And now?
She glanced back to where Barric slept and lowered her shawl onto a nearby chair. She began to wonder if Nell’s plan to catch him off his guard would truly work or if she was about to destroy herself out of desperation. Her legs shook, but she commanded them to move. She crossed to the bed without allowing herself even a moment to draw breath, and wishing to conceal herself as much as possible, she put out the lamp’s already guttering wick, settling the room into a rivaling tangle of shadows and moonlight.
As she lowered herself to the mattress, her fingers fiddled anxiously with the edge of her sari. The last time she had been in bed with a man, it had been her husband’s head which rested upon the pillow, his arm the one cast out at that sprawled and slumbering angle. Rena banished the thought as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and traced Lord Barric’s unguarded features. His red hair was bright upon the pillow, his jaw a patchy scruff, unshaven since morning. Three hours had passed since the fire, since he had lowered his face toward hers. How certain she had been he would kiss her, but he had drawn away instead. Rena had understood. She knew how it felt to want and not to want with the same breath.
Nell had noticed.
Had he?
Before Rena could stop herself, she reached out and smoothed her fingers down the side of his face. She had vowed never to love another man as she had loved Edric, and so far as she could tell she’d kept that promise—for she did not love Lord Barric exactly as she had loved Edric. But did that mean she could not love him? Did it mean she did not love him, perhaps in another way?
Before she could consider the answer to that question, a firm hand clamped hard around her fingers. Rena drew a sharp breath as Barric’s eyes shot open, a flash of green in the otherwise dim room. He seemed at once awake and not awake, his hazy eyes startled as they flashed over her veiled face, then lowered to consider the strange, foreign dress she wore.
Nell had told Rena to let him speak first so they might know what kind of man he truly was. Rena waited as she’d been told, mortified to have come to him in such a way. She was frightened he would accept her terms, even more frightened he might send her away in shame.
But Lord Barric was not speaking.
She waited for him to bark at her to get out, as she’d already imagined he might do. Eyes not leaving her, he eased himself up. Weight resting on one elbow, he moved aside the veil from her eyes, then pulled it free from her hair and let it drop to the floor. Rena wasn’t sure what kind of expression she wore as he exposed her face to the moonlight. Her breath seemed suspended high above her, her lungs refusing to siphon an ounce of air from the suddenly drafty room.
Barric did not seem to notice. Instead, his eyes dipped to trace the henna patterns on her collarbones, then lower to the ones on her arms.
Then he looked into her eyes.
Without a word, he grabbed her by both arms and tipped her over onto the bed beside him. She scrambled to remember what Nell had told her, to keep to the plan they had set, but Lord Barric’s hands sunk into the mattress as he leaned over her, his lips suddenly at her ear. “I always hoped you’d come to me.”
Rena opened her mouth to respond, but Barric tipped her face up toward him and pressed his lips against hers. All protests were instantly knocked beyond her reach like they’d been physical things wrenched from her hands. Barric’s lips were warm, eager. His skin still smelled like smoke, like the house that had burned to rubble that night, and there was still nothing either of them could do to stop it. This time there were no tears in Rena’s eyes as Barric touched her, only a dizzied half awareness as he pressed her down against the bed and threaded his fingers through her hair.
“You are so beautiful,” she heard him murmur. “I have always thought you were beautiful.”
Rena floundered even more. She knew how it felt to be loved by a man, to be wanted, and she also knew Barric could easily make her forget her own emptiness if she let him. Her heart softening within her, she shifted closer, touching her fingers to the scruff of Barric’s jaw as she suddenly returned his kiss.
He released a sharp breath of surprise, his fingers curling around her waist where her skin had been left bare beneath the sari. The warmth of his hand hit Rena like a jolt, but she did not pull back, even as his lips roamed across her cheek, then dipped to press against one of the inky figures on her collarbone.
Yes, Rena thought. This felt right. Much the same as Nell’s plan, though her heart knew it wasn’t the same at all. What was the name they called her in town? Edric’s Indian whore. The words twisted the feeling of eagerness within her until it stung and made her gasp. Immediately she stiffened beneath Barric, her throat barely fighting off a sob of shame.
As if sensing her uncertainty, Barric pushed himself slightly up, his body inches from hers as he studied her face. Fingers trembling, she clutched at Barric’s shirtsleeves, her eyes pleading with his beneath the arch of moonlight. She tried again to form the words she’d come to say.
“You’re…” He faltered as if unsure of his own word. “You’re afraid.”
Rena realized she’d been holding her breath for rather a long time. Afraid was far too simple. She was like those fields beyond his bedroom window—razed and barren, remnants of a full harvest brushed by a gust of wind, and there was nowhere she could go to defend herself against it.
As if awakening from a dream, Barric glanced around them, stiffening as he seemed to come to his senses. “Rena,” he said urgently, “what are you doing in here?”
“Lord Barric.” Her voice was tight but measured. “I’ve come with a proposition for you.”
He gave her an uncertain look, and Rena lowered her eyes, mortification mounting. She knew what he must think of her. It was, after all, not an unusual trick. She’d heard stories of women who had climbed into bed to strong-arm rich men like him into an otherwise impossible marriage. Why should he expect anything different from her? “I’ve come to offer you Hawthorn Glen,” she announced, refusing to sound tremulous beneath his gaze. “Might I be permitted to sit up as we discuss the will?”
As her question registered, his expression darkened. “The…will?” Still balanced above her, he paused, eyes drifting down again to her mouth. “You mean to tell me you’ve come here, like this, to talk to me about money?”
“Will you let me sit up?”
He studied her face, his eyes hard and extracting, until Rena’s fear returned. One quick swoop was all it would take for him to dash away her terms, just a touch of the lips. And if she refused him, they both knew he could spread this story to every eager ear in town. The gossips would descend on her like vultures, and all that would remain of her reputation would be a rotting carcass. She was entirely at his mercy.
Shoving himself up by his arms, Barric clambered from the bed, straightening his shirt as he stood. “Hawthorn Glen,” he repeated coldly. “What makes you think you have the power to give it to me?”
Relieved by his sudden distance, though not by his darkening mood, Rena pulled herself into a sitting position, taking a similar moment to straighten her hair and tuck her feet beneath her skirt.
“Because I can give it to you.”
He leveled her with a sardonic look. “Because of the new will, you mean.”
“Who told you about the new will?”
“My uncle.”
She blinked with some confusion. “What does he know about it?”
“Only that it exists. If you want an even conversation, you’ll have to educate me on the particulars.”
This was the moment Rena had been dreading. Lord Barric might have been altogether willing and eager to take her to bed as his mistress, but Nell’s suggestion of marriage could hardly be seen as a deal in the man’s favor. Pressing her hands against the fabric of her skirt, Rena willed herself to speak the words. “I need you…to marry me.”
To his credit, Barric didn’t stagger when she said it, but his eyes narrowed slightly. “What, a proposal you mean? Aren’t
you supposed to take a knee or something?”
She ignored the barb and explained. “My father-in-law’s will is rather shocking. I have to marry back into the Fairfax side of his family for any of it to take effect. Lord Barric, please. We are desperate. If you will only marry me, Nell will receive his fortune. She’ll never have to worry again. Never starve. And you can have Edric’s family estate.”
“Yes,” he agreed sharply. “And his wife.” Rena dropped her eyes at his curt response, but he went on, pacing nearer to his desk as if he needed more room to think. “So this was the plan, was it? Seduce me into saying yes?”
Rena climbed to her feet, her face heating. “That was not the plan,” she insisted, though she knew he’d likely suspect as much. “I came to talk about the will.”
He froze as if something new had crossed his mind, and his gaze swung back over to her. “Is that why you dragged me out to Hawthorn Glen?” He grabbed her by the hand when she swayed back, his fingers tightening as he waited for her answer. “Dangling the prize in front of me, were you?”
“Of course not.” Heat pounded into her face. “No!”
“I’m afraid you’ve overlooked the fact that I have Misthold, Mrs. Hawley, which is ten times the estate of Hawthorn. In order for me to even consider biting at your offer, I’d have to want far more than his paltry estate. I’d have to want you.”
Her voice barely trembled as she challenged, “Don’t you?”
When she looked up at him, Barric swore and released her, all semblance of conversation lost in angry accusation. “You know I do. And if I were a dishonorable man, or even a weaker one, I’d take you to bed without a second thought. I’d bed you, then laugh at your terms and tell you to keep quiet about what had happened. And then what would you do?”
She felt her resolve begin to crumble. “You are not a weaker man.” His eyebrow dipped in challenge of her trust. “No,” she said. “You would not hurt me like that.”
Her words did nothing to alleviate his anger. “Does it not bother you?” he growled. “Selling yourself to me like this, to a man who doesn’t love you, just so the old lady can have some gold in her pocket?”
Selling herself. A disquieting choice of words, almost as miserable in her ears as hearing him say, so bluntly, that he didn’t love her. Her fingers curled into fists as she swallowed both insults. “I suppose it all depends on how much I sell for,” she replied, needling him. “Perhaps you think I ought to have taken up work at the Gilded Crown after all.”
Her words made him flinch. He pressed forward a step, opened his mouth like he was about to shout something back at her, but then his eyes fell to her trembling hands, and he turned away. “If it’s all business,” he said, forcing himself to speak more evenly, “why come to me when you might have gone to anyone with a blood claim? Charlie is, after all, a Fairfax too.”
“Because”—she fought to keep the grief from her voice—“I trusted you.”
Barric fell silent, his eyes ponderous for a moment, and then his expression muted even more as he turned to face her. “Well, if it’s all one to you, I will make you an offer, Mrs. Hawley. My uncle wants Hawthorn Glen more than anything. He’s been scavenging for it for years. And, as a first cousin to Sir Alistair, he has a closer claim than I. Since you’ve set your terms so prettily, I’ll extend them to him. It wouldn’t be right not to give him a chance, after all. I’ll tell him of your offer. If he refuses to marry you, then I will.”
New terms now set, Lord Barric crossed his arms across his chest and awaited her reply.
“Your uncle?” she echoed faintly. Her voice sounded as pale as she suddenly felt. She had come to Lord Barric for Nell because she loved her and wanted to see her taken care of. But she’d also come because she cared for him. Because she knew, in some way, he cared for her.
But could she marry his uncle? Did she love Nell that much?
“Family is family, isn’t it?” Barric shrugged, his tone devastatingly casual. “It shouldn’t matter who you marry, so long as it gets done.”
In the wake of the new will, Rena had accused her father-in-law of using her as one of his favored chess pieces; now she felt like she was being shoved violently across the game board. For Nell, she reminded herself. Anything for Nell. “Yes,” she agreed, her voice trailing with loss. She lowered her eyes to the floor. “I am grateful to you for your assistance.”
Barric stood silent. She wanted him to say he had regretted his offer, that he would never toss her off to his uncle, that he didn’t think so little of her. What would it be like, she wondered, to be married to Barric’s uncle, a man twice her age, whom she barely knew? Barric’s uncle was also Thomas’s father, she realized belatedly. The idea of marrying him made her suddenly sick.
“Then I will speak with him tomorrow,” Barric answered coolly. She sensed in his words a clear dismissal, for which she was grateful, if only to escape his cutting eyes. With hardly a nod goodbye, Rena turned and clutched the doorknob.
“Wait.”
She paused with the door half-open, one foot already in the hall. As she turned, Barric approached. “By tomorrow you might very well be betrothed to my uncle.” He ran his fingers over her hair, softly, as if he couldn’t bear not to touch her. “Is there nothing you would want to say to me while you are still a free woman?”
Rena was stricken, suddenly, by how much she wished she might stay there, with him, and not just for the night. What would it be like to hear him call her “wife” each morning? What would it be like to have a husband such as him? It did not matter. It wasn’t to be. She had been a fool to imagine Lord Barric cared for her in such a way.
She would not lift her eyes to him, nor could she keep the bitterness from her voice. “I am bound by our contract, Lord Barric.” Her voice stiffened with disappointment. “As such, I am not a free woman.”
Grimacing at her reply, Barric released her. “Then leave,” he said, and turned away.
CHAPTER 17
The sun had not yet risen when Barric saddled Samson and tore out of the stable, straight on course for his uncle’s house. His hands were knuckled hard over the reins in a painful grip. He was still furious. Rena had tested him within an inch of his self-control, then had the nerve to say she trusted him. At first he’d been delighted to find her in his bed. If she hadn’t gone as rigid as stone beneath him, if he hadn’t paused in that moment to look into her eyes, he feared he wouldn’t have stopped until he’d had her out of that dress. At first his own weakness had sickened him, shamed him, but now there was nothing left but roiling anger. He thought she had come for him. Instead, she had come in the interest of money.
And then there was the fact she had accepted his horrible terms, that she would marry his uncle because Barric had said it was to be so. As if Barric himself was replaceable, just a pawn in a race for the family inheritance. She didn’t trust him—she needed him—and Barric was not so swept away that he couldn’t see the difference. He knew she was desperate, and he hated that she would willingly toss herself away to his uncle to feel a fraction of control.
“If you will only marry me, Nell will receive his fortune. She’ll never have to worry again. Never starve.” Barric winced as he remembered her words. That was her motive, the real reason she’d come to him, and in a way he almost understood. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for them when they’d lived in that brothel, or the terror Rena had felt watching her mother-in-law famish away into nothing. Nell was the only family Rena had left, and both now lived on Barric’s charity. And what had he done? Earlier that night, he’d hinted at sending her away, as if his kindness to her was a whim, a thin line she was obliged to walk every day, and if he was unsettled enough, she’d tumble.
He slowed Samson to a softer pace, his temper relenting. If anything happened to either woman, there was no telling what might befall the other. He remembered the trapped expression in Rena’s eyes the first night she’d met him, the useless efforts she employed to susta
in herself.
Alistair Hawley’s will had thrown the women a rope, and now they struggled to tie it around each other, to bind them both together beyond the reach of destitution.
Of course, Barric had never intended to hand the property, or Rena, over to his uncle. At first he had been testing her, to determine what her real motive was, though he hadn’t allowed himself to believe she’d accept such dismal terms. Her instant acceptance angered him despite her stricken expression, and he prodded at her on purpose, insulted her, threatened her, all to get her to stumble and say something that sounded truer to him than the flat words already spoken.
Barric still wasn’t sure if she’d come to him because she actually cared for him. Then again, he was the only one in the Fairfax family with the title of earl. His jaw tightened at the thought. He didn’t know if the plan had been hers or Nell’s, or if she would have been relieved had he accepted her terms as she had set them. He knew she felt for him, had recognized it as soon as his lips were on hers—but he also suspected she struggled with her own wantings, that her heart was still cloaked in a widow’s shroud.
Yes, there were many things Barric didn’t know for certain as he rode across the heath, but there was one thing he did know for certain: there was no way in hell he would ever allow his uncle to marry her.
When Barric finally arrived, he had to wait in the sitting room while the servant rushed to rouse his uncle. Barric paced the length of the room, from window to fireplace, replaying his encounters with Rena over and over in his mind until he felt he’d run mad. The night had been a steady march of endurance. From putting out the inferno, to pursuing Rena in the trees, to finding her in his bed—he felt like he hadn’t slept in a century, and daylight had not yet broken.
At last Uncle George descended the stairs wearing his dressing gown and a look of concern.
“Barric,” he said, half-breathless as he stopped in the doorway. “What is it? My servant said it was a matter of some urgency. Is it Charlie?”
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