in his eyes took on a dimension of true amusement. “You look,” he said, “as if you are agreeing to attend your own execution.”

“Oh,” she said and felt her blush return with full heat. He knew that she knew he was taking her outside to kiss her. She glanced at his mouth. She had felt it once—at their wedding—coming to rest lightly beside her own mouth. It had shocked her to her toenails. What would it feel like directly against her own? It was very silly to feel breathless when she had received his body right inside her own four times in all.

But a kiss was different. She felt breathless. And the
music was coming to an end. Yes, there was no doubt about it. The dance had finished.

T
HEY WOULD STAY
for dinner and for the ball, she had said. They would not run away. They would stay and show his family a thing or two about courage. Well, they had stayed, and even his grace would have to agree that all had gone smoothly enough. The ball was a grand success. It could almost compare to a London squeeze. He doubted that anyone had refused the invitation.

The point had been made. Tomorrow he would return to London and set his own life and his wife’s in order—separately. Tonight was done with as far as he was concerned. Tomorrow had not yet come. Between the two times there was now, tonight. He had not yet decided if he would invite her to his bed again. He wanted her, of course. He guessed it would take some time for his sexual craving for her to die. He would have to work on it. But he would just as soon resist the temptation to have her tonight. If he had her once, he would want her again, and each time he would be in danger of impregnating her.

He wanted something different out of tonight. Something—he could not think of a word to describe what he wanted. Actually, there was a word but he was unwilling to use it even in his own mind. He wanted some warmth, some human closeness, some tenderness, some—romance. There, the word had come unbidden. He wanted a little romance. He mocked himself with both the word and the feeling it evoked in him. But it was what he wanted.

And so he invited her to walk to the lake with him after their waltz. He saw in her eyes that she understood him perfectly. He found it somewhat disturbing that within just a few days she had developed the uncanny knack of getting into his head with him as no one else
had since the days when Will had been his closest crony. And even Will had not been so unerring in his understanding. He also saw in her eyes, of course, the mirror of his own feelings. She too wanted some romance tonight. It was an alarming realization. He should have run a mile from it. He should have danced with someone else and turned her over to another partner. He should have decided quite firmly to go to his bedchamber at the end of the ball and lock his door.

Instead he led her out through the French doors into the coolness of the evening, where several couples were strolling. He took her away from the terrace and the lights of the house, across the lawn toward the lake. He took her hand and linked his fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and smooth and curled firmly about his. When they were beyond the sight of anyone who might have been watching, he released her hand, twined his arm about her waist, and drew her against his side. After a moment’s hesitation she set her arm about his waist. Her head came to rest against his shoulder. They had not said a word to each other since leaving the ballroom.

It could not have been a more perfect night for such a stroll. The air was cool but not at all cold. There was hardly a breeze. The sky was clear and star-studded. The moon was shining in a broad band across the water of the lake. They stopped walking when they were close to the bank.

“Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” she asked with a sigh after a lengthy, perfectly comfortable silence.

“Yes,” he said. “I have only to turn my head to see it.” He turned his head and his mouth brushed against her hair.

“Where did you learn such foolish gallantries?” she asked, amusement rather than censure in her voice.

“Here at Enfield,” he said. “Today and yesterday and
the day before.”
Steady
, he told himself.
Say nothing you will forever regret. Steady
.

She said nothing.

“Will and I used to sneak out sometimes at night,” he said. “I can remember swimming here on at least one occasion. Even now I dread to think what would have happened to us if we had been caught.”

“Or if you had had cramps,” she said.

“I suppose,” he said, “rules like the one forbidding children to go out alone at night are made for their own good, are they not?”

“Usually,” she said.

“And I suppose I will be as drearily prohibitive with my own children,” he said.

She did not answer him.

He winced inwardly. “If having children of my own were in my plans,” he said. “But childhood can be a golden age despite prohibitions and punishments. I am sorry you had no brothers and sisters of your own.”

“I had companions,” she said. “I had a happy childhood.”

“I am glad of it,” he said, tightening his arm a little. “I would not like to think of you being lonely.”

And then he felt lonely himself. He was here with her, cocooned against present loneliness, but there was a strong awareness that tomorrow everything would be different. They would be traveling back to London. And after that their separate lives would begin. He would be married to her for the rest of his life, but he would probably never be with her like this again, just standing quietly in the moonlight, gazing across a calm lake. In harmony with another living person.

There was only tonight.

The anticipation of loneliness washed over him.

When he turned her in his arms, she tipped back her head and looked up at him with those very large blue
eyes of hers—though he could not really see their color in the moonlight. He did not kiss her—not immediately. He was afraid to kiss her. He did not know what lay on the other side of a kiss. He was not sure he would be able to regain command of himself and his life once he had kissed her, though he could not quite make sense of his fear.

He held her against him with one arm and ran the knuckles of the other hand softly along her cheek and down beneath her chin to hold it up.

“Why did you not let me see on that day that you are beautiful?” he asked her.

“I have never been called beautiful before,” she said. “I wanted the position.”

“My quiet brown mouse,” he said. He was rubbing the pad of his thumb very gently over her lips. He heard her swallow. “Have you ever been kissed, little mouse?”

“No.” It was just a whisper of sound.

She had been bedded, but she had never been kissed. He had bedded, but he had rarely kissed. He moved his lips so close to hers that he could feel the warmth from them.

“Is this a lovely enough setting for the first?” he asked her. “Is the moment right? Is it the right man?”

“Yes.” When she spoke the word, her lips brushed his.

He touched her with his lips—barely touched. He felt warmth and softness and sweet invitation. He felt her breath on his cheek. He moved his lips, parted them slightly, feeling her, feeling what she did to him. Not to his body. He expected his body to react predictably, but it did not do so. He felt what she did to his heart, or whatever unknown part of him was denoted by the name of a mere organ.

He wrapped his free arm about her shoulders, pushed his lips more firmly against hers, tasted her, was warmed by her, soothed by her, healed by her.

He knew all about tongue play. There had been a time when he had practiced it, enjoyed it. He did not touch her with his tongue or open his mouth. She parted her own lips only sufficiently to give him the softness and the warmth of her very essence. This was not a sexual encounter. He was right to have feared it. He raised his head and looked down at her.

“Thank you,” he heard himself say.

He watched her eyes fill with tears and knew instinctively that they were not tears of grief or of anger or of disappointment. He drew her head to his shoulder and held it there for several minutes while she relaxed against him.

He was not after all in love with her, he thought, and he felt terror clutch at him. That was not it at all. He wished it were. Being in love was a youthful, essentially shallow thing. He was not in love with his wife.

He loved her.

“I had better take you back to the ballroom,” he said.

“Yes.” She drew away from him and looked at him speculatively. The tears were long gone. “Will you do something for me? Please?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Will you come to the library with me,” she said, “and wait there while I—until I come back?”

He searched her eyes but she offered no explanation. He would ask for none. He had said yes.

“Yes,” he said again, “I will.”

She frowned for a moment, but when he took her hand she twined her fingers about his and walked by his side toward the house and the library.

Tonight he would do anything in the world for her.

Tomorrow he would begin to set her free.

C
HARITY WAS BEGINNING TO REALIZE THE ENORMITY
of the mistake she had made. She had agreed quite cold-bloodedly to a marriage that was not really a marriage just for the sake of money and security. It was a horrible sin she had committed.
I thought you were a fortune hunter
—Charles’s words had haunted her all day. She had married on the very foolish assumption that her feelings would be no more engaged during a few weeks of a temporary marriage than they would have been during a brief period of employment as a governess. But her feelings had become involved with almost everyone at Enfield.

And now she knew that she was to suffer the ultimate punishment for her sin and for her foolishness. Her feelings were very deeply engaged in a much more personal way than just concern for a family that was living in its own self-made hell.

She had experienced the ultimate embrace on her wedding night and again last night. But she had perhaps been too involved in the wonder of physical sensation on those occasions to feel the full impact of what was happening to her heart. She had understood with blinding clarity during that kiss at the lake. It had been exquisitely sweet, totally different from what she had expected. She had expected passion and had found tenderness.
Tenderness was not something she would have associated with the Marquess of Staunton if she had not experienced it there in his arms and felt it in his lips. His lips had even trembled against her own.

She was not in a dream as they walked back up the lawn toward the house. She knew what was ahead for her, and the prospect was daunting to say the least. But there was tonight. And tonight all things seemed possible. It was a magical night, set apart from real time. And so she had suggested, quite impulsively, that he come to the library with her and wait there.

But there was magic elsewhere too.

She stopped walking suddenly, squeezing her husband’s hand a little tighter as she did so.

“Look,” she whispered. Perhaps she ought not to have drawn his attention to what she saw, but she sensed that he too was in a mellow mood.

Not far from the house, but hidden from it by the particularly massive trunk of an oak tree, a man in dark evening clothes stood face-to-face with a woman in a delicate white dress, his hands at her waist, her body arched toward his. Even as Charity watched, they drew closer together and kissed. Charles and Marie.

“They are bound only for heartache,” the marquess said softly, drawing her firmly onward again. “He may be a duke’s son, but he is only a younger son—hardly a worthy substitute for the heir, for whom she has been groomed. Her father will never allow it.” He sounded more sad than cynical.