With This Ring (30 page)

She was silent for a moment.
“It would have worked, wouldn’t it have?
If Amelia hadn’t been such a silly thing, she could have been a countess someday, with no one the wiser.”

Aaron breathed deeply.
His lungs seemed to be working again.
“Do you think she was silly for being disappointed that she could not wed the man she loved?
That she would see him wed another instead?”

Elektra sighed.
“Oh, no, my lord.
She wasn’t silly for wanting to be loved.
She was silly for wanting to die instead!”

Aaron shook his head.
“It wasn’t suicide.
That was the gossip, because it made for a marvelous story, but I know it was an accident.
She said she couldn’t sleep for crying.
She told me she couldn’t give me an answer until she’d managed to have a bit of sleep.
I went away, thinking I’d ask again on the morrow.
The next day she was gone, an overdose of laudanum.”

She drew in a long breath.
“How sad!
Oh, the poor girl!”

“I should have pressed for an answer.
I was an idiot for dawdling, for being reluctant to make it right when it wasn’t my doing.
I was glad for a reprieve, glad to walk away.
I got drunk that night, because I was a twenty-two-year-old idiot, and told someone—I honestly don’t remember who—that I refused to marry out of duty.
Empty words—but much repeated, after Amelia’s death became public.
A truth here, a surmise there, and everyone suddenly believed that I had seduced and then disappointed Amelia unto death.”

“Why didn’t you tell the truth?”

“The truth has very little to do with what ‘everybody knows.’
It would only have involved Serena in the sordidness—and her child.
She was already expecting when she married.”

She was very quiet.
A quiet Elektra was a dangerous Elektra.
Aaron turned to look her way.

By the fire in her tropical-sea eyes, he knew she was furious.

“I don’t believe I like your friend Wells very much.
We are going to have to discuss your tendency to misplace your loyalties.”

A small laugh burst from deep within Aaron’s pain.
“It’s a bit late for that, I fear.”

She gazed at him, her eyes suddenly sorrowful.
“The truth can never come out, can it?
Despite Wells’s actions, Serena and her child don’t deserve scandal, and Society never forgets.”

“Serena has two children now.
A boy and a girl.
I hear they are exceptional.
I have never been allowed to meet them, of course.
Wells, I fear, did not prosper.
Guilt, I think.
His indulgences overcame him.
He died seven years ago, racing his horse while drunk.”

“And the earl?
You could have told him, at least.”

Aaron tried to smile at that thought, but he feared it didn’t come out quite right.
“The earl is not a tolerant man.
Wells knew he’d be driven off instead, and Serena was already … well, it seemed better at the time.
The damage was done due to the gossip, and I knew I’d played my part with poor Amelia—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong!”

He shook his head.
“I think perhaps a girl might like to be proposed to properly, not offered a reluctant hand, don’t you?
I did a poor job of it.
I blamed her for putting Wells into a fix, thereby putting me into a fix by association.
I’m sure I didn’t hide it well.”
He shrugged.
“And I knew that Wells was engaged to Serena, but I thought he was only flirting with Amy.
Just having a bit of fun before tying the knot.
I was too wrapped up in my own pleasures to see what was going on beneath my very nose.
I could have stopped it so easily, if only I’d bothered to pay attention.
Amelia needed protecting, but I failed her.”

“You weren’t her father, or her brother!
Besides, if I truly wanted to sneak away with a man, no one could stop me.
You carry so much guilt—why, when you’ve done nothing wrong?”

Wonderful, mad Elektra.
After knowing him for less than a week, how could she possibly have that sort of belief in him, when his own family had not—even Serena?

He smiled sadly at her.
“It is harder than you realize, to remember yourself when you have forever lost the good opinion of the world.”

Their gazes met and held for a long moment.
Aaron hadn’t felt so light in years.
The relief was amazing.

Unfortunately, it changed absolutely nothing.

Suddenly he saw her beautiful eyes fill with tears.
She lifted her chin and looked away.

He returned to her side, kneeling on the blanket.
“What is it?”

She brushed the back of her hand over her eyes impatiently.
“It is nothing.”

Aaron reached for that hand and kissed away the dampness there.
“I have split open my soul, Elektra.
Time to pay the piper.”

A small laugh cut damply through the tears.
“I miss Hastings!
Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“I am right here.”

She turned to regard him.
Her gaze was unflinching.
“You are a stranger to me, Lord Aaron.”

He gave her a Hastings smile.
It did not feel false upon his face.
“That didn’t stop you from kissing me before in the ruin.”

She laughed again, albeit reluctantly.

Encouraged, he brushed a strand of golden silk away from her face.
“Elektra, I think you are wonderful.”

She looked down at her hands.
“Hastings didn’t think I was wonderful.”
She sniffled.
“Hastings thought I was a spoiled brat.”

“Hastings—I—thought you were a complete bedlamite, actually.
I also thought you were beautiful and fascinating—”

“And complicated.”

He tipped her chin up with one finger and smiled at her.
“You say that as if it is an insult.
I shouldn’t like you nearly so much if you were simple—if you were Bliss.”

The smile that broke out then was reward enough for days.
Then she reached out with one finger and gave him a challenging poke in the chest.
“Be careful, my lord.
Bliss is a Worthington!”

Aaron vowed to himself to never, ever bring up Dade in conversation.

“Now you know everything about me,” he said softly.
“So you must realize how alike we are.
I know precisely how you can want something so much that you will turn yourself inside out to make it happen.”

Elektra gazed into the warm gray eyes of the most astonishing man she’d ever met.
How could he know what he knew?
How could he understand what she barely understood herself?

He might be impressed with her little game of deduction, but Elektra knew she wasn’t brilliant like Attie, or capable like Callie, or even good-natured like Bliss.
She wouldn’t even own the title of family beauty much longer, not with Attie growing up so quickly.

What she was, the only gift she knew was truly her own, was her strength of mind.
Her determination to repair her family.
Now that she knew the source of that purpose, she was more resolved than ever.

She could not part with that goal, not for anything.
Not for anyone.

Not even for love?

Instant terror swept her.
Love?

She could not love him!
She could never fall in love with him!

Lord Aaron Arbogast was everything she’d ever wanted, and everything she never wanted.
Wedding Black Aaron would not bring the Worthingtons up from their disreputable reputation!

Aaron could not make her a lady of Society who was accepted wherever she went.
Aaron could not legitimize her quirky family, nor whitewash their eccentricity.
Aaron would only add further gossip and scandal to a family reputation already checkered with madness and chaos.

No.
Elektra needed the Duke of Camberton.
She needed him to turn her family’s status to the finest sterling, to wipe the tarnish from the Worthington history, to end the chatter and gossip and chaos once and for all!

I need Camberton … but I love Aaron.

I want to be selfish. For just this one moment, I want to be as selfish as people have always believed I am.

Very slowly and with great purpose, she removed the pins holding her chignon.
Ignoring Aaron, although she could feel his eyes fixing on the fall of her hair, she began to unbutton her spencer.
She laid it aside.
Then she stood and reached behind her.
With the ease of a lifetime of looking after herself, she swiftly undid the long row of tiny buttons on the back of her gown.

Only then did Aaron seem to rouse from his hair-induced daze.

“Elektra?
What—”

When her gown slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet, she turned to face him at last.
He was staring at the pile of mint-green muslin on the blanket.
She watched as his eyes rose slowly and his gaze passed over her pearly stocking-clad calves, over the mint-green ribbon garters tied above her knees, over the hem of the chemise that brushed halfway down her thighs, to the twin points of her nipples, chilled with excitement—and yes, a bit of fear!—and not very well concealed by the filmy, finely woven white batiste.

Then, with obvious effort, he forced his gaze to her face.

“I—” He swallowed thickly.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

She lifted her chin.
He wanted her.
She could feel his desire emanating from him.
She thought of the kiss—she thought of each kiss separately.
There was the first one, when she’d been so surprised and pleased at the thought of feeling such attraction for her future husband.
Her pulse increased at the memory.

There was the second kiss, when she’d believed him to be a servant and was sure her perfect plan had been ruined, when she’d felt the compulsion to retrieve one good thing from the mess, even if it remain just a memory forever.
Her lips parted, her breath coming faster.

Then … then there was the third kiss, the kiss of a girl in love against custom, against rank, against everything she’d always assumed to be valuable.

Her heart melted.
Her body throbbed in time with her speeding pulse.
Her hands began to shake.
Her knees, already weakened by the memory of his mouth on hers, gave way.
She knelt before him on the blanket, facing him—offering him …

Everything.

Chapter Twenty-five

Elektra watched Aaron swallow hard again.
He blinked, started to speak, then halted.
Then, incredibly, he drew back, practically scrambling backward on the blanket.
She bit her lip.

How sweet.
He was trying so hard not to give in.
He was trying desperately to remain a gentleman, though he wanted her so badly he seemed beyond speech entirely.

“Aaron?”
she murmured.
“What are you going to do—mount your horse and ride away?”

He stopped his retreat.
“No.”
His gray eyes went dark then.
All gentlemanly reticence slipped away, rolling off him like water, leaving him larger and darker and far more intimidating.

He reached his long, muscled arm out and caught her about the waist.
In one powerful motion, he pulled her tightly to his body.
They remained there for a thrilling, breathless moment, on their knees, chest to breast, hard to soft, caught on the cusp of no return.

Then he rolled her beneath him on the blanket.
She gasped at the weight of his big, hard body on hers.
His two days of beard set her skin to tingling and sent shivers down her neck when he pressed his hot mouth to her throat, sucking and nibbling at her most tender spots.
Her lips parted in a gasp.
His mouth sought hers.

He took her mouth hard, with all the passion he’d kept so well hidden since the ruins.
She willingly let him in, let him dive his tongue into her, let his firm lips mold her softer ones.
She wanted him hard, wanted him to want her as fiercely as she wanted him.
She’d felt his gentleness.
Now she wanted his shadows as well.

His knee pressed between hers, pushing them apart.
She spread her thighs willingly, welcoming him coming to rest with his muscled thigh hard against her mound.
Her hands clung to him, moving over him, tugging at the buttons of his weskit, at the studs of his shirt, then wonderfully, miraculously, over the bare hot skin of his back.

He pulled her chemise off in one motion, leaving her in nothing but stockings and garters.
Pulling away from her for a heart-stopping moment, he came back stripped of his clothing, hot and hard and naked against her.

He began to enter her.
She squirmed above him, and he realized after a moment that she squirmed with discomfort.
Not precisely how he would prefer her to squirm.

“Sh.
Wait.”
He withdrew from her, although it made him ache to leave even this small amount of her warmth that he’d enjoyed.
He kissed her softly.
Then he rolled over, pulling her on top of him to sprawl across his chest.
As her golden hair fell in a veil around them, he decided he liked this better anyway.
She pressed against him invitingly, soft yet lithe and strong.

He pushed the hair back from her face and smiled up into her scowl.
“Don’t worry.
Nothing has to be perfect, my darling.
We are here to touch, kiss, and to love.
You don’t have to get this right.
You don’t have to be perfect.”
Even though you already are. Born perfect
, he thought.
Perfect for him.

His chest ached with the expansion of his heart as he watched the concentration and worry ease from her expression.
She even gave him a small rueful smile, an easing of the tension she wrapped herself in like a suit of armor.

“I don’t know what to do.”

He could tell she hated admitting any such thing.
It was incredible how well he could read her eyes and the tilt of her head and the lift of her chin.
The language of Elektra.
He wanted to spend the rest of his life reading and rereading this book.

“Do whatever you wish to do.”

Aaron slid his hands up smooth thighs and wrapped them around the curve of her hipbones, which fit into his palms as if they were made just for him.
With a single gentle tug, he positioned her in a straddle with her hot damp center pressing his aching erection down on his belly.
She gasped in surprise, and then sighed with pleasure when he tilted his pelvis to slowly slide his cock along her slick, aroused slit.