A Rogue's Downfall, page 13
“Alistair?” she said, laughing softly. “It is your name, is it not?”
“Lyndon,” he said. “Last night. You called me Lyndon. Before you woke fully.”
She stared up at him, her expression turning quite blank. “I did not,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, “you did. When I first kissed you. Before there was light. Before you could possibly have known who I was. You called me Lyndon.”
She shook her head slowly and he was sorry suddenly that he had asked. Sorry that he had not kept that particular memory to himself.
And then she pushed violently away from him, gathered up her skirt, and fled back the way they had come.
“Caroline,” he called and took a few steps after her.
But she only increased her pace, if possible. He stopped. For some reason he had embarrassed her dreadfully. She had been dreaming of him? She had thought the kiss part of a dream, and she had identified him as her dream lover? When he was a stranger to her? A stranger she had seen only during the Season even though he had not seen her.
Damnation, he thought, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides.
As he expected, she was not in the drawing room when he returned there and did not reappear for the rest of the evening.
It was half an hour before noon when she had met him the day before. It was a little earlier than that when she came downstairs now, pale from a night of little sleep, nervous at having to carry through this encounter, wishing that she could be anywhere else on earth. For starters, she could die of mortification. She had spoken his name aloud! If only she could have slept during the night, she would have had nightmares over that fact. But that was not the worst of it, of course. She was going to have to face him this morning and bring their wager to its conclusion. And then what?
The rest of her life looked frighteningly blank. Not that it would be, of course. The remnants of good sense in her told her that this heightened emotion would not last forever or even for very long. Soon, or at least in the not too distant future, life would settle back into its routine and she would think of her marriage prospects again. But oh, that was no consolation now. Now it felt as if her life was to end within the next half hour.
If he had come, that was. If he had not hidden himself away somewhere—in the billiard room with some of the other gentlemen, for example. Or if he had not gone away, afraid that after all she would trap him into marriage.
He was in the hallway when she came down and looked as if he might have been pacing there for some time. Had she been able to look critically, she might have noticed that his own face showed signs of a certain sleeplessness too. He had not slept well, if at all, and he was not looking forward to the coming hour. It frankly terrified him. He was not an adventurous man, he had realized during the night. His life had been predictable for the last number of years. He liked it that way. He resented the fact that change was sometimes inevitable.
“Caroline.” He smiled at her, bent over her hand, and kissed it. “Almost exactly on time. Shall we find somewhere private?” His heart was beating in his chest fit to burst through. How many hours had passed since he saw her last? Thirteen? Fourteen? It seemed more like a hundred.
“Yes,” she said.
He led her outdoors and stood looking along the terrace, first one way and then the other, before leading her in the direction of the woods at some distance from the house. There appeared to be no walkers there today.
“Well,” he said, “did your amazon sleep at the foot of your bed last night?”
“Yes,” she said.
He did not attempt more conversation. They walked in silence, her arm through his, until they reached the shelter of the trees and he could release her arm in order to set his back against the trunk of a tree and fold his arms across his chest.
“The moment of truth,” he said. “Do you want to go first, Caroline?”
She turned to look at him in some dismay and down to examine the backs of her hands, spread before her.
“Or would you rather that I went first?”
“No,” she said quietly. “You have not won, Alistair. I am sorry. I enjoyed yesterday more than I can say. I learned to like you. And I learned that you are an attractive man, though I knew it already, and could make me desire you. I will not deny what must have been all too obvious to you on the beach. But that is all. I can feel no warmth of love. You have not won fifty pounds from me, you see.” She looked up fleetingly and smiled briefly. “But then you need feel no obligation either.”
He said nothing for a long while. But she had whispered his name. She had dreamed of him. She had noticed him even when he had not noticed her. And she had dreamed of him. She had desired him. But in her mind, desire and love were not the same thing. As indeed they were not.
Let us be done, she thought. Let him say something. She wanted to be back at the house. She wanted to be a stranger to him again. He was holding something out to her. A piece of paper. She looked at it.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A draft on my bank for fifty pounds,” he said. His voice was very soft, but it did not have the seductive quality with which she was becoming familiar.
She looked up into his eyes. They looked steadily back at her.
“You have won it,” he said.
She had won it? Her mind felt sluggish. “How?”
“You have made me love you,” he said. “Take it. It is yours.”
She raised her hand. He released his hold on the paper as she touched it. But she was not gripping it. It fluttered to the grass between them.
“No,” she said, closing her eyes. “No, please. You promised not to lie.”
“And so I did,” he said. “Yesterday was the happiest day of my life, Caroline. Not only that. It changed my life. It made me realize that I have wasted thirty precious years out of a span of perhaps seventy if I am fortunate. It made me realize that I need more than myself and my own pleasure. And it made me realize that I would like more than anything to be needed. By one person. By the same person as I need. You.”
“No,” she said, looking at her hands again. “You are being gentlemanly. You still think you are obliged to marry me, and you think to persuade me this way. Don’t be cruel.”
Cruel? He felt a stabbing of hope. Cruel? “But there is no question of marriage,” he said. “You do not love me, Caroline. And there has to be love on both sides before you will marry, does there not?”
She looked up at him, her eyes luminous with misery and something else. “No one can change in a single day,” she said. “I would be a fool.”
Hope grew. If so much had not hung on the words they would exchange over the next few minutes, he would have grinned at her and teased her and forced her to tell him that she had lied. But he was too afraid for the fragility of his own heart to believe what his mind told him was the truth.
“No,” he said. “It would take us both longer than a day, Caroline. It would take me many days, I daresay, to realize the wonder of the exchange I had made— numberless women in exchange for you. And it would take you many days, perhaps even a lifetime, to come to trust me and believe that it could happen. But we will never know, will we, if those changes would have been possible. Perhaps it is just as well. The familiar is safer and perhaps cozier than the unknown.”
He watched her lower her arms to her sides and rub her palms against her dress, as if they were damp. Her eyes were on the ground at her feet. And then she stooped down suddenly, picked up his bank draft, and held it out to him, her eyes on the paper.
“It is yours,” he said.
She shook her head and bit her upper lip. “No,” she said. “I did not bring fifty pounds to give to you. If we both won or if we both lost, you said, we would be even. We are even.”
“Caroline?” he said, taking the paper from her hand, folding it, and putting it away in his pocket. He found himself holding his breath.
“I lied,” she said. “I am no gentleman, am I?”
He ran the knuckles of one hand lightly down her cheek and then set the hand beneath her chin to raise her face.
“I lied,” she said again more firmly, a note of defiance in her voice, though her eyes were suspiciously bright. “Now tell me that you did too. Alistair.” Her eyes grew anxious. “Don’t tell me that you lied too. Please?”
“Why did you say my name?” He was looking at her mouth.
“Because I conceived a deep infatuation for you the first time I saw you,” she said. “Because I thought I was dreaming. And I dreamed that it was you.”
“Infatuation?” he said.
“I called it love,” she said, “until yesterday. Now I know that it was not. Only infatuation. I did not love you until yesterday.”
He set his hands on her shoulders. “What are we going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She patted her hands against his chest.
“I want to build sand castles with you again,” he said, “and swim with you and talk and laugh with you. I want to love you. And make love to you. I want to have children with you.”
She raised her eyes to his. “Oh,” she said.
“I’m glad you agree.” He smiled down at her and touched his forehead briefly to hers. “Will you take a chance on marrying a rake, Caroline?”
“Yes,” she said. “Alistair, I am dreadfully inexperienced. I will not know how to—”
He kissed her firmly on the mouth. “We will teach each other,” he said. “We will go back to school, both of us, for the rest of our lives.”
“Teach each other?” she said.
“I will teach you how to make love,” he said, “and you will teach me to love. Agreed?”
She laughed shakily and relaxed her weight forward against him. “Agreed,” she said. “But I think your classes are going to prove to be more exciting than mine.”
He chuckled. “If you are that eager to start,” he said, “we had better open this school of ours as soon as possible. I will talk with your brother. How does a special license and your brother’s home next week sound?”
“For a wedding day?” she said, her eyes widening.
“And a wedding night,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“You have a lovely way of pronouncing ‘yes,’ ” he said, lowering his head to kiss her throat. “A week is an awfully long time to wait, my love.”
“Mmm,” she said, arching her body against his.
“If it were not for the amazon,” he said, his hands coming up to cup and caress her breasts, “I might be tempted to try a few more nocturnal excursions.”
“Mmm,” she said.
“We will have to set her at the foot of someone else’s bed next week,” he said, sliding his hands over her waist and hips and around to cup her buttocks and draw her more snugly against the core of his own desire.
“Mmm,” she said.
He set his mouth to hers again, opened it beneath his own, and thrust his tongue inside deeply, once, twice, before withdrawing it and drawing back his head an inch.
“Caroline,” he said, smoothing one hand over her sun-warmed auburn hair, “it is not just this I want of you, you know. It is you. I have wanted bodies before. I have never wanted a person. I want you. I want to join my body to yours so that we will be closer than close, so that we will share everything there is to be shared. I am on fire for you, as you can feel. But for you, not just for the lovely body that houses you.”
She smiled slowly at him. “Joining your body to mine,” she said. “Do you know how the very thought turns me weak at the knees, Alistair? Don’t expect a shy bride. I am afraid I will be shockingly eager. And the rest of what you said too. Oh, that turns me weak all over. That is how love differs from merely being in love, does it not? Wanting the other’s body and everything else too, right through to the soul.”
“Speaking of bodies.” He grinned at her.
“Mmm, yes,” she said, wrapping her arms about his neck and smiling eagerly at him. “What was it you were saying, Alistair?”
“This, I believe,” he said, opening his mouth over hers again.
Precious Rogue
by
Mary Balogh
Holly House, Summer 1818
She had so little time to herself. It seemed unfair that her peaceful solitude should be shattered after a scant fifteen minutes. Nobody ever came to the lily pond, since it was a full ten-minute walk from the house and inaccessible by carriage because of the trees. She had come to think of it as her own special hideaway— whenever she could get away by herself, that was. That was not very often.
She was high up in the old, gnarled oak tree that she had appropriated as her own, sitting comfortably on a sturdy branch, her back braced safely against the trunk. She had not brought a book with her as she usually did. She had learned by now that she would not read it anyway. When she was at the lily pond, surrounded by the beauties of nature and filled by its peace, she liked nothing better than to gaze about her and allow all her senses to come alive. And sometimes she merely set her head back and gazed upward at branches and leaves and sky and went into a daydream.
There was so little chance to daydream. Night dreams were not nearly as pleasant, since one could not control them—or even remember them half the time. She daydreamed about—oh, about many foolish things. About being beautiful and charming and witty, about having pretty clothes and somewhere special to wear them, about having friends and beaux, about loving and being loved, about having a home and a husband and children. All foolish things. She always reminded herself as she climbed nimbly downward back to the ground and reality that she was well blessed, that it was downright sinful to be discontented, that there were thousands of women far less fortunate than she—and that was an understatement.
But today she had only just begun to relax. She was still enjoying the sight of the pond with its large lily pads almost hiding the water and of the trees surrounding it and of the blue sky above. She was still enjoying the smell of summer greenery and the sound of silence—oh, blessed silence. Though the world about her was anything but soundless, of course. There were birds singing and insects whirring and chirping. But they were natural sounds, sounds to which she did not have to respond.
And then an alien sound. A man’s voice.
“Ah,” he said, “a lily pond. How charming. I do believe Mother Nature threw it down here this very minute in a desperate attempt to rival your beauty and distract me. She has failed miserably.”
A trilling, female laugh. “What absurd things you say,” the woman said. “As if I could rival the beauties of nature.”
There was a pause as the two of them came into sight beneath the old oak tree and stopped beside the lily pond. Mr. Bancroft and Mrs. Delaney—two of the guests from the house. The house was full of guests, Nancy having just completed her first Season in London but not having quite accomplished the purpose of that Season. Oh, it was true that she had found her future husband. Everything was settled except for one minor detail. The gentleman had not yet proposed.
It was a mere formality, of course. The two of them had a clear understanding. Mr. Bancroft was young, unmarried, heir to a barony, and thoroughly eligible in every possible way. He had paid court to Nancy quite persistently through the spring, dancing with her at a number of balls, accompanying her to the theater one evening, driving her in Hyde Park one afternoon, and generally hovering in her vicinity as much as good manners would allow. And he had accepted her invitation to spend a few weeks at Holly House.
Two facts about him particularly recommended him to Nancy and her mama—or perhaps three, if one took into account the indisputable fact that he was excessively handsome and elegant. Nancy sighed over the fact that she was about to net one of London’s most notorious rakes. All the female world loved him, and half the female world—or so the rumor went— had had its heart broken by him. It was a singular triumph for Miss Nancy Peabody to be the one to get him to the altar. Not that she had him there yet, of course. But she would before the summer was out. He had made his intentions quite clear.
The rather strange fact that recommended him to Mrs. Peabody was that he was poor—as a church mouse, if gossip had the right of it. Mr. Peabody, on the other hand, was enormously wealthy and had only his daughter on whom to lavish his riches. It might have been expected that the Peabodys would wish to ally their daughter with wealth, but far more important to Mrs. Peabody was to see Nancy move up the social scale. As Mrs. Bancroft she would be a baroness-in-waiting, so to speak. And until that day when Mr. Bancroft would inherit his uncle’s fortune as well as his title, he would have to rely upon the generosity of his father-in-law to keep him in funds. He would be a husband kept firmly to heel.
It all seemed wonderfully perfect to Mrs. Peabody.
And now he was down below the oak tree telling Mrs. Delaney that nature could not rival her beauty. What a ridiculous untruth, the young lady in the tree thought. Mrs. Delaney was too fat—though she had to admit that it was the type of fatness that some men might find appealing. Mr. Delaney was not one of the guests at the house, though apparently he was not deceased.
And Mrs. Delaney had fished for further compliments. Mr. Bancroft did not disappoint her.
“In you, ma’am,” he said, “the beauties of nature have combined with breeding and taste to produce dazzling perfection. How can I appreciate the scene around me when you are here with me? I do protest that you make your surroundings appear quite insipid.”
The young lady in the tree held her nose.
Mrs. Delaney tittered. “I do not believe a word of it,” she said. “You flatter me, sir. I wonder why.” She reached out a lace-gloved hand and rested her fingertips upon his sleeve.
Mr. Bancroft possessed himself of the artfully offered hand and raised it to his lips. “Flattery?” he murmured. “You have not looked in your glass recently, ma’am, if you believe that. I have had eyes for no one else since arriving here three days ago. And I have had sighs for no one else.”
