A Rogue's Downfall, page 10
What he should do was spend the rest of the day making sure she came to dislike him more than she did already. That after all had been his original plan, when he had assumed that she would betroth herself to him without protest. But now, of course, he was facing the challenge of a wager. And he had never in his life been able to resist a wager.
She was in the hallway, talking with some of the other sweet young things, including the horsey one, who favored him with melting glances as he came down the stairs. The general intention among the young people, it seemed, was to walk down to the beach. Lady Plumtree was in the hallway too, tapping one foot on the tiles and looking grim and haughty. He had had no opportunity to explain to her why he had failed to keep their tryst the night before.
Caroline Astor detached herself from her group and turned to him while the others gaped and Lady Plumtree turned sharply away to smile dazzlingly at Willett’s father.
“Everyone is ready for the walk, then?” Colin called cheerfully from somewhere close to the front doors. He caught the viscount’s eye and winked as he sized up the situation. “Anyone for a bathe?”
The horsey girl shrieked. “But there are waves, Colin,” she said. “And it is cold.”
“Caroline.” The viscount took her hand on his arm and patted it. “Trying to rival the sunshine, are you?” She was dressed in all primrose yellow, a quite inspired color with her auburn hair. She really was remarkably pretty. He was surprised he had not noticed her anywhere during the Season. But then he was not in the habit of noticing any but the beddable females—beddable in fact as well as in looks.
“Oh, and succeeding in outshining it,” she said, smiling at him as dazzlingly as Lady Plumtree had just smiled at Colin’s father. “You must add that, my lord, and I shall be so delightfully flattered that I will fall headlong in love with you and win your wager for you when our day has scarcely begun.”
He was taken aback. He had noticed earlier in the morning, of course, that his first impression of timidity had been wrong. She had shown spirit. Now she had clearly decided to go on the attack. Well, it might be an interesting day after all, though he dreaded to think what would be awaiting him at the end of it.
He grinned at her. “But of course,” he said, “you succeed in outshining the sun. My eyes are dazzled.”
Her mouth quirked at the corners.
“Women who are about to fall in love with me are permitted to call me by my given name,” he said.
“Alistair,” she said. “I suppose it cannot be shortened, can it?”
“The first boy at Eton who tried found himself on his back stargazing with a bloody nose,” he said.
“I’ll not try, then,” she said. “Alistair.”
They followed along behind everybody else, through the formal gardens and across the long lawn that finally mingled with sand and gave place to the open beach. It was a sunny and warm afternoon, though several clouds were scudding across the blue and there was a steady breeze to prevent the heat from becoming oppressive.
“Tell me about yourself,” the viscount said as they walked.
“Beginning at the cradle?” she asked. “Do you have a few hours to spare?”
“I do,” he said, “But let me be more specific. How is it that you are twenty-three years old and unmarried?”
“Because I have been waiting for you?” she said, directing a melting look up at him. Her eyes were not quite green, not quite gray. They were a mixture of both. “How old are you, Alistair? Thirty?”
“Right on the nose,” he said.
“And why are you thirty and not married?” she asked.
“Because I have been waiting for you, of course,” he said, looking directly into her eyes in a way he knew had a powerful effect on women. In reality he wanted to chuckle. She really was a woman of spirit. He rather thought he was going to enjoy himself—if he kept his mind off the consequences.
“Ah,” she said, “and amusing yourself with other women while you wait.”
“Practicing on them,” he said, “so that you might have all the benefit of my expertise, Caroline.”
“Ooh,” she said. “This is the part at which my knees buckle under me?”
“I would prefer that to happen in a more secluded spot,” he said. “Where I could proceed to follow you down to the ground.”
“Then you must not talk yet about your expertise,” she said.
He chuckled suddenly. “Why are you still unmarried?” he asked.
“For a number of reasons,” she said. “At first I did not want to leave the country for all the silly formality of a court presentation and an appearance on the marriage market, even though I could not feel any great attachment to any of the eligible gentlemen at home. Then when I finally decided that perhaps I should make an appearance after all, my grandfather was inconsiderate enough to die. When we were coming out of mourning for him, my father decided to follow in his footsteps. I finally made my curtsy to the queen and got myself fired off this spring at a shockingly advanced age.”
“And no one wanted you?” he asked.
“Would I admit as much even if it were true?” she said. “Actually, it is not. I had two offers, both from perfectly eligible and amiable gentlemen. I refused both.”
“You make a habit of refusing marriage offers, then,” he said. “Why? Were they rakes too? Or do you have your mind set against any marriage.”
“Neither,” she said. “I just have the silly notion that I would like to marry for love. Mutual love. I would find it equally distressing to marry a man who was indifferent to me when I loved him as to marry a man who sighed over me when I could feel no more than liking or respect for him.”
“Which was it with your two suitors?” he asked.
“One of them loved me, I believe,” she said. “With the other, as with you, there was a mutual indifference of feelings.”
“So,” he said, “you are a romantic.”
“Yes.” She looked at him and regarded his smile of amusement in silence for a few moments. “Most people feel great embarrassment about admitting such a thing. Most people go immediately on the defensive. But it is romance that gives life its color and its warmth and its joy, my lord—Alistair. It is romance that lifts life from being a rather nasty accident into being a thing of beauty and meaning. Yes, I am a romantic. And yes, I will marry only for mutual love.”
And so, he thought, he need not worry about the morrow and what it would bring. For even if he won his wager—when he won his wager—she would not marry him. Before she would agree to marry him, he would have to be in love with her too. He was safe. Free. He could enjoy the day, knowing that he would be free at the end of it.
Her cheeks were tinged with color and her eyes were glowing. Her lips were parted in a soft smile. It was an attractive idea—a thing of beauty and meaning. He almost wished for one moment that he was the sort of man who could believe in love and in commitment to the beloved. Instead of which he believed only in lust and commitment to his own pleasures.
“You will die a spinster,” he said, “rather than compromise your dreams?”
Her smile lost its dreamy quality. “Oh, I suppose not,” she said. “I would hate to have to impose my presence on Cynthia and Royston for the rest of my life. And I would hate to miss the experience of motherhood. I suppose that sooner or later I will settle for respectability and amiability if love does not come along. But that will have to be sooner rather than later, will it not? I am almost on the shelf already. It is horrid being a woman and expected to marry so very early in life.”
“Have you never been in love?” he asked. He found himself hoping that she would not have to settle for less than her dream. She wanted to love her husband and be loved by him. She wanted children. It did not seem a very ambitious dream. But she was three-and-twenty and had not found it yet.
“Yes,” she said flushing. “Once.”
“But he did not love you?”
“No,” she said. “And I fell out of love with him, too, once I got to know him better.”
And a good thing too, he thought. The bounder did not deserve her love if he had so carelessly rejected it. She could do better.
“What about you, Alistair?” She was looking up at him again. “Why are you still unmarried?”
“Because I have never felt any inclination to marry,” he said. “Because I do not believe in love. Because my life is too full of pleasure to be given up to the chains of marriage.”
“Pleasure,” she said. “Pleasure without anyone with whom to share it. I cannot imagine such a state.”
“Because you and I are very different,” he said.
“Which is probably the understatement of the decade,” she said. “What you began to do to me last night”—she flushed deeply—“is probably very pleasurable, is it not?”
He could still regret that that experience had not been carried a little further or even to completion. He had rarely felt more aroused by a woman. His eyes strayed down her body and he could remember the soft, warm curves and the unusual eagerness he had felt to cut short the preliminaries in order to sheath himself in her.
“It is the most pleasurable activity in the world, Caroline,” he said, watching her mouth, keeping his voice low.
The tip of her tongue moistened her upper lip with what he guessed was unconscious provocation. “And yet,” she said, “you feel no closeness to the woman inside the body? There is a whole person there experiencing pleasure too—I have no doubt, you see, that you give pleasure to your women as well as to yourself. I had small evidence of that last night.”
“Did you?” Dammit but he was in grave danger of becoming aroused again.
“If those pleasures could be combined and shared,” she said. “If it could be two persons instead of just two bodies making love, imagine what it might be like. The earth would move.”
“They would hear the music of the spheres together,” he said, smiling in amusement. And yet he was not altogether amused. What would it be like? It would, he supposed, be making love, a term he usually used to describe what he did to women with great enthusiasm and great frequency, whereas in reality all he did was— Yes, the obscene word that leapt to his mind was far more appropriate to the type of pleasure he took from the exertions of the bed.
“Which way shall we go?” he asked as their progress took them first over the sandy grass at the edge of the lawn and then onto the open beach, which stretched for a few miles in either direction in a wide golden band. “With the others toward the bathing huts? Or the other way, toward solitude?”
“The other way by all means,” she said, immediately resuming the brightly flirtatious mood she had demonstrated at the start of their walk. “How am I to make you fall in love with me if we are distracted with company? How are you to make me fall in love with you?”
“This direction it is, then,” he said, turning them to their right. “I would have accused you of abject cowardice if you had made the other choice, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “Are you in love with me yet, Alistair? I am not in love with you though a few hours of our twenty-four have already passed. My impression of you as a successful rake is fast dwindling. You had better reassure me.”
He chuckled and tucked her arm more firmly through his.
She was actually enjoying herself, Caroline realized in some surprise as they turned away from the direction the group was taking and struck out along the empty beach. Even the thought that she should not be going off alone with him unchaperoned did not worry her. After all, he was supposed to be her betrothed or her soon-to-be betrothed anyway. She had told Royston evasively just before luncheon that yes, indeed Viscount Lyndon had made her an offer but that they had not settled the matter definitely yet. They were to go walking during the afternoon. The implication had been that they were to settle matters then.
She was enjoying herself. There was something wonderfully freeing about being able to spend time with a man without having to wonder if he was trying to think of some way to get rid of her. And to be able to talk on any subject that came to mind because she was not trying to impress him or make any particularly favorable impression on him. They had talked about things she had hardly dared even to think about before—like the pleasure a man and a woman might derive from being in bed together, for instance. Gracious heaven.
And it was fun to be able to flirt without being accused of being fast. It was all for a wager. She was expected to flirt. He would think her a poor creature if she did not. And definitely it was fun to flirt with him. With Viscount Lyndon. Alistair. It was rather like something from a dream. This time yesterday she had been studiously ignoring him because she had been feeling the power of his attractions so strongly.
“Where did you think you were last night?” she asked.
He looked at her sidelong, his eyelids drooping over his eyes. “In heaven,” he said.
“For shame,” she said, checking the laughter that was bubbling up inside her. “Such carnal pleasures would not be appropriate in heaven.”
“Then perhaps it is as well,” he said, “that my behavior thus far in life makes it likely that I am bound for the other place. A heaven without the pleasures of sex would be a dull place.”
She should be outraged. She was not, and she was enjoying the freedom of not having to pretend that she was. “Where did you think you were?” she asked again.
“Never mind,” he said. “That would be telling. Suffice it to say that taking the wrong turnings or opening the wrong doors or climbing into the wrong beds can definitely have their compensations. Though I could wish that this particular compensation had lasted longer.”
“No,” she said. “That is nonsense. I was asleep most of the time. Besides, I know nothing.”
“I believe, Caroline,” he said, again with that sideways glance, “that you are fishing for a compliment.”
She was. She wanted to know why he had wanted it to last longer. She wanted to know what her attractions had been. But even her newfound boldness would not allow her to ask the questions aloud.
“You were warm and soft and shapely and inviting,” he said. “And responsive in a languid, highly alluring sort of way.”
“And yet,” she said, “you thought I was someone else. Is she like that too?”
“Let me just say,” he said, “that I was pleasantly surprised.”
She was pleased. Ridiculously so. She wanted to fish further, but there were limits to her immodesty and she had reached them.
“Are you going to her tonight?” she asked.
“Heaven forbid,” he said. “I might find myself in bed with the birthday lady herself—your Great-Aunt Sabrina.”
Caroline exploded into mirth. The mental picture his words had painted was just too tickling to be resisted.
“Exactly,” he said. “It does not bear thinking of, does it?” He chuckled and then threw back his head and roared with laughter.
They looked at each other and were off into peals of mirth again until he released her arm, took her hand in his, and laced his fingers with hers.
“Caroline,” he said, “you are a shocking young lady. How could you have found that idea funny?”
She laughed again for answer. Walking hand in hand with a man, especially with their fingers laced, seemed far more intimate than walking arm in arm. His hand felt very large and strong.
“How did you like London and the Season?” he asked.
“Oh, very well,” she said, “though all the entertainments can be very tedious, especially the balls. One feels all the necessity of appearing to enjoy oneself when one is without a partner and to be quite bored when one is not. I always felt the perverse urge to do the opposite.”
“And shock the ton, Caroline?” he said. “I hope you never gave in to temptation.”
“Under normal circumstances,” she said, “I behave with the utmost decorum. I always do what is expected of me. That is why you have never noticed me.” If someone would just present her with a pair of scissors, she thought, she would gladly cut out her tongue. What a foolishly revealing thing to say.
“Yes,” he said, “that would have been part of the reason. The other is that even if you had behaved unconventionally you would still have been one of the virtuous women, Caroline. I tend not to notice virtuous women.”
“Because they are dull?” she said.
“Because I cannot take them to bed without marrying them first,” he said.
“Ah, yes, of course,” she said. “So I am not to feel slighted that you did not notice me? I am not to feel forever unlovely and unattractive because the notable rake, Viscount Lyndon, never once allowed his eyes to alight on me? How reassuring.”
“Actually,” he said, “if I had allowed my eyes to do any such thing, Caroline, I might have found myself behaving atypically. I might have found myself in pursuit of a virtuous woman. You are extremely lovely, as I am sure your glass must tell you every time you glance into it.”
“Oh, well done.” She turned her head to look up into his face, allowing her eyes to sparkle, though it was not difficult. The compliment really had pleased her. “Are you now making a concerted effort to woo me? To make me fall in love with you? You came perilously close to scoring a hit that time. Perilous for me, that is.”
His eyes smiled at her. “And your enthusiasm,” he said, “is doing the like for me, Caroline. It is time for each of us to redouble our efforts and our guard, I believe.”
He stopped walking in order to look back over his shoulder. She did the same so that their heads almost touched. There must be almost half a mile of beach between them and the others already. They were clustered about the bathing huts, probably trying to decide whether any of them was going to be brave enough to test the water.
“You tasted particularly enticing last night,” the viscount said, turning his head partway. She did the same so that they were gazing into each other’s eyes, only inches apart. “I wonder if you taste the same this afternoon.”
