In Love with the Viscount (American Heiress Trilogy Book 3)

by Julianne MacLean

  “I’m glad you keep your garden natural,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to ever think of you with your wings clipped, so to speak. I like the idea of you being wild and soaring.”

  Damien fought to ignore the blood pounding through his veins. “Adele, you need to soar, too. Don’t let them make you English.”

  Her smile faded, and her expression became serious all of a sudden.

  Bloody hell. He didn’t know where that had come from. She was engaged to Harold. He shouldn’t have said that.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said, backtracking. “They’re good people. They’re my family.”

  She turned away from him and walked to the windows. Standing with her back to him, she said nothing. He set his hat down on the table, then moved around it and joined her, gazing down at her soft profile in the light reflecting off the calm lake.

  “Why would you say that?” she asked, looking up at him. “Is it because of what Eustacia has been saying—that no one would guess I’m American? That I’m practically English already? Do I mold and bend into any shape, fade into any background, rather than be the real me? Or is it because everyone always assumes that I’m perfect, and you’re the only one who knows I’m not?”

  He wasn’t sure what to say, which was out of his realm of experience. He always knew what to say to women. He knew what they wanted to hear, and he knew how to seduce the ones who wanted to be seduced.

  But Adele—dear, sweet Adele—did not want to be seduced. She wanted truth. She was unsure of her future, and she wanted him to tell her everything was going to be all right.

  “Yes, it’s just because of that,” he said.

  She gazed out at the lake again. There was not a hint of a breeze causing even the smallest waves. There were only random, circular ripples where the quiet fish bobbed to the surface.

  “No, it’s not just that,” she insisted, and Damien’s gut wrenched. Then she turned to him and began to speak quickly. “Harold is a wonderful man, I know that. I just wasn’t expecting so much grandeur. I had no idea I would be living in a house like this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How will I know when to curtsy or not to curtsy, or how to be a proper hostess? I’m not prepared for this. How will I ever manage? Do you think I made a mistake coming here? Or did Harold make a mistake, believing in me?”

  “You’ll learn,” he said. “You’ll learn all of it, because you’re smart. Harold wouldn’t have proposed to you otherwise.”

  “But do I want to learn it? Maybe it’s too much. I’ve always done what my parents wanted me to do, but sometimes I think they may have overestimated me. They always said I was the most sensible and dutiful of their daughters, and I suppose that’s what I’ve always thought I was born to be—sensible, and to please others. I’ve been playing that role, but now I’m not so sure. I’m tired of this perfect life—the jewels and the shiny chandeliers and the overwhelming wealth. I don’t want all those things, I just want....”

  She gazed into his eyes, looking almost frantic. “Sometimes lately, I find myself not wanting to be sensible. I’ve never felt that way before. I’ve never been tempted to do anything that was different from what was expected of me. I was content to just do what people told me to do. But since the kidnapping, I’m questioning that. And it scares me.”

  Her eyes were pleading. What did she want? Answers? Answers to what? Her place in the world? Her purpose? Her desires?

  “There’s a great deal in life you haven’t experienced yet, Adele. That’s all. You’ll figure it all out in time.”

  “But I am going to become someone’s wife very soon. I am choosing the direction of my whole future, the rest of my life. What if I discover that’s not what I’m meant to be?” She stopped talking and bowed her head and cupped her forehead in her hand. “Oh, listen to me. How very silly I must sound. I have cold feet, that’s all, and I’ve been listening to my sister too much.”

  “What does she say to you?” he asked.

  The pleading look disappeared, and Adele’s voice took on a calmer note. “She’s always wanted me to go out and have an adventure before I settle down. But I already did that, didn’t I?”

  “Does she approve of your decision to marry Harold?”

  Adele blinked a few times. “Oh yes. She likes him very much. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  Adele’s gaze swept over Damien’s face, from his eyes down to his lips, to his hair and back to his eyes again. He simply stood there, letting her look at him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “for being so emotional. It’s not like me to act that way.” She paused, staring at his face as if she were pondering something. Then at last she added, “Sometimes I feel like I’m a different person when I’m with you.”

  He gazed down at her wet, ruby lips, glistening in the sunlight beaming in the windows, and an unexpected shiver of need coursed through him. She was unlike any woman he’d ever known.

  Perhaps it was because she opened up to him and told him things she didn’t tell other people. Or perhaps it was her innocence and her goodness.

  No, it couldn’t be. The only thing he thought about when he looked at her was everything that defied innocence and goodness. What he felt for her was dark and sinful and wrong.

  She gazed up into his eyes and said with a deep, resounding sadness, “Damien, sometimes I worry that I don’t really know who I am.”

  “I know who you are,” he softly replied.

  He stepped forward, closing the last bit of space between them, and took in a deep breath. At last, he thought, feeling a blazing surge of anticipation in his veins. But with it came shame and remorse—even before he’d done anything.

  She looked into his eyes and shook her head, and he understood what she was saying without ever really saying it. This is wrong, please don’t do it. That’s what her eyes told him.

  It was wrong, he knew it was, but he couldn’t stop himself. He folded her into his arms and held her, as he’d held her on the bed when she’d had the nightmare. Except then, he had done it because he had to. He had to keep her safe when he was bringing her home to Harold. He’d been acting as her protector.

  Now he had no excuses. They had survived the ordeal and arrived at Osulton Manor. She was safe in every way but one. Because he should not be holding her. Harold should be holding her.

  But still, Damien could not let go. His heart was pounding, racing out of control. He pulled back, took her face in his hands, and kissed the tip of her nose, then her forehead, then he lowered his mouth to hers—softly, wetly, so achingly that it hurt inside of him. Blood pounded in his brain. He swept his tongue into her mouth, and she made a little sound—a sweet, innocent whimper of pleasure and awakening.

  Savoring the breathtaking sensation of her soft, luscious body pressed closely to his, and responding to the feel of her breasts crushed between them, Damien deepened the kiss.

  Adele wrapped her arms around his neck, ran her fingers through the hair at his nape, and Damien’s impulses, like fire under a splash of kerosene, flared with a gusty roar. He devoured her soft, supple lips with his own, and finally—finally—he let himself cherish her deep inside his broken heart.

  Giving in to it all was like taking a cool drink of water, when he’d been almost dead from thirst. He couldn’t stop guzzling. He wanted more and more and more.

  He turned with Adele in his arms and slowly backed her up against the wall, his lips never leaving hers. Harold could have been watching from outside one of the windows, and Damien wouldn’t have been able to stop this. That’s how badly he wanted her—with desperation and a fierce, fiery need more powerful than anything he’d ever known.

  He had lost himself. He was doomed. Yet still, he couldn’t stop, because the pleasure was so good, and the need to touch Adele and hold her was so great, he thought he might suff
ocate if he let go.

  Bending slightly at the knees, he thrust upward with his hips. She raised a knee to open to him, while she drove forward in return, applying an exquisite, stimulating pressure upon his desires. It all came so naturally—this tantalizing, erotic dance that mimicked sex—even though they were fully clothed, upright against a wall.

  Damien’s senses reeled with lust. He wanted so much more than this. He wanted to bury himself inside her and feel the pleasure of everything she contained. He wanted to take her—in every way she could be taken—here and now on the cold, hard floor of this rotunda.

  She sighed with contentment, and the deep, husky sound of her voice, full of raw, sexual need, sent his desires ramming hard against the crumbling wall of his self-control.

  Feeling her hands cup the back of his head, he moved lower to kiss her neck, while he unfastened the top buttons at the collar of her bodice. Adele.... He wanted to say her name, whisper it in her ear, but he didn’t want to break the fragile spell, so he kept quiet.

  She moaned again, running her hands through his hair and making a terrible mess of it, while Damien dropped reckless, openmouthed kisses across the moist, creamy skin just above her corset.

  “Damien,” she whispered, panting, as she tossed her head back. “Please, stop.”

  He heard the desperation in her voice, and realized she was pleading with him again, only this time for something very different from before. She was asking him to back away because she didn’t have the strength or the discipline to do so herself.

  Damien labored to throttle his mounting desires. Quickly he stepped back and raked a shaky hand through his hair. All the breath sailed out of his lungs as if he’d been punched. It was a reaction to his sexual desires being suddenly and swiftly disrupted.

  Adele stood against the wall. She gathered the top of her bodice in a tight fist and held it closed. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked shocked. Dismayed.

  “I apologize,” he whispered.

  Adele’s eyes filled with tears. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

  “It was my fault entirely,” he said.

  “No, it was my fault, too. I wanted you, but I don’t want to want you.”

  Her statement hurt, even though he knew it was the way things were. He didn’t want to want her either.

  “Please go away,” she pleaded. “Go to London until this passes. It’s wrong, Damien, and we both know it. Please just go away.”

  He stared at her shimmering beauty in the brightness of the room as she pleaded with him to do the right thing.

  He nodded and walked out.

  Damien strode to the house to leave a note for his aunt, to tell her that he was leaving. He passed his cousin Violet on the way up the front steps. “Damien,” she said, “where are you going?”

  He did not stop to talk. “To London.”

  “But what about tonight? We’ve been rehearsing a scene from King Lear.”

  “It will be stupendous, I’m sure.” He entered the house and slammed the door behind him.

  Violet remained on the steps, staring after her cousin, who seemed in a most hotheaded hurry. He is probably going to see that actress, she thought, lifting her parasol over her head and turning to continue down the steps on her way to the garden, where she’d heard Lord Whitby had gone walking.

  Lord Whitby. Violet sighed heavily. He was so impossibly handsome she couldn’t bear it. She’d once heard that opposites were attracted to each other. Perhaps it was true. She did love his golden hair. Thank heavens he hadn’t come back from California engaged to one of those brash American heiresses. And thank heavens Harold had come home engaged to one.

  Violet smiled. Fate was kind sometimes, was it not? Who would ever have thought Harold would manage such a thing, and secure Violet’s own future in the process? And secure it soundly, because she had always been able to pull her brother’s strings. Now it would be the family’s purse strings she would pull.

  She glanced over her shoulder to where she had just met Damien a moment earlier. He—on the other hand—had no strings to pull. He was no one’s puppet. Lucky for her, the heiress still wanted to marry her trouble-free brother. And thank God Damien was leaving.

  Violet stopped. She stood motionless on the grass. Was she being selfish by wanting Harold’s marriage for her own advantage? She recalled what the vicar had said in church the week before: “We must put others before ourselves.”

  Perhaps she should try to be a better person, Violet thought fleetingly. She gazed upward as she considered it and pictured herself doing something charitable. Could she help the vicar when he went to collect bread for the poor?

  Then she thought of the horrid, cheap cologne he wore. Violet wrinkled her nose and started walking again. No, she didn’t need to work at being a better person. She had been blessed with a pretty face, and very soon a full bank account. Besides, the vicar was annoying. Everyone said he was a nice man, but he had a squeaky voice. She certainly didn’t want to end up married to someone like him.

  An hour later, after Adele returned her horse to the stable, she entered the house and walked quickly across the main hall to the stairs. She had just grabbed hold of the newel post when she heard someone at the top. Glancing up, she saw Damien.

  Their eyes met, and they both halted where they were—she at the bottom and he at the top. She had not expected to see him. She had hoped he would be gone.

  She considered backing off the step and standing up against the wall to make way for him to pass. Or perhaps she could keep her head down and dash up the stairs, passing him without a word.

  After a few seconds, Damien started hesitantly down the steps again, his eyes never leaving hers. All she could do was stand there, frozen in her place.

  He slowed when he reached the step she stood upon and stopped beside her. Her heart was pounding; she half expected him to tell her to leave Osulton Manor. She was the outsider, after all.

  But he said nothing...nothing as he took her hand and led her off the step and into the quiet, private confines of the library.

  Chapter 15

  Damien opened the library door, peered inside to ensure it was empty, then brought Adele in and closed the door behind him.

  “We shouldn’t be in here,” she said, crossing the dark paneled room to stand in front of a window. “Not alone.” She had to force herself to turn and face him with an appearance of confidence.

  He had changed into city clothes—a crisp white shirt under a black jacket, and a long overcoat, open in front. Yet his wavy, black hair was in chaos, and despite the fine clothes, he had that wild, rugged look about him. His chest and shoulders were inconceivably thick and broad. He was a mountain. A beautiful windswept mountain.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was deep and controlled. “I need to say something to you before I leave.”

  He is going to apologize and say it will never happen again. Then it will be over, and by nightfall, he will be in the arms of his mistress.

  She clung to the image of his mistress. It strengthened her will.

  He took a step toward her. “Are you absolutely sure you should marry Harold?”

  Adele stared at him, dumbfounded. It was not what she’d expected him to say. And why was he asking her this? Did he mean to convince her she should not be sure? Was Damien willing to consider fighting for her himself?

  She imagined becoming his bride instead of Harold’s, and a part of her basked euphorically in the notion that it could happen, that she could be loved, truly loved, by her wild, black knight. There. She’d admitted it. A part of her was indeed dreaming of such an end to this situation.

  But no. She clenched her fists suddenly. She should not fantasize about him that way. He was not the husbandly kind. He was currently in love with a scandalous actress, and he had no loyalty. He went from woman to woman. Adele should not imagine
him as something he was not.

  She reminded herself that he had unleashed her passions, certainly, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. This change in herself was disconcerting and frightening. She didn’t know what was on the other side of it, or how far it would take her. She didn’t want to end up like Frances Fairbanks, promiscuous and not respectable and living for pleasure alone. Could that happen to Adele? Damien was a powerful temptation. He had enormous pull. Hence, he made her fear the possibility of tumbling into a dark abyss, a future full of regret. A life ruined, all because of a passionate, temporary madness.

  “I’m sure,” she replied firmly, embedding herself in her determination not to be carried away by it.

  Damien slowly crossed the room, growing closer until he was standing directly in front of her. Adele realized she was holding her breath. She had to consciously force herself to let it out slowly.

  “I’ve spent the past hour wondering if I should tell Harold what just occurred,” he said.

  Startled by the suggestion, Adele blinked up at him.

  “Don’t panic,” he continued. “I would never hurt him for the sake of easing my own conscience. But I would hurt him to protect him.” He began to pace around the room. “He lacks experience with women, Adele. He’s innocent, and he’s naive. What kind of wife will you be?”

  The breath she’d been holding sailed out of her lungs in a single, thunderous heartbeat that shook her. So. He did not bring her in here to convince her to marry him. He brought her here because he doubted her decency.

  Though a part of her was having doubts about it herself, her pride nevertheless bucked. “Damien, I value my integrity, and when I speak my marriage vows, I will not take them lightly.”

  “But when I kissed you, you kissed me back.”

  Adele raised her chin.

  “Maybe you’re not as perfect as you, and everyone else, thinks you are.” He took another slow and careful step toward her. “That’s what worries me. My mother was not faithful to my father, and their marriage ended very badly. I do not wish to see that happen to Harold.”