The closer Rand got to Sylvan, the louder was the buzz of gossip. Lady Katherine had done her job well, and Rand hoped Sagan would finish it. Rand had come prepared to coax, to apologize, to give explanations to Sylvan in the humblest of spirits, but he hadn’t been prepared for her to play the “I’ve got another suitor” game. He could deal with Hawthorne and Sagan, especially now when he knew why they followed her like devoted dogs. Indeed, he probably owed them a debt of gratitude, for it sounded as if Sylvan had been playing a dangerous game. But the thought of handsome, decadent Holyfeld sniffing after Sylvan brought a chill that hardened Rand’s resolution.
Sylvan would go with him tonight. When they reached Hawthorne and Sylvan, Hawthorne stepped in front of Sylvan, but Rand called, “How unlike you, Sylvan, to hide behind a man.”
Sylvan made no attempt to step out. “Maybe I’m smarter than I used to be.”
“But not braver,” Rand answered.
“Now, look here, Clairmont,” Hawthorne began, but Sagan stopped him with a simple phrase.
“Clairmont is her husband.”
He hadn’t said it loudly, but it seemed to resound through the ballroom. The orchestra, in the process of beginning another tune, stuttered to a dissonant halt. The women stopped laughing, the men stopped grumbling. The gamblers in the card room came to the door, cards still clutched in their hands.
The earl of Holyfeld shouted, “What?” The dancers still on the floor fell away as he charged through. “What?”
Rand tingled with satisfaction as he faced the imperious Holyfeld. “The former Miss Sylvan Miles is now the duchess of Clairmont.”
His announcement brought Sylvan out from behind Hawthorne and face-to-face with Rand. “Not for long,” she said.
“What do you mean, not for long?” Holyfeld demanded, just as if he had the right.
“His Grace has graciously agreed to allow me an annulment.”
Sylvan’s voice had started out strong, but it faded at the last word and Rand thought that the walls of the ballroom itself leaned inward to hear it.
“An annulment?” Holyfeld’s glance flicked over Rand and he grinned viciously. “You didn’t expect to get untouched goods, did you?”
Sagan, Hawthorne, and Rand all jumped on Holyfeld at once. Rand threw the first punch, catching Holyfeld on the jaw and snapping his head around. Sagan caught him in the gut, and Hawthorne finished him off with a fist to the eye.
Holyfeld was still falling in a circle when Rand seized Sylvan’s fist and pried it open, then tangled his fingers with hers. Holding her hand aloft, he proclaimed, “Lady Sylvan was my virgin bride.”
Sylvan moaned. “Rand…” but the crowd parted without a sound as he hustled her toward the door.
“G’night,” Hawthorne called.
“G’luck,” Sagan added, and he sounded as if he thought Rand would need it.
16
The Clairmont carriage boasted a matched pair of chestnuts, an armed footman to discourage highwaymen, and an accomplished coachman, a crest on the door and a duke who thrust Sylvan inside, then crowded her into the corner of the narrow seat and seemed to have no intention of allowing her any freedom.
His presumption infuriated her, and she struggled to free her hands and feet from the snare of her cloak. “I’m not going with you.”
He tapped the roof of the carriage and the horses sprang forward. “Aren’t you?”
He’d wrapped the cloak around her deliberately just to frustrate her. She was sure of it when she realized one side was wrapped over the other and the edge trapped beneath him. She jerked it loose and freed herself, but by then the horses were moving too swiftly. Inside the carriage the torches cast bright squares that grew long and thin, then faded altogether. She was trapped in the dark with a rogue husband.
Trapped, but not defeated. Gathering herself together, she shoved him with all her weight. “Sit on your own side,” she commanded rudely.
He shifted slightly. “There’s not much room.”
“Then sit across from me.”
“If I did that, I couldn’t hold your hand.”
“Good.”
“But I’m afraid of the dark.” His fingers groped for hers.
“Aren’t we all?” she muttered, moving her hand out of his way. Then she jumped and shrieked, for he fastened on her knee.
“I missed,” he said pitifully, but when she tried to pry his hand off, his fingers twisted and caught hers. He sighed. “Now I’m satisfied.”
She sat stiffly and waited for his next move, but nothing happened. Relaxing, he settled beside her. He held her hand, she noted, without a tremor. He didn’t speak, and after a moment, she considered her options. Their entwined fingers rested on the seat between them, wedged between their bodies and serving as a perfect divider. She could free her hand, but he’d no doubt find another part of her body to hold. She could remove his liver with a spoon, but she had no spoon. Or she could sit here, pretend she didn’t care, and grind her teeth down to their roots.
The silence that settled was thick in its intensity. It seemed part of the darkness inside and out, twins with the night of her soul. Anger and hurt fought a battle within her, and together they combined to strip her of pride and leave only anguish. There was nothing that could make her forget the way he’d ripped her that day outside the mill. He’d insulted her background, made it clear his family didn’t approve, and insinuated that one brief bedding was all the union he could bear.
And she sat here placidly holding his hand. It was a good thing her teeth were young and healthy, for her jaw was strong and the ride to London would take over an hour—if that was indeed where they were headed. She hated to be the first to break that silence, but she had to know. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to our town house.”
“Our town house?”
“The town house of the duke and duchess of Clairmont.” He squeezed her fingers. “You and I. I’m the duke and you’re the duchess.”
“Temporarily,” she muttered, then said, “In London?”
“Yes, in London.”
“Leave me on my father’s doorstep, then.”
He chuckled and said nothing, as if her demand wasn’t consequential enough to require a reply.
“You can’t take me to your town house. This merchant’s daughter might dirty the atmosphere.”
He released her hand, and she was grimly satisfied until his arm slid around her shoulders and brought her close against him. “You’re not just a merchant’s daughter. You’re the savior of Waterloo and my wife.”
His voice sounded soft in her ear. His breath ruffled the hair at the nape of her neck. His body warmed her whether she wished it or not, and she rejected everything, all of him, all his phony comfort and his seductive comprehension. With the sharp point of her elbow wedged in his ribs, she said, “I’m the daughter of a merchant who extracted a barony from the regent in a rather hideous case of blackmail.”
“Did he?” Rand sounded entertained rather than shocked as he used his other hand to move her elbow to a place behind his back and trap it there. “Got his claws into Prinney, eh? What a scene that must have been.”
Speaking with precision, she said, “So I am not only the daughter of a merchant, but the daughter of a merchant without ethics.”
“I’ll not hold you responsible for your father’s methods of making money and gaining respectability.”
“That’s not what you said two months ago. Two months ago you said you were ashamed of me.”
“No, you said that.”
“Don’t play games with me! You said—”
“You said, ‘You’re sending me away because you’re ashamed of me?’ and when I didn’t answer you assumed the answer was yes.”
Silently, she reviewed their quarrel in her mind. He was right, the rat. She had jumped to an unsupported conclusion.
“I hadn’t previously realized what a fragile ego you have, darling. We’ll have to work at t
hat.”
Was he sneering? Laughing at her? She wished she could see his face, the better to read his expression and perhaps to nail his ears to the wall. “I do know you said your Aunt Adela wouldn’t have approved our marriage if she’d known you were going to recover and inherit the title.”
“No person in the world comprehends the line of descent as well as Aunt Adela. She knew very well I was second in line to Garth, and she undoubtedly calculated the chances that you would be the duchess. If Aunt Adela had objected, believe me, she would have made it clear to you.”
It was the voice of reason speaking from out of the darkness, calming the turmoil that rocked her. Yet that same voice had ignited the turmoil and she didn’t understand what he wanted with her now. She’d spent two months telling herself she didn’t care, she didn’t want him, she could forget him, and now in the space of an hour he’d tempted her to wash away her fury in a flood of tears.
But the only place to cry was in his waistcoat, and Sylvan Miles didn’t blubber all over a man who didn’t want her.
“So.” Something touched her ear softly—his finger, she guessed, tracing the whorls. “Have I answered your every objection?”
She swatted at his hand as if it were a bothersome fly. “For what reason does it matter?”
“For this reason.”
His lips swooped, locating hers unerringly in the dark. It didn’t seem to matter that she sat strictly unresponsive under his persuasive mouth, he still feasted on her as if she were sweet marzipan. Indignation bubbled beneath her calm exterior, but she tried to keep her temper. If she didn’t, every word she longed to utter, every insult she longed to yell, would come frothing out in an incoherent mass. And she didn’t want him to realize how thoroughly the venom of his rejection had corroded her spirit.
Still, he didn’t stop. There wasn’t room in this carriage for anything more than kissing and embracing, but he opened the frogs on her cloak and kissed her bare shoulders. He moved back, and she thought perhaps he’d comprehended at last—she wasn’t interested. She didn’t want him to touch her. Her skin heated and her breath caught not because she liked his tongue lapping the edges of her bodice, but because she was angry.
Then she heard the crinkle of material. Straining, she tried to see what he was doing. Starlight barely illuminated him, and he was moving, but what…? Taking her hands, he put them around his neck and she discovered that he’d ripped off his cravat and removed his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
Laughter lit his voice. “I thought that was obvious.”
“Not to me.” She shoved at him, but he’d already proved himself an insensitive, uncaring brute, interested in nothing but his own pleasure. He didn’t budge. “Not here. Not now.”
Placing an arm on each side of her head, he asked, “When and where?”
“Not ever!” She tried to duck away from him, but his next words arrested her.
“I never thought of you as a perjurer,” he said thoughtfully.
“Perjurer?”
“You gave me your promise.”
Mystified and infuriated, she asked, “Do you mean our wedding vows?”
“There are those,” he agreed. “But no, this was a personal vow which you made to me.”
“A vow,” she repeated, searching her mind. “What vow?”
“The night before the wedding. Remember?”
A vague uneasiness nudged at her mind.
“We were discussing my incapacity, and you promised to acquiesce to all my conjugal demands.”
She remembered now. Of course, she remembered now. But—“You’re not crippled anymore!”
“I don’t remember that being an addendum to your vow.” With each word, he moved closer until his breath fanned her face.
She tried to jerk back, but there was nowhere to go. “But I promised you against my better judgment.”
“Circumstances have changed, haven’t they?”
But her vow had not, she could almost hear him add.
He waited to see what else she would say, but she was speechless. “Sylvan, you’re all I want.” He kissed her, long and lingeringly. “I haven’t slept, haven’t eaten.” Her ruffled cap sleeves slid down easily beneath his urging, and his palms skated along her skin in a slow, seductive slide. “Let me show you how much I need you.”
“This is unfair.” She tried to sound stern, but that was difficult when he cupped her breasts and his thumbs grazed her nipples.
“It’s more than fair. It’s magnificent.”
She didn’t want clever word games. She wanted to be left alone. She needed to be left alone—now, before she gave in and told him how she’d missed him. “I’m not going to mate with a man who wants an annulment.”
He sat back on the seat, giving her breathing room and somehow disappointing her. “There’s not going to be an annulment. There’s never going to be an annulment. And next time I send you away for your own safety—”
Tugging at her neckline, she said, “Oh, now there’s an excuse I hadn’t imagined.”
Her sarcasm should have made him defensive. Instead, it seemed to incense him, and for some reason, she felt defensive. Quietly, he asked, “Would you like to tell me about the ghost?”
Her mind skipped around, touching on her various thoughts and experiences with the ghost, and lighting, she feared, on the incident to which he referred. “The ghost?”
“Specifically, would you like to tell me about a visitation you received the night before our wedding?”
“When did you find out?” she asked, then cursed herself for sounding guilty.
“Not long after I helped you get to sleep on the day of Garth’s funeral.”
She winced.
Putting his hands on her waist, he drew her toward him until her face matched his and her chest rested against his. He said, “Perhaps you can explain how it came about that you neglected to tell me?”
“I meant to,” she said feebly. She stared straight ahead, able to see only the dim outline of his features but sure that should she look down, it would be perceived as an apology. Maybe even a sign of weakness.
“You lied to me the day I sent you away. I was going to talk to you about that attack, and you told me you were an independent woman. That to have me try to protect you was an insult.”
Had she wounded him with her easy dismissal of his protection? “I didn’t mean that in a hurtful way.”
“You said there was no reason to think anyone would harm you.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
His chest rose and fell beneath hers, his diaphragm laboring like an overworked bellows. Somehow that told her what he thought of her excuses, but his voice was genial when he spoke. “So we both have reason for anger, and we both have words we must forgive. But there are more important things to discuss.” He untied the bow at her back. “Like your promise to acquiesce to all my conjugal demands.”
She couldn’t think of a clever retort, although she desperately needed one to stop his onslaught. She blurted, “You never wrote or sent a message. You left me at my father’s house.”
Now his hand smoothed her gown down her spine. His palm came to rest on the cleft of her rump, and his fingers flexed like a cat’s. “I apologize for that, but in all fairness, you never told me everything about your father.”
“I don’t know how I could have missed it. And I did so want to impress you.” Sarcastically, she imitated her own confession. “’Lord Rand, my father is cold and manipulative and he has browbeaten my mother until she has not a spark of spirit. That’s the reason that I…” She paused, breathless with a sudden stab of pain. “Well, never mind.”
He didn’t say a word. He just kissed her mouth and rubbed his cheek against hers. His silent comprehension humiliated her. Taking advantage of his lax hold, she leaped back and seated herself opposite. Struggling to right the disorder of her clothing, she banged her elbows against the sides of the carriage and tried to speak cohere
ntly at the same time. “You may not have said I was too lowly for you, or that you wanted an annulment, but you implied that was the truth, and you let me believe it for two months.” Her voice gained strength.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said.
“I don’t care what you meant.”
“You are unreasonable.”
“You are detestable.”
“Sylvan.” He didn’t raise his voice, but she heard him too clearly. “I had to do it.”
Each breath hurt her, and her chest ached with a sensation that might have been the need to cry.
“To keep you safe.”
She released a quivering sigh.
His hands groped through the darkness and drew her back into his embrace. “I’m only a bumbling man. Please forgive me.”
An apology. From Rand. He wanted her to forgive him, and he sounded sincere. Maybe he was sincere. She couldn’t imagine that those three words—please forgive me—would ever pass his lips unless he was absolutely convinced that he was wrong.
But what if she was wrong? What if she forgave him and he once more trampled on her heart? For all his cajoling, he was still a nobleman and she was still a merchant’s daughter, and merchants’ daughters, and their hearts, had been fair game for centuries. She tested him. “Why? So you’ll feel better?”
“That’s what forgiveness is for. To make us both feel better.”
If she forgave him and he destroyed her once again, she would never recover. It would be the last burden she would bear. She would give up, crawl into her father’s house, and die.
The bleakness of that vision made her shudder, and he clasped her closer. “Sylvan, please. Don’t go away from me like this. Please, I’ll make you happy, I promise. Please, please forgive me.”
It was the catch in his voice that decided her. She would do it. She’d forgive him now and try to protect herself later. Some people would say that wasn’t forgiveness, but he’d never know what he lost. He’d never miss that part of herself she held in reserve.
He must have felt her body relax, for in adoring tones he murmured, “Sylvan.” He kissed her warmly, seeking passion with his lips and tongue and finding a stray tear. It embarrassed her, and to distract him, she caught his mouth with hers. It felt good to have human contact. Probably if she kissed anyone right now, she would enjoy it. Probably this upswelling of pleasure had nothing to do with Rand and everything to do with her loneliness. Probably…his lips moved on hers. He tucked her head into the crook of his elbow and leaned her back and kissed her more.
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