by Lynn Messina
“I’m here about your other daughter.”
“My other daughter?” Harlow repeated, as if not entirely certain there was another Harlow girl. “You mean Lavinia?”
“Yes, Lavinia.”
Harlow raised his eyebrows at this unexpected news. “Well, I must tell you, the same rules apply. She is of age and whatever Vinnie has done to offend you—though what she could have done to have offend you is a mystery—must be taken up with her.”
“She has not offended me at all,” Huntly said smoothly, more than confident after this brief exchange that his request would not be denied. “I would like to marry her and am here to request her hand.”
Instantly, Harlow’s expression cleared. “Is that all? Yes, you have my permission,” he said, standing up and offering to shake the marquess’s hand again. “I trust we are done here?”
As the meeting had gone more and less as the duke had described, Huntly said, “Yes, sir. Shall I take up the matter of contracts with your son?”
“A capital idea. I’m returning to my room to rest, but the others are about to sit down for breakfast. I’m sure the viscount won’t mind if you join them,” Harlow said, making the offer with what his future son-in-law would describe as indifferent graciousness. The gentleman, though polite, did not seem at all interested in getting to know the man her daughter was about the marry, a development that disappointed, if didn’t surprise, the marquess. If his own parents were alive, he imagined they would be eager to meet Vinnie.
“I appreciate the offer, sir, but I see no reason to linger when I have much to settle in London,” he said with a bow. “I will give your regards to your daughters.”
If Harlow thought this was another capital idea, he didn’t say so, for he was already halfway out of the room when Huntly spoke.
The ride back to town went more smoothly than the ride out, half of which was passed in the dark. He drove quickly, stopping once to change horses at the Black Bull and have a midday meal, and returned to Berkeley Square a little after four o’clock. Since nobody had known where he had gone, his entire staff was relieved to see him arrive home only slightly worse for wear, except his valet, to whose keen eye Huntly looked considerably worse for wear. Upon removing the formerly pristine white waistcoat, Petrie shook his head sorrowfully and immediately put the offending garment in the trash receptacle, from which it was promptly removed by the housekeeper, who felt there was never a sufficient number of rags to be had.
Although making the trip to Tunbridge Wells and back within thirteen hours had been uncomfortable and inconvenient, the marquess, relaxing finally in a warm bath, was remarkably glad he had done it. He had complied with acceptable protocol and could proceed as he wished with nothing in his way.
As eager as he was to make his proposal—what an inadequate word eager was to describe the unbearable impatience he felt!—Huntly requested a quick snack be served in the study, for he was clever enough not to ask for a woman’s hand on an empty stomach.
He was just about to start eating a joint of roast beef when the door to his study flew open and in stormed Vinnie, who slammed the door with a resounding crack in a nonplussed Fleming’s face. Surprised by her appearance—both the suddenness of it and the remarkable way she looked, for not only was her dress stained and torn, including a long rip at the hem, but the color in her face was inordinately high. Obviously, she had been working on her invention, and his first thought—after, of course, thinking how wonderful it was that she was there when he’d just been wanting her there—was that she had finally mastered the formulation. But then he noticed her eyes, not the red rims or the puffiness, though his quick gaze observed those elements as well, but the fierce anger in them, the spitting fire, as if she loathed him entirely and couldn’t wait to explain why.
Transfixed by her rage, he stayed planted to the spot as she raised her hand and slapped him across the cheek.
“I withdrew!” Vinnie screamed, her anger an almost palpable thing. She took several steps back, as if being close enough to strike him was too near. “I stood in this very room, and I withdrew. But you said no, you bastard. You said no, and now you seek to destroy me and all you had to do was let me withdraw a week ago. You are a vile, bloody coward and I despise you.”
Huntly did not know what was happening. As when he’d walked into the conservatory all those weeks ago expecting to admire the duke’s orchids and instead found himself met by a wall of water, he couldn’t conceive what was going on. Now, like then, the world suddenly stopped making sense.
Last time, he’d apologized. Confronted with an inexplicable situation, incapable of grasping the larger picture, he’d sought refuge in familiar courtesies and accepted blame for something with which he had nothing to do.
He could not go that route again. How could he treat her like a polite stranger when he loved her more than anything else in the world? So, despite his instincts and despite a sick dread that her hatred was unalterable, he took several steps forward, looked her in the eye and said with just as much vehemence as she, “I love you.” He waited a moment, then said it again. “I love you. I love you. I”—pause—“love”—pause again—“you. I would never do anything to destroy you, for that would mean destroying myself. I love you.”
Vinnie launched herself at him. He could think of no other word to describe the way she propelled herself into his arms, the whole length of her body suddenly pressed against the whole length of his.
He was still unable to comprehend what was happening to him. That Vinnie would wrap her arms around his neck, that she would run her hands through his hair, that she would press her lips against his in frantic need made no more sense than her seething anger. Lack of sleep played a part, he knew, for it weakened his ability to reason as surely as it did his self-control, but even if this bewilderment was a permanent condition, he didn’t care. He was a man of science who believed the world was ultimately a knowable place with enough investigation, but he would happily live in a state of absolute confusion if he could do so with her.
As mystified as he was as to why it was happening, he certainly knew what was happening, and he returned her kiss with equal fervor, pulling her body tightly against his as if trying to absorb it into his own.
His befuddled mind retained enough sense to realize this wasn’t the sort of activity one did in the middle of the study on a desk with a joint of beef and a bottle of claret, so he lifted her up and carried her to the thick rug in front of the fireplace. The blaze crackled as he lowered her gently, and he kneeled across from her, kissing her softly, deeply, heartrendingly. He pulled back to look into her eyes, and when she leaned forward to capture his lips again, he raised her head until her gaze locked with his. “I love you. I love you.”
With her eyes intently focused on his, Vinnie clutched his shirt in both hands and pulled it over his head in one fluid movement. His breath hitched as she laid first her hands on his chest, then her lips. As incredible as his need was, as unbearably intense his craving, it paled in comparison with the gratitude he felt at her simple touch. He had known this would happen—from the moment when she’d launched herself forward it had been inevitable—but he’d never imagined how humbled it would make him feel to know this incredible, brave girl wanted him.
His gaze just as unwavering as hers, his movements considerably less smooth, he removed her tattered dress and stared at her gorgeous form in the flickering light of the fire, unable to believe how perfect she was. With a touch that was almost deferential, he cupped her breast and bestowed a butterfly-soft kiss on her nipple. She moaned in pleasure and tried to pull him closer. He resisted, determined not to rush a single moment of this remarkable experience. He pressed his lips against her other breast, teasing the nipple until she cried out his name. It was the first thing she’d said since calling him a vile coward, and he relished the desire in her voice, the longing, the yearning. Dizzy with it, he trailed his hand down her chest, across her stomach and over the mount of her w
omanhood until he could feel the soft folds of her flesh quivering with need. Gently, he brushed a finger over her nub of desire, and feeling her writhe, brushed it again and again and again until she cried out with pleasure and sighed his name. Then he captured her lips again in a searing kiss as her hands caressed his body—his arms, his chest, his back—until they came to an unbearable boundary. Without breaking contact, he shifted his hips and as soon as she removed his trousers, her hands resumed their heady stroking.
Her fingers, tentative at first but with growing certainty, touched his manhood, and he had to close his eyes to absorb the pleasure. He didn’t know how long he would be able to hold on and yet he knew he would hold on forever if that was what she wanted. Whatever she wanted was hers, and when her smooth movements became frantic, he decided she wanted more.
With a hypnotic kiss, he pressed her back gently against the rug, positioned himself over her and looked down. Staring into her stunning blue eyes, he wondered why he had ever thought the world didn’t make sense. The world made perfect sense, and when the haze of desire lifted from her gaze, he said with the certainty of the ages, “I love you.” Then he shifted his hips forward, entering her body gradually and gently, attuned to her every response—her every moan, her every shudder, her every tremor. He kept his movements slow and smooth, savoring everything about her: the silken feel of her thighs, the soft breath of her sighs, the tight clutch of her arms as she held him against her. The feel of her hips as they moved under him was like a drug pulling him deeper and deeper into a swirling abyss, and when he finally heard her cry out in release, he felt himself dissolve into the encompassing blackness.
Vinnie was satisfied—oh, was she satisfied. Having whipped into the room, hurling accusation, her anger a snarling beast she could barely keep on a leash, she had expected an argument, a shouting match, disgust, hatred, disdain, even indifference, but she had never imagined she’d see terror flash in his remarkably beautiful eyes. It was terror, pure and simple, unadulterated by logic or reason or understanding. Huntly had no idea why she was raving about and was terrified she would never stop.
It was that terror, more than the declaration of love, that had propelled her into his arms. At the sight of it, all the emotions of the day—happiness, excitement, anxiety, grief, shock, fury—coalesced into a single compulsion to touch him. And it wasn’t enough to touch him once, to banish the terror and then step back. No, she had to keep on touching him until all of him was revealed, until there wasn’t a single unlit corner for him to hide in. Felix Dryden, Marquess of Huntly, was hers now because she knew him completely.
Yes, she was very satisfied indeed.
Vinnie didn’t know how Townshend had pulled off his trick, but it seemed likelier to her that the prime minister himself had revealed the truth than the man sweetly kissing her neck.
Luxuriating in the feel of him, she stretched lazily and marveled at the absurd unpredictability of the world—that she could wind up ravished in his study after an afternoon of weeping uncontrollably in her conservatory.
Suddenly, she recalled that afternoon’s endeavors. “I perfected the hose,” she said, her oddly husky voiced tinged with excitement.
Huntly raised his head from its comfortable perch at the nape of her neck, and it was only when she saw the amusement gleaming in his gorgeous eyes that she realized her first words should have probably have been more loverlike.
“I’d thought that was why you had come,” he said, lightly running a hand over her cheek, as if compelled beyond himself to touch her again and again. “I saw your stained work dress and flushed face and thought you’d been in such a rush to tell me, you didn’t bother to change. Congratulations. Congratulations, as well, on your acceptance into the British Horticultural Society. You have done the impossible, my love, and I’m extremely proud of you. Proud of myself, too,” he added with a cheeky grin, “for thinking of it in the first place.”
Vinnie laughed and allowed that he deserved some of the credit. Then she raised the other unloverlike subject that was on her mind. “We need to alert the home secretary that he has a traitor in his office, for there’s no other way to account for Townshend using the truth about Windbourne to coerce me into turning down my acceptance.”
“Ah, so that is the charge of which I stand accused,” Huntly said softly, looking Vinnie in the eyes and adding soberly, “I did not tell him.”
Grinning with an audacious wickedness she hadn’t known she was capable of, she said, “I thought I’d made a fairly convincing display of my belief in your innocence, but if you are still in doubt, my lord, I’m happy to prove it again.”
Unable to resist the invitation in her eyes, he pressed her firmly against the rug as his hands encircled her breasts. He kissed her deeply, one, two, three times, and then, just when it seemed as if she would indeed have the pleasure of proving it again, he groaned loudly, rolled onto his side and reached for his clothes. He glared at her as he tugged on his shirt and trousers. “You have the disconcerting ability, as no one else in the world, of making me lose all sense of propriety,” he growled. “I don’t know how you do it, and I can’t say I like it very much.” He marched over to his desk, tugged open a drawer, pulled out a small box and then slammed the drawer shut. “We need to discuss Townshend and your membership, which you are not declining to appease that weaselly cur, and we absolutely need to dispense with the traitor in the Home Office but first—” He broke off his tirade to toss the contents of the box at her on the rug. “First let the record show that I tried to do it properly. I even got your father’s permission. But that’s all ruined now, so you might as well put that on your finger and we shall call it a day.”
Vinnie picked up the ring—a delicate affair with rubies and diamonds—and watched it glimmer and sparkle in the firelight, as transfixed by its beauty as she was her own emotions.
The compact between them had already been made. The moment he had said he loved her, this agreement had been forged, so, yes, she was happy to put on the ring and call it a day.
And yet she was deeply moved by the churlishness of his proposal, for what woman wouldn’t want to know that she made her lover behave uncharacteristically? It was only right, she thought, as he had the exact same effect on her: how else to explain the practical Miss Lavinia Harlow lying naked on a rug before a crackling fire in a gentleman’s study? Her own sense of propriety had been so lost, it hadn’t even occurred to her to lock the door. She was as exposed and vulnerable as any woman could possibly be and she didn’t care, which merely confirmed what she had suspected several times in the last few weeks: She was every bit a Harlow hoyden.
As she made no move to put on the ring, Huntly dropped to his knees and slid it on for her finger. Then he laid his forehead against hers and said, “I love you.”
This time, she responded appropriately. “I love you, too.”
Hearing the words, which, of course, he’d known in his heart for almost twenty-four hours, so moved the marquess that Vinnie found herself once again lying beneath him. She was happy to stay there for the rest of the night, if not the rest of her life, but he rolled off her again, this time with a sigh and a deeply felt goddamn it. He pulled down his shirt, which Vinnie had tried to slide over his head without his noticing. She had come very close.
When he finished tucking in his shirt, Huntly raised her into a sitting position and tugged on her walking gown.
“You look like a street urchin,” he announced, rubbing his thumb against a black smudge on her cheek, “for which we must be grateful, as none of my staff would suspect me of behaving in such a reprehensible manner with a grubby ragamuffin.”
As much as she shared his respect for decorum, she found his devotion to it at that particular moment to be extremely inconvenient. She had a problem with it at other times, as well, and didn’t hesitate to say so while he fastened the buttons on her dress. “I appreciate your attempt to do things properly, but the next time an emotionally wrought woman tell
s you she killed her fiancé, I would recommend against a sojourn in Tunbridge Wells and advise an immediate visit to the overwrought young lady so that she doesn’t spend the entire day thinking you despise her.”
Startled, Huntly turned her around to look at him.
“What did you think I would do today?” she asked with a faint smile. “I mean, other than work on my invention. I expected you every moment, and when you didn’t come, it broke my heart.”
The stricken expression on his face broke her heart all over again, but she couldn’t stop herself from speaking the truth. The only way to put her past behind her was to share it with her future. “I don’t regret shooting Windbourne,” she announced matter-of-factly. “I am far too sensible to regret taking a necessary action. If I hadn’t killed him, he would have surely killed me and very likely Emma. I do not worry about my immortal soul, for I cannot believe God would punish me for acting in self-defense, nor do I lay awake at night tortured by my conscience. In more than six months, I never once regretted it and yet this afternoon, when I realized you weren’t coming, I felt unbearable remorse because I assumed you couldn’t love a murderer.”
He gripped her shoulders and growled, “You are not a murderer.”
She smiled gratefully at his defense of her. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Unsatisfied, he shook her gently. “Of course it matters, for you are not a murderer. What you are is the bravest woman I’ve ever met, and I’m humbled that you would trust me with your heart after such an inconceivable betrayal.”
Humbled herself by his remarkable statement—he had to be the only human being in the world to think the sensible Miss Lavinia Harlow brave—she felt tears rise in her throat and pushed them back. She would not be one of those silly women who were so overwhelmed by their own happiness they could not help but cry. Instead, she sought to lighten the mood with a glance at his desk. “Was that a joint of roast beef I saw when I came in?”
Taken aback by the change in subject, Huntly could only nod.