A Rogue's Downfall, page 12
“I could have told you that,” she said scornfully, “before you did anything as stupid as this. You did not think, did you?”
“It was not stupid,” he said. “If I had not done it, Caroline, you would have lost both the innocence and the virginity you spoke of earlier. We both know it.”
“Oh,” she said again, turning to wade toward shore. “Am I to thank you for showing gallantry and restraint, then, Alistair? A rake showing restraint? It seems rather a contradiction in terms, does it not?”
“Perhaps,” he said, striding along beside her, “I am hoping to win your admiration and therefore your love.”
“Poppycock,” she said. “It is cold.”
“You may wrap my coat about you,” he said. “The sun will soon warm us. And dry us.”
“Oh,” she wailed suddenly as they ran up the beach toward their castle and their belongings, “just look at me. No! Don’t look. Oh, goodness me.”
But he could not be expected to have acquired all the gallantry in the world during the course of one short afternoon. He looked—and laughed and whistled. Her dress was clinging to her like a second skin.
“I have never been so mortified in my life,” she said, pulling the muslin away from her in front and making a delicious contour of her derriere. “Stop laughing. And stop looking. I shall die!”
He picked up his coat, swung it about her shoulders, and drew her against him. He wrapped his arms around her and stopped laughing. “I have never seen a more pretty form than yours, Caroline,” he said. “But I promise not to tell anyone else that I have seen it with such clarity. This thin fabric will be almost dry by the time we approach the house. And my coat will cover most of you.”
“I have never in my life known a day like this,” she said against his wet shirt. “I keep expecting to wake up. And all because you opened the wrong door last night.”
“I am becoming increasingly glad I did,” he said. And listening to his own words and considering them, he was surprised—and not a little alarmed—to find that he meant them.
By some miracle Caroline succeeded in regaining her room without being seen by anyone more threatening than a curious footman. Of course, he might decide to gossip belowstairs, but she would not think of that. And of course Letty saw her lank hair and her limp, damp dress when Caroline rang her bell to ask for bathwater.
“It was such a warm day,” she said with a winning smile just as if she owed her maid an explanation, “and the water looked so inviting, Letty.”
“Hmm,” Letty said with a sniff. “If you was with him, mum, then enough said.”
Caroline gathered that he was not very high in Letty’s favor.
Cynthia arrived in her room when she was toweling her hair dry after her bath. Caroline was very thankful her sister-in-law had not come half an hour earlier.
“Caroline,” she said, “is it all now settled, then? Are you betrothed? This is all so very sudden that it is hard to digest. He is very handsome, and I do see how you were tempted. But oh, love, I do hope your rash behavior will not lead you to unhappiness.”
Caroline could not bear to have her sister-in-law think badly of her. “The only rash thing I did was lie to Royston,” she said. “I thought he was going to challenge Lord Lyndon to a duel, Cynthia, and you know as well as I do who would have won.”
“You did not invite him to your room?” Cynthia asked.
“Of course not,” Caroline said scornfully. “He mistook my room for someone else’s. Lady Plumtree’s I would not doubt.” The thought hurt.
Cynthia looked dismayed. “You lied to Roy,” she said, “when he was sending the man away, Caroline? He had ordered him to leave within the hour.”
“Oh, dear,” Caroline said.
“And you are now betrothed?” her sister-in-law said.
Caroline set her towel down and picked up a brush. If she said no, she would be unable to spend the evening with Alistair. Or tomorrow morning. She could return to her usual wise, sensible self merely by speaking the word. It would be dangerous not to say no. Very dangerous. But there was an evening and a morning she could have if she lied. Or avoided telling the truth.
“I am to give him my answer tomorrow morning,” she said. “He has kindly given me a little time since we did not know each other at all, Cynthia.” Oh, it was an outright lie. First Royston and now Cynthia. She never told lies.
“Think wisely,” Cynthia said, her hand on the doorknob. “Perhaps you were compromised, Caroline, but no one need know it but us and I cannot see that any useful purpose will be served by forcing you to spend the rest of your life with that man, handsome and charming as he undoubtedly is.” She smiled suddenly. “Why are rakes so nearly irresistible?”
“They probably would not be rakes if they were not,” Caroline said. “No woman would oblige them and allow them to build the reputation.”
Cynthia laughed. “I am sure you are right,” she said. “A load has been lifted from my shoulders. May I tell Roy the truth?”
“After tomorrow morning,” Caroline said and stared at the closed door after Cynthia had left.
She should have taken the way out that had just been presented to her, she thought. She should not have prolonged matters. For she knew now that she was going to get hurt. Dreadfully hurt. She had been in love with him for months—in love with his looks and his reputation. And then for a brief spell this morning she had fallen out of love with him, having perceived him as a selfish and conceited man. Now—well, now she loved him. She had seen warmth and gaiety and charm and tenderness and even conscience in him. He was no longer the handsome rake to be sighed over in secret. He was a person now, someone she had talked with and laughed with and built a sand castle with and swum with. Someone with whom she had known the beginnings of passion.
Someone with whom she would have made love on an open beach without benefit of clergy if he had not exercised unexpected restraint. Someone she still wanted despite the cold ducking in the sea.
What was she going to say tomorrow morning? She was going to lie, that was what. She was going to behave with the utmost dishonor. But then she was not a man. Men had a different notion of honor from women. If she admitted the truth tomorrow morning, he would probably feel obliged to marry her after all. She could not bear to be married to him. Every day would be an agony.
She could have avoided it all if she had told the truth to Cynthia and then gone and told it to Royston. She could have avoided the misery of tomorrow morning. And replaced it with the misery of now. There was to be no winning this battle. Caroline sighed and brushed harder in order to dry her wet hair in time for dinner. He was going to take her in to dinner. He had said so. She would have him to converse with all through the meal.
No, she was not sorry she had told a lie. An evening and a morning were better than nothing.
Eugenia gave her a wounded look as if Caroline had stolen the viscount away from her. Irene and all the other cousins looked at her with interest—and some envy on the part of the girls. Lady Plumtree pointedly and with haughty disdain did not look at her at all. Caroline did not care about any of it.
“Did you escape notice after we parted at the top of the stairs?” she asked the viscount when they were seated at the dinner table.
“Escape?” he said, raising his eyebrows and looking at her sidelong with very blue eyes. “You are joking, of course. After my valet had taken one glance at the state of my boots and clothes, I believe he would have bent me beneath his arm and given me a good walloping as my father used to do, if only he had been a foot taller and I had been a foot shorter. How about you?”
“Similar treatment from Letty,” she said.
“The amazon who attacked me last night?” he said. “My sympathies, Caroline. I would guess she is quite large enough to take you over her knee even now for a thorough spanking. A dreadful breed, personal servants, are they not? One lives in fear and trembling of their wrath.”
Caroline laughed and won for herself a puzzled frown from her brother and a sniff from Lady Plumtree.
“There is to be dancing in the drawing room afterward,” the viscount said. “Special request of Colin, bless his heart. It is to be in the nature of a practice for the grand ball in two nights’ time for the old lady’s birthday. Will she dance, by the way?”
“Great-Aunt Sabrina?” Caroline said. “Oh, assuredly. She will expect every male member of the family to lead her out.”
“Will she?” he asked. “Every male member of the family? Not every male in the ballroom?”
She laughed again at the expression on his face. “Are you disappointed?” she asked. “Her card will doubtless be too full for such a lowly mortal as you to find a space.”
“Well,” he said, “what about tonight, Caroline? One is not to be confined to only two dances with the same partner or any such absurdity as that, is one?”
“It is not a formal ball,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “You will reserve the first and last sets and every one in between for me if you please.”
If she pleased? She was absurdly pleased. “This is part of your campaign?” she said. “You are going to waltz me into love with you?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But I was thinking more of taking you out for turns on the terrace or perhaps for strange disappearances into the gardens. What have you told your brother?”
She felt her cheeks grow hot. “That we are using today to get to know each other,” she said. “That I am to give you my answer tomorrow morning.”
“Ah,” he said. “That rather plays into my hands, does it not?”
“Into mine,” she said. “There is nothing like darkness and moonlight and music to arouse feelings of romance. I shall have you sleepless with love tonight, Alistair.”
“It sounds distinctly promising,” he said, using that low seductive voice she was beginning to recognize.
“I did not mean it quite like that,” she said hastily, wishing fervently that she could recall the words and reframe them.
“A pity,” he said. “A great pity.”
Great-Aunt Sabrina was being helped slowly to her feet and the ladies followed her at snail’s pace from the dining room, leaving the gentlemen to their port.
Sleepless with love, Caroline thought, her knees feeling quite weak. What an unfortunate thing to say. And what a glorious thing to imagine. Oh dear, she was growing to like him so very much. She had never talked with anyone more amusing. And all she had left was part of an evening and a morning.
“Caro,” Irene said, taking her arm and squeezing it, “what is this? You lucky, lucky thing. He is quite smitten with you. Mama had a fit of the vapors when she knew that Lyndon was to be a guest here this week. So did I, but for a different reason.”
“We are merely friends,” Caroline said.
Irene laughed derisively.
Dancing in a room full of eager, sweet young things and bright sparks and gossiping matrons and older, sober blades had never been Viscount Lyndon’s idea of fun. But this evening was different. He was close to winning his wager, he believed, if it was not won already. She had glowed at dinner and had clearly enjoyed his company.
As he had hers, of course. She was delightful and pretty and desirable. He rather wished that they had set the terms of the wager at one week instead of one day. But he had the evening left. He would make the most of it.
“My country dance, I believe, ma’am,” he said when one of the matrons finally sat down at the pianoforte and began to play sprightly scales to warm up her fingers. He bowed formally over Caroline’s hand and won a dazzling smile from her and inquisitive looks from the young people surrounding her.
“My pleasure, my lord,” she said, dipping into a deep curtsy.
“Was that the one you practiced to deliver to the queen on your presentation, Caroline?” he asked as he led her onto the floor, from which the Turkish carpet had been rolled back. “Your forehead was in danger of scraping the floor.”
She laughed. “It would have been a shame to practice such a curtsy for two full hours daily for six months and use it only once on the queen,” she said.
She danced with energy and grace, smiling at him and at the other partners with whom she sometimes had to execute certain measures of the dance. He watched her the whole while, not even noticing his own temporary partners, and found it difficult to imagine that he could have missed her throughout the Season. Why had his eyes not been drawn to her as to a magnet? She was altogether more lovely than any other lady in the room. More lovely than any other lady he had known.
He frowned at the thought.
“Oh, this is marvelous,” she said breathlessly as he twirled her down the set. “You don’t expect me to appear bored, do you, Alistair, this not being a formal affair?”
“If you dare to look bored,” he said, “I shall twirl you at double speed and then let go of you so that you spin off into space?”
She laughed.
He had always thought of young virtuous women as dull, humorless, timid, unexciting—the list could go on. But then he had not met Caroline Astor until last night.
The country dance was followed by a sedate waltz. He resisted the urge to hold his partner slightly closer than was considered proper. After all, most of the eyes in the room were probably on them—on Caroline, a member of the family, in the clutches of a man they must feel Colin should not have invited.
“Why have I never noticed you?” he asked her.
“Because you never notice virtuous women,” she said. “Because you could not take me to bed without marrying me first.”
“Could I have this afternoon?” he asked her, his voice low.
Her eyes slipped to his neckcloth. “You dumped me in the water instead,” she said.
“But if I had not, Caroline?”
She looked up into his eyes again. “It is pointless to speculate on what might have been,” she said. “The past is the one thing we can never change. But I am not sure that I can be described as virtuous any longer. I have never come even close to behaving like that before.”
“I will marry you, then, and redeem your reputation,” he said. He did not know quite why he kept saying such potentially dangerous things. One of these times she was going to take him at his word.
She smiled fleetingly.
“Come outside with me after this dance,” he said. “We will see what the gardens look like in the moonlight. Shall we?”
“But of course,” she said. “I have a wager to win.” She peeped up at him from beneath her lashes with deliberate provocation and he grinned back at her.
“How are you going to do it?” he asked. “Do you have a plan?”
But she merely smiled.
It was a subtle plan. She strolled quietly along the terrace with him, first with her arm through his, then with her hand in his, her shoulder touching his arm, and finally with her arm about his waist as his came about her shoulders. By that time they had rounded one end of the house and stepped into a type of orchard.
Very subtle. The moonlight and the branches above their heads made changing patterns of light and shade over her face and dress and she lifted her face. Her eyes were closed, he saw when he looked down at her. She broke the silence first.
“Sometimes,” she said, “one feels all one’s smallness and insignificance in comparison with the vastness of the universe. And yet how wonderful it is to exist amidst such beauty. How privileged we are. Don’t you feel it too, Alistair?”
“Yes.” He could not talk on such topics. He had not thought a great deal about the miracle of life and the wonder of the fact that he had one to live. It was a new idea to him. He was wasting his one most precious gift, he thought.
“I am glad we were made to need others,” she said. “Would it not be frustrating to see and feel beauty and have no one with whom to share it? I think we would feel loneliness and even terror instead of wonder.”
“Yes,” he said. He was very aware of her arm about his waist, his about her shoulders. Holding each other against loneliness and terror. It was a novel idea. He had never thought of needing other people, only of using them. He had never thought of other people needing him. Could anyone ever need him? Was he that important? That privileged?
She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “I am glad it has been you with me today, Alistair,” she said. “I am glad it is you out here with me tonight. But I am sorry.” She lifted her head. “I said it would be romantic, did I not? I promised to make you fall in love with me. But all I can do is feel warm and cozy with you. All I can do is babble on about the universe and our human need for others. I have no experience in arousing romantic feelings. You asked if I had a plan. No, I have none. We had better go inside before our prolonged absence is noted.”
The soft wonder had gone from her voice. She sounded sad suddenly, and he knew it was his apparent lack of response that had saddened her. He had made her feel that after all she was alone. But how could he express thoughts that were so new to him that he knew no words in which to frame them?
He tightened his hold on her shoulders and turned her in against him, wrapping his free arm about her waist. She turned her head to rest one cheek against his neckcloth. He held her for a long time, perhaps several minutes, without either talking to her or kissing her. He did not want to kiss her. He did not want to make love to her. There was a nameless and quite unidentifiable yearning in him that took the place of the sexual desire he might have expected to feel.
For some reason that he could in no way fathom he wanted to cry. He swallowed hard several times. She was soft and warm. A buffer against loneliness. A bundle of gaiety and dreaminess, of wisdom and innocence. There was something in her that he wanted, that he yearned for. Something in addition to her woman’s body.
“Alistair.” She lifted her face to him finally and touched her fingertips to one of his cheeks.
He took her hand in his and kissed the palm. “Why did you say my name?” he asked her.
