The Water's Kiss (4 page)

“Might I have a word alone with you?” he asked Claire, those eyes so intense, his gaze melting the rest of the world away. “Within view of your chaperone, of course,” he said, smiling at Julia. “We wouldn’t want any rumors to float about that might cause a stream of discomfort,” he added, winking at Claire and pointedly making eye contact with the minor audience of fellow members of the
ton
, out for their promenade, who now gaped openly at the trio.

What? What?
She fairly screamed in horror. Float? Stream? Detestable man. To think she ever wanted to marry him! Was he trifling with her, making innuendos about what he might have seen the other day at the waterfall? His eyes twinkled with the merriment of torturing her with a secret, yet she could only grit her teeth and act as composed as possible.

“No, Mr. Michaelson,” she finally replied, steely eyes boring into his, Julia perking up with the preternatural sense that something was amiss – and worth watching. “Whatever you say to me must be said to my sister, as well.”

“Did you know that one of our cousins from South America is coming to live in England!” Julia declared, taking Evan’s arm. He seemed unbalanced by the gesture, so certain a moment ago and now a bit befuddled.
Good
, thought Claire. Julia was a wicked gossip and would find some way to keep them all talking with poisoned tongues in a few moments. She needed to discuss anything other than that morning with him.

“Really?” he inquired politely, walking with Julia and Claire around a small shrubbery. “And which cousin is this?”

“The triplets!” Julia cried out, as if Evan offended her with his failed memory.

“Ah, yes. The triplet daughters from your aunt.” His face closed off, and she realized he was unsure how to proceed. Their aunt Katherine had died seven years past, likely of some horrid disease caught in the filthy jungles of Venezuela. Claire’s mother always said Aunt Katherine had been too adventurous, and it had killed her in the end. Her father claimed Uncle Manuel told him it was a slow-moving disease of the belly that took five years to creep through her. Mama wouldn’t hear of it; she would always blame her uncle for luring Aunt Katherine off to that dangerous land.

“Yes! Our cousin, Anastasia, has married an earl!” Julia said breathlessly. Of all the Hanscombe girls, Julia wore the most distinguished bosom, which now heaved with the excitement of a juicy bit of information she clearly needed to express. Her brown eyes widened and narrowed with intrigue and importance. Claire, of course, knew what she was about to say, but did not spoil it for her sister. The climax was, for Julia, the fun of whispering scandalous things about town.

Evan seemed to know exactly what to say next and winked at Claire. She flushed, heat pooling in that same place where the water had excited her. “And which earl?” he inquired.

Julia looked hurriedly to the left and right, as if worried about spies. “The Earl of Framingshire!”

Claire and Julia shuddered simultaneously. Evan came to a halt and openly gaped, all composure and courtly manner discarded. “The Earl of Framingshire? No!” Then he laughed, great belly laughs that made Claire want him even more, his relaxed and open state tipping a keen yearning in her from simple want to open desire. The Evan she had known all these years was right before her, eyes filled with shock and mirth, shaking his head, casual and free.

“Yes!” Julia clapped, clearly thrilled by her execution of what would prove to be the talk of the
ton
for the season. “Someone’s father actually agreed to marry him. And that someone is our cousin from the savage land!”

“Didn’t the earl make an offer to your father, Claire?” Evan asked, one hand suddenly clenching into a fist. She swore that he had, imperceptibly, almost reached out to touch her. Oh, how she wished he had.

She closed her eyes and bristled. “Yes,” she sighed. “Apparently, the earl’s man made an overture to every wealthy father within a fortnight’s voyage of his estate. Fortunately, like all other good fathers, Papa said no. Can you imagine being married to, to that?” She swallowed and shuddered again.

“He is quite pleasing to the eye,” Julia replied, moving her head and eyes about as if conjuring his physical memory.

“But his reputation,” Evan said, “is...far too perverted for any decent woman.”

“Are you calling my cousin ’indecent’?” Claire asked archly. Oh, good. A reason to be angry with him. Now she could work with this, could get her mind off that mouth, those hands, and her mind’s torment of imagining them on her body here, and there, and oh, yes,
here
.

“Oh, no, that is not what I...” Julia and Claire glared him down. “But ladies, I did not mean to imply...”

“No. You did not imply. You stated it outright, Sir,” Claire retorted. She was enjoying her anger now. Something tangible, with fangs, a feeling she could control with reins and a bridle of fury. It was so much easier to be his nemesis and not his object of desire, to view him with contempt instead of passion.

“But he has been with three women! At once! What sort of father would accept that in a man? And what sort of woman...” He fumbled for words and she lit into him.

“Women have no choice in the men they marry, Mr. Michaelson. You, of all people, should be quite well acquainted with that fact!” she nearly shouted. Passersby began to slow their walking to a slug’s pace, ears turned to catch as much of the scene as possible, fuel for gossip sessions at tomorrow’s tea. Julia arched her eyebrows, shrewd eyes picking out all of the undertones as she watched them, Claire now two feet from Evan, facing him directly, so aroused with anger and passion that she’d as likely slap him as kiss him.

He arched his eyebrows, the expression making him more attractive, her stomach tightening with the pain of rejection. “And you, Lady Claire, should know that the same holds true for many men.”

“What do you mean?” asked Julia. Evan let out a sound of disbelief. Julia looked at him quizzically, then at Claire, and then her mouth opened slightly and she nodded once, as if to acknowledge the deeper implications.

“Men cannot choose their wives? You are equating the role of women and men in courtship, Mr. Michaelson? Are you certain you did not injure more than your leg at war? Your thinking seems impaired,” Claire blurted. She was breathing hard, her clothing oppressive, her body angry and smothered by so many layers.

So many rules.

He reached for her gloved hand and startled her, bending slightly, his lips pressing against the cloth, murmurs creating small vibrations that seemed centered on the tender flesh of her belly. “Forgive me. I have clearly offended you.”

Anything but this. Claire could handle being angry with him. Could manage any condescension he might inflict. Could even muddle through watching him dance with another.

But right this very moment, his apology and the view of his lips on her hand made her light up with passion and pain, the blend so flurried she needed an escape.

“And furthermore!” Claire added. “If you are going to besmirch my family’s reputation, my sweet cousin’s honor, please kindly do it in the manner of polite company – with whispers behind fans at soirees and in salons, hisses and moans in a lover’s ear on country visits – and not in the middle of Hyde Park in broad daylight.” And with that she hooked her arm in Julia’s and the two women stormed off, her sister now joining her in the art of angry offense, leaving Evan to stand there sputtering apologies that were a balm for Claire’s aggrieved heart and body. The buzzing faded as she stepped further from him, though the abatement was temporary.

She knew she would not rest for as long as she lived if she could not be with Evan. Yet why, oh why, had he not fought for her? Papa’s words stung.

Thank goodness Papa had not paired her with the Earl of Framingshire. However, a worse thought invaded – she truly had no choice. Papa could pick someone far worse than Framingshire, and she, like her cousin Ana, could be judged for the pairing.

Ah, her heart hurt.

What just happened? Evan felt as if he had just been beaten about the face and neck by fists of words, all administered from Claire Hanscombe’s sensual, delicate, lovely mouth.

He was bruised in his mind, pained in his heart.

And tight everywhere.

Worse, yet, was the news that Framingshire had managed to wed one of the Hanscombe cousins. Framingshire! The weaselly rake of the
ton
! The admirably promiscuous earl of proclivities so notoriously libertine in their spirit that the man was considered a walking disease.

How the Viceroy of New Granada had possibly considered Framingshire a good match for one of his daughters was beyond Evan’s comprehension. He had heard the stories from his mother about the scandal caused by Lady Katherine’s marriage to the swarthy Spaniard a generation ago, when King George III had been on the throne, as the New England colonies rebelled. His mother had fixated on the story so much that, now that Evan had aged a bit, he wondered whether jealousy, as much as pure enjoyment of repeating the tale, were part of what fueled his own mother’s outrage.

“That Manuel de Vargas had his eyes set on Georgina Harper, he did, you know,” his mother had sniffed. “But she chose the earl instead, and could you blame her? An earl or a no-name Spanish army officer. Any woman in her right mind would have made the same choice.” His mother’s eyes had become unfocused and a bit dreamy as she recounted details from five and twenty years past.

“So Lady Katherine was not in her right mind?” he had teased when most recently she brought up the matter.

“Oh, hush.” She had shaken her head. “She must have been besotted, the fool, to tear off into the jungles with him. And then to have triplets! I thought that Lady Felicia’s twins were quite the feat, but
triplets
! As if it were a competition and she had to best her own sister.” She had clutched her belly in memory of something too impolite to mention and Evan had left the conversation with an invented meeting.

And now one of those famous triplets, from deep in the bowels of hell on earth (to hear the ladies of the
ton
describe the Spanish colonies), was marrying the very son of the woman who had spurned the viceroy. The connections made Evan’s head hurt. Framingshire was the male whore of the House of Lords.

(Not that he would use those words in polite company).

Yet he, Evan Michaelson, the son of one of England’s most famous solicitors and a decorated war hero in his own right, could not marry the woman he adored. If he were a bit younger he would rail against the unfairness of it all. Instead, he pondered. Fantasized about Claire. Walked a bit, hoping inspiration would strike.

All that struck him, sadly, was a bird unleashing a burden from above. He muttered a light curse as he extracted a cloth from his coat pocket and attempted to clean the mess created by another.

Something more churned under Claire’s anger. His words about her cousin and Framingshire had not been the source of so much fury; that much he knew. Distancing him from her with barbs and insults might have been her way to mourn, to convince herself that whatever pairing her father made would have to be good enough, and that Evan would be relegated to some distant memory, an almost-fiance whom she narrowly escaped as she made her way to the throne of some country no one had heard of. Or cared to know.

He knew that as a man of honor he should approach the earl and fight for the right to marry Claire. That had been his intention last week, in fact, before his own father had stopped him. Women in town commented on how similar Evan and his father, Sebastian, were in appearance. Both had the darker Irish look, both had bright blue eyes, but the elder Michaelson had not only the difference of an additional six and twenty years on the planet, enough to pepper his hair with gray and make his skin sag a bit from age and exposure, but his features were altogether different.

A bit ratlike. Evan himself saw it, especially after overhearing a particularly caustic gossip session at Sir Tetley’s ball many years ago, when Evan was barely out of childhood. His father had sent him into the library to find a butler for some small, nonsense issue and he’d opened the door just enough to realize someone was in there, but not so much that he’d been spotted.

“The women sure like him,” Lord Landsdown had commented, smoking some sort of cigar that smelled of clove and spices from India. His tone of voice had made Evan freeze; Father always said that gathering and saving every piece of information was like carefully collecting pennies one finds: eventually, they add up to something more substantial.

And, often, valuable.

“But he looks like what’s really inside,” Tetley had replied. “Ever noticed how his features are all just a bit too close?” The slur in the host’s words had told Evan he was drunk. Spying a drunk via voice was an acquired skill, one Evan had been forced to hone by the age of ten, given his father’s choice of company and ambitions that extended to accepting every party, ball, soiree or gathering at which he might be able to slip himself into.