When a Scot Loves a Lady (34 page)

“But you are trying to resist?” she barely managed.

“I am failing.” His hands holding her were warm, certain.

“Tell me that you did not know of their suspicions of Lord Chamberlayne before, in Shropshire. Tell me so that I can believe you. Please, Leam.”

“I knew of your glance and your smile, your words and the touch of your hand, and nothing else. Your very existence mesmerizes me, Kitty Savege. It has since the moment I first saw you three years ago. Is that sufficient to convince you?”

“P-perha—”

He captured her lips, openmouthed. She wound her arms about his neck and let him pull her close, closer until their bodies met everywhere and the relief of touching him again filled her. His palms moved down her back, then over her behind, grabbing her up. She let herself touch him, to revel in the strong planes of his face, his shoulders and hard arms, and the pleasure of it. She could lose herself in his kiss and never wish to be found again. She was on the verge of allowing that to happen.

She already had. She was lost.

He sought her jaw with his mouth, the tender place beneath her ear.

“I have not ceased thinking of you,” he uttered. “Not an hour has gone by that I have not recalled the music of your voice, the perfume of your skin, or the pleasure of being inside you.”

“You left Willows Hall abruptly. I thought you despised me for wanting you. Yet now you say this. And you kiss me. I cannot think.”

“You did not tell me the truth, did you?” His mouth pressed against her hair, his voice low. “It was only Poole, wasn't it? Why did you wish me to believe otherwise?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I wanted you to be certain of my inability to conceive. What did it matter if I'd had one or a hundred lovers?”

“What did he do to you, Kitty?”

“What drove me to seek revenge on him? Nothing,” she whispered. “He did nothing.” She had done it to herself, nursing her hurt into vengeance. She understood that now.

His breathing seemed uneven. “He must have.”

“You needn't worry, Leam. I will not come after you when we are through with one another. One man's ruination suffices for me this lifetime.”

“Kitty, do not speak such words. Do not.” His big hands bracketed her hips and slid up her waist, in command of her body as though it were his to do with as he wished. He spoke against her cheek. “I do not wish to be through with one another.”

“Not yet. But—”

His mouth found hers. She twined her fingers in his hair and let him kiss her as though they never would be through with one another.

He drew away, his hand again circling her face, thumb caressing her lips as he had done before.

“I must see to a matter now.” His gaze moved across her features, then to her eyes. “Promise me you will not do what Gray has asked of you.”

“Why not?”

“Because it does not become your soul to muddle in such pretense. Leave it to those whose souls are already blackened.” He touched his lips to hers gently, tenderly, then more fully. “I must go,” he whispered against her mouth, then released her and stepped back. He took a deep breath.

“Will you return?” Kitty bit her lip, but the words had already tripped out.

He smiled. “Is the ban on my entrance into this house lifted, then?”

She wanted to ask him if it should be. If he returned, did it mean that he was returning with sincere intentions?

“Perhaps we should leave it open to interpretation,” she said instead.

He nodded, bowed, and went out. This time when Kitty sank down upon a chair, jelly-legged and weak, she did not cry. She hoped.

L
ondon never quieted, not even in the drenching cold of a February rain. Leam worked his way through carriages and carts and pedestrians, through puddles and across sparkling roads rising with the stench of a city awash in busy commerce, intent upon his destination.

On a neat block he gave his horse into the keeping of a boy. For a moment he stared at the narrow town house before him, nothing of particular note about its plain brown façade and black iron rail. Its resident might not even be at home now. The knocker, however, was up; the man was at least in town.

Leam was as impetuous as ever. His presence here proved it. His brief call on Kitty the day before proved it even more surely. She wanted him and he needed to be with her. If that meant tackling his demons, he would do so.

First he must find David Cox. In the sennight Leam had been back in town, Cox had not contacted him. Leam and his solicitor had both visited Lloyd's, looking for information on the insurance agent, but none knew anything of him after his departure for America five years earlier.

He would not be defeated. He did not pause to regret his haste in paying this particular call. But his gut was tight as he went to the door and knocked. A servant answered, narrow-faced and pale. He assessed Leam's bedraggled appearance before lifting his brows.

“May I help you, monsieur?”

Leam handed him a calling card. “Fesh me yer master.”

The manservant's nostrils flared. He nodded, ushered him into the foyer, and took his coat and hat.

“Swith awa, man.” Leam gestured impatiently. “A dinna hae aw day.” He could gladly wait forever to have this conversation, but the time had come, and he had purpose now he'd never had before.

“
Je vous en prie
, my lord,” the manservant said with stiff disapproval. “If you will wait in the parlor.”

Leam went into the chamber and to the window, and stared into the gray day at the neat row of elegant buildings across the street. By God, he wanted out of town houses. Out of London. Out of
England
. She would never have him anyway. Not for long, at least. For all the passion and warmth beneath her society hauteur, she had been made for this world. The world he had lied to for years.

A footstep at the threshold turned his head. Nearly as tall as Leam, with a slash of straight black hair falling across his brow, penetrating green eyes, and a Gallic elegance to his clothing and air, Felix Vaucoeur was a handsome man.

“I saw your card,” he said without any trace of accent, his English as fluid as Leam's when he wished it, “but did not quite believe it.”

“Your manservant is an impertinent snob, Vaucoeur. Do you pay him to frighten away callers?”

The comte moved to the sideboard and took up a carafe of dark liquid.

“Rather late to be paying me a call finally, Blackwood.” He poured out two glasses, then turned and came across the chamber. He handed one to Leam and met his gaze. “And hypocritical.”

Leam studied the man who had killed his brother. In nearly six years their paths had not crossed. To protect both Leam and James from scandal, their uncle, the Duke of Read, had seen to it that Vaucoeur received a pardon, and the duel was put about as a hunting accident. Vaucoeur had gone into the countryside to avoid gossip, where he remained until the war ended and he returned for a time to his estate on the Continent. But the English half of Vaucoeur's blood had always been stronger, despite his French title.

Leam set his glass on a table. “You haven't any idea why I am here.”

“Ah.” The comte turned and went back to the sideboard.

“I need your help.”

Vaucoeur paused in lifting the carafe.

“I am looking for a man who claims to have served with you and my brother on the Peninsula,” Leam said. “David Cox. Fair, good-looking. Says he is in insurance now. Do you remember such a fellow?”

“Why not inquire at the War Office?”

“I've more interest in him than his address.”

Vaucoeur's eyes narrowed. “What business is that of mine?”

“I don't know that it's any. Cox has been following me, and he has threatened those close to me. I must make certain it hasn't anything to do with my brother before I pursue other avenues.”

“You imagine I might have had something to do with him, this tradesman who claims to have known James. A good-looking fellow, one of our regiment mates.” Vaucoeur set down his glass with a quiet click. “What?”

“What do you mean?”

“What business might I have had with this Mr. Cox that could have involved your brother?”

For a long stretch of silence they stared at each other.

“Why did you allow me to goad you into it?” Leam finally uttered. “Even so, I exaggerate. I barely had to nudge you to challenge him.”

Vaucoeur spoke slowly. “He violated my sister.”

“He violated a great many men's sisters,” Leam replied. “But he was in love with you.”

“That was his misfortune.” The reply came too swiftly, too smoothly, practiced, as though he had been waiting to say the words for almost six years.

It did not suit Leam. Not after so long.

“What happened on the Peninsula, Felix? Two young men thrown together at war, sharing the same battlefield and tent, like Philip Augustus and Richard
Coeur de Lion
marching across the desert against a heathen enemy. Which one were you? Young King Philip, the tease? The opportunist.” His mouth tasted metallic. “To my brother's anguished Richard.”

“Get out, Blackwood.” The words were like ice, but something in his eyes arrested Leam, something keen and deeply scarred even after years. Vaucoeur had not yet made peace with his part in James's death.

“You did care for him. Didn't you?” It had never before occurred to Leam. Not in such a manner.

“Of course I did. He was my best friend.”

“But not your lover.”

“Never.” His gaze bored into Leam's. “I am, you see, quite exclusively fond of women.”

Finally Leam understood his brother's torment, and perhaps this man's pain and regret as well. Vaucoeur had never been what James both wanted him to be and feared. For years anger had burned in Leam for how his brother had lied in not telling him about Cornelia's baby. James might have married her; men like him married women they did not want frequently enough. But the desperation that had driven James to bed every female he could had made actual marriage to a woman impossible. His brother had wanted someone he could not have and it had driven him to the edge of insanity. The Blackwood passion had not been reserved to Leam alone.

“Am I to understand then,” he said, “that you have nothing to help me in the matter of David Cox?”

The comte turned away, replacing the stopper on the brandy. “I don't remember him.”

Leam nodded and went toward the door, an odd emptiness in his chest.

“He hated himself.” Vaucoeur's voice came behind him, steady and certain.

“Yes,” Leam said quietly. “And he suffered for who he was,” in a way Leam had never in his life suffered. While James despised his own nature, Leam hadn't given a damn what his fellow classmates thought of him. Quietly he studied and wrote and took the teasing along with his high marks and masters' praise. But he hadn't cared about any of it, only the poetry, the expression of true emotion he'd believed in so deeply at the time.

But for too long he had watched his brother suffer and felt it in his own heart. After a time, he wanted to suffer as well, to finally share some of that pain. Cornelia Cobb had offered him the perfect opportunity.

Her youthful levity had attracted him. But not for its own sake, he understood now. Falling for her had finally made him feel like he was betraying his nature. Fool that he was, he had reveled in knowing she was not suitable for him with her gay, light smiles and superficial flirtations. After all those years watching his brother and hurting for him, Leam had welcomed the suffering too.

He had not paused a moment to consider what would actually happen if she accepted him.

“You did not kill him.” Vaucoeur's voice was hard. “I would like to believe that even I did not. He wanted to die and he used us because he hadn't the courage to pull the trigger himself.”

Leam looked into the man's glittering eyes and saw a coldness there he never wished to live again, a cold that Kitty's wide gaze and eager touch had begun to thaw within him.

He bowed. “Vaucoeur.”

The comte nodded. “My lord.”

Leam departed. The city streets were still crowded with vehicles and people, the sky thick with rainclouds the color of her eyes. He must head for the War Office and the information on Cox that might or might not be there. Still he felt peculiarly adrift, without anchor.

He paused to allow a cart to trundle past on the muddy street, the clatter of wheels and shouts and the smell of rain all about.

Not adrift.

Free
. Free of guilt. Free of regret and pain.

His hands tightened on the reins and he sucked in a lungful of damp air, water dripping off his greatcoat capes and the brim of his hat. He pushed his mount forward toward the War Office.