Their Wicked Ways (16 page)

“But … never mind,” Bronte
said, deciding as she helped her mother into her bed and tucked the covers
around her, that it was useless to remind her mother that some people
functioned very poorly when woken from a sound sleep.  “I’ll be back
momentarily with a glass of milk.”

“And perhaps a sliver of the
cake cook baked earlier,” Lady Millford added as Bronte reached the door again.

Bronte hesitated, turning to
look back at her mother.  “Should you--?  Never mind.  Anything else?”

“Well, perhaps a bit more
than a sliver, but just a small piece, mind you.”

Darcy grabbed Bronte the
moment she entered her room, shoving her back against the wall and kissing her
as avidly as if they had not been thoroughly interrupted.

As tempted as she was to
allow herself to be dragged once more under his spell, Bronte had had time for
more cool headed thinking. After a moment, she pushed against his chest,
breaking the kiss.  “Darcy, you have to go.”

He dragged in a shuddering
breath, fighting for control with an obvious effort.  “I had a very bad feeling
you were going to say that.”

Bronte couldn’t help but
chuckle at his expression.  “I have to fetch Mother something from the
kitchen.  If you’ll be really quiet I’ll let you out the back so you won’t have
to go out the way you came in.”

He nodded.  “I’d as soon not
try the window again.  It wasn’t easy coming up
with
the trellis.”

Bronte shook her head at him,
feeling a surge of both affection and amusement.  “You are the most
incorrigible rogue.  How am I to explain the broken trellis?”

He grinned at her unrepentantly. 
“Pretend ignorance, darlin’.  That’s usually the best bet.  Trying to come up
with a story only creates more problems because then you have to remember what
lies you told.”

Chapter Sixteen

“You and I have unfinished
business,” Darcy murmured close to her ear as he twirled Bronte about the dance
floor in a waltz, bringing a flood of color into her cheeks.  She sent him a
startled glance, for up until that moment, he’d behaved as if the incident of
two nights ago had never occurred.

He grinned at her expression,
leaning closer to whisper in her ear.  “That. Too.  I don’t mind telling you
I’m sorely in need and I can offer you no guarantees--if you continue to tease
me so unmercifully and then withhold your favors--that I will remember next
time that I’m supposed to be a gentleman.”

Bronte felt her heart flutter
at the promise/threat, felt her breath catch in her chest and her sex quiver
with unrequited ache.  The devil take him for being so charming and handsome! 
“You are more rogue than gentleman, and always were, Darcy St. James!  And
what’s more, I could as easily lay that accusation at your door as the other
way around, for you know very well I did not initiate anything.”

Amusement gleamed in his eyes
as he gazed down at her.  His arched one brow.  “No?  It seemed so to me.”

His teasing drew a smile,
despite her best efforts to contain it.  “You were foxed. Mother gave me a most
suspicious look when she learned of the trellis.”

“I will use the door next
time.”

“You will not!” Bronte
gasped, uncertain of whether he was serious or not.

He shrugged.  “I’d hoped to
avoid the rose canes.”

“There
are
no rose
canes!” Bronte responded tartly.  “You stomped the rose bush down.”

“I have far more reason to be
outdone about that than you.  It is I who spent a good deal of the night
picking thorns from my arse.”

That comment provoked a
chuckle.  “Behave yourself or I will regret that I did not eschew your company
altogether after your trespass.”

His expression became
serious.  “Speaking of which … why came you to be at that disreputable
gathering when I had warned you away?”

Bronte sighed.  “Nick
lectured me all the way home.  Is that not sufficient?  Must you lecture me, as
well?”

A troubled look came into
Darcy’s eyes.  “It might have turned out far worse than it did, Bronte.”

“I know.  I was fearful that
you or Nick, or both, would end up on the dueling field.  I wish the two of you
would stop trying to protect me.  I am not a child anymore.”

He shook his head
disbelievingly.  “You don’t truly believe it’s no more than that, Bronte.”

Bronte found she couldn’t
maintain her gaze.  She looked away.  “You’re saying that is not a part of it?”

She could’ve bitten her
tongue the moment the words were out for even to her own ears it sounded as if
she was fishing for some sort of declaration when she most definitely was not. 
A declaration of any kind was something she most desperately wanted to avoid,
for then she would be put in the miserably uncomfortable position of having to
decline.  Nick had not bought the ‘you’re too much like an older brother’
excuse, and she doubted very much that Darcy would, especially after the way
she’d behaved the other night.

Darcy frowned.  “I suppose it
was, in the beginning, at least.  And it’s for damned sure you’ve little more
notion of how to look out for yourself now than you did when you were no more
than knee high and about as big around as a green twig.

“I wouldn’t have considered
it of any consequence if I
had
ended up in a duel, and can say with
certainty that Nick wouldn’t have either.  I wasn’t talking about that.  I was
talking about what might have happened to you.”

Bronte’s jaw set.  “It could
not have been as bad as all that.  I’m not a green girl, Darcy.  I was married,
remember?”

“I ain’t likely to forget,”
Darcy said grimly.  “Especially when you are so determined to throw it at me
every time I open my mouth, but Isaac was damned near as green as you were when
you wed, and being with your husband isn’t the same thing at all.”

“How would you know?  You’ve
never married,” Bronte pointed out tartly.

“I’ve been with plenty of
women that were,” Darcy shot back at her.  “And don’t give me that look,
Bronte.  You know damned well I’m no saint and never claimed to be.”

“But I’m supposed to be?”
Bronte demanded indignantly.  “Perhaps I went because I was looking for a
lover,” she added.  “Did that not occur to you?”

“No, it didn’t, because I
know better.  Is that what you told Nick that’s got him tied in knots and out
looking for somebody to kill?”

Bronte sent him a startled
look, but there was nothing in his expression to suggest that he was being
other than completely serious.

His face hardened. “Fairfax
didn’t call Nick out.  Nick called Fairfax out.  The only reason neither one of
them are dead now is because Fairfax refused to meet him on the field.  They
went a few rounds at the boxing salon instead.”

Fear clutched at Bronte’s
insides.  “Darcy, this must stop.”

“It must,” he said grimly. 
“You’ll have to choose between us, Bronte.  If it’s Nick, I’ll learn to live
with it, but I’ll tell you plain out, unless you tell me right now that you
care nothing for me at all, I won’t step aside for anyone else.”

Dismay filled her.  It was
all very well to say
he
would learn to live with it, but what about
her?  Could she live with it?  She swallowed with an effort, wishing she had
thought of an excuse not to dance with him for she didn’t at all care for the
direction the conversation seemed to be taking and she couldn’t for the life of
her think of anything to say to turn it.  “You would know that I was lying if I
told you I did not care for you.”

He seemed to relax
fractionally, though she had been so unnerved herself she didn’t realize until
that moment that he had tensed as if expecting a blow. “Then marry me.”

It was just as well that the
dance ended at that moment for Bronte was so stunned she froze in shock, gaping
up at him stupidly.

He reddened slightly.  “For
God’s sake, Bronte, don’t look at me like that.  Everyone will begin to think I
offered you an insult.”

Bronte closed her mouth, but
when she looked around, her head swum dizzily.  The fear seized her that she
was going to disgrace herself by fainting dead away in the middle of the dance
floor, and perhaps even worse, that she would distress Darcy by doing so.  Try
though she might to fight it off, however, the darkness seemed to close in more
firmly upon her.  “I think I may have gotten a little overheated,” she said
through strangely numb lips.

Nearly as white faced as
Bronte was by that time, Darcy glanced around a little desperately and finally
spied her mother seated near the refreshment table.  “Can you make it to the
chair just there?”

Bronte couldn’t see the
chair, but she nodded hopefully.  “I think so.”

He tucked her firmly against
his side.  “I suppose I should take this as a definite no,” he said hesitantly,
drawing a quick look from her.

“Please don’t think like
that, Darcy!  I’m just feeling a little dizzy.”

She began to feel a little
better when he’d helped her into the chair, but only in the sense that she was
no longer in plain view of everyone if she should keel over in a dead faint.

Her mother took one look at
her and immediately began to fuss about the heat of the overcrowded room.  She
drew far more attention than Bronte cared for, but it was a relief that
everyone seemed to accept that it was no more than an understandable episode
brought on by tight stays and too much exertion in a heated room.  Darcy
brought her a glass of punch and when she’d drunk it she began to feel better
in truth, but she did not argue when her mother insisted that they go home.

They had no more than settled
in the carriage than her mother dropped all pretense of believing Bronte had
become ill from the heat.

“What in the world happened?”
she demanded.

Bronte slumped into one
corner, closing her eyes, for she still felt more than a little ill.  “Darcy
proposed.”

“Darcy St. James?” Lady
Millford exclaimed.

Bronte winced, wishing she’d
kept her mouth shut.  “What other Darcy would I be talking about?” she asked
testily.

“I can’t say that I care for
your tone.”

“Please excuse me, Mother. 
It’s just that I’m not feeling at all the thing.”

Lady Millford sniffed.  “Well,
I must say I am not surprised you nearly fainted dead away.  If you had told me
before, I am sure I would have.  Darcy St. James!  You are certain you heard
him correctly?”

Bronte burst into tearful
wails.  “I can only imagine what he must have thought when I nearly passed out
on the dance floor!  I have behaved so dreadfully, but I could not help it,
Mother.  Truly, I couldn’t.  I was just so surprised.”

“There, there, dear.  You
mustn’t cry about it.  I’m sure you have not wounded him too deeply.  He is a
disreputable rake, my dear … worse, if you can believe it, than Nick Cain … and
both of them confirmed bachelors, though there have been many a female who has
tried to entice them down the aisle from what I hear.  Most likely you
misunderstood something that he said to you.”

Instead of comforting her,
the suggestion that she had wounded Darcy made Bronte cry harder, for she
couldn’t help but remember the expression of dismay on his face, or his comment
about taking her faint as a refusal of his proposal.

“You are not seriously
considering a proposal from him, are you?  Assuming, of course, that you did
hear him correctly and it was not some silly bet or something of that nature.”

Bronte sniffed her tears
back, searching for her handkerchief.  Far from being insulted at her mother’s
suggestion, she felt a ray of hope that, perhaps, she had not wounded Darcy
after all, and that she needn’t torment herself with trying to think of some
way she might decline without hurting or angering him.

“You think it might have been
something like that?”

Lady Millford rolled her
eyes.  “Men!  They will wager on anything, up to and including which male fly
will mount the female first, though I am not at all sure how it is that they
can tell which are male and which female.”

“Mother!” Bronte gasped in
shock, torn between amusement and horror.

Her mother gave her a
complacent smile.  “I did not find you in a garden patch, my dear.  I do know a
little something.”

Lady Millford did not cease
to marvel over the fact that Darcy had proposed, and Bronte began to think that
perhaps she
had
heard him incorrectly.  He came to visit the following
day to see how she was, but he said nothing, nor did he behave as if anything
at all had happened.

On the other hand he had been
much the same about the night he had climbed into her window and she’d become
convinced then that he had been so foxed he either didn’t remember it at all,
or he wasn’t certain what woman’s bed he had climbed into.  Since he’d proved
her wrong that time, she couldn’t decide whether he was merely allowing her
time to come to terms with the idea and decide upon an answer, or if her mother
was right after all.

What, she wondered, might he
have said that she could have misunderstood though?

Try though she might, she
couldn’t remember the precise words that he’d used.  It had not been the least
like a formal declaration, but then she would not have expected Darcy to be at
all formal.  Still … on the dance floor?  Almost as if it were one of his
peculiar impulses?  Was that it?