A Lady's Choice

by Donna Lea Simpson

“Rachel, hallo! You are just in time to see a demonstration of the fine art of pugilism.”

  Staring, not believing her eyes, though Belinda had told her what to expect, Rachel was speechless. Sir Parnell waved one mitted hand, but Colin merely stared. She joined Andromeda, who looked oddly right in her male garb and her casual pose as she never had in frilly dresses and turbans.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” Rachel said, finding her voice.

  Colin gave her another long, considering look and she felt her stomach quiver, but then he turned back to his opponent. The men boxed, clearly pulling their punches, while Andromeda explained the moves and talked about the art and science of pugilism. Rachel could not look away from Colin. He looked magnificent, she thought, in breeches that outlined muscular thighs and a loose shirt, open to the middle of his chest and with the sleeves rolled up over muscular forearms. He was not overly hirsute, just that arrow of coarse dark hair down the middle of his chest. Shocking. Simply shocking. Definitely not a sight she should be seeing. That must be the explanation for the palpitations she suffered; she was shocked.

  But every move he made strained the seams of his breeches, and he moved smoothly, much better than the older man. Colin was a natural athlete, something Rachel had never realized. Nor would she have cared in the past, she admitted to herself. Her former view seemed narrow and self-absorbed; nothing that did not concern her directly had been of interest. How had she lived like that for so many years?

  And why now did she see things so differently? Her eyes had been opened and she saw all around her examples of love and tenderness, men and women setting aside their inevitable differences to find bliss in each other’s arms. “Where is Belinda?” Rachel roused herself to ask. Her voice was a little hoarse and she cleared her throat.

  “That young friend of Pamela’s, Mr. Dexter, asked to take her for a drive and to the Tower to the menagerie. I thought it would make a lovely treat for her, someone closer to her own age, you know. Nice young lad.” Andromeda had not taken her eyes off the pair boxing, but her gaze was riveted on her fiancé, not her brother. They had decided they would after all go north with Colin to Corleigh, and Sir Parnell and Andromeda would be married from her home.

  Rachel was delighted; she looked forward to their wedding, knowing how much happiness it would bring to the two involved, and how much to Colin, too, to have a brother like Sir Parnell.

  “Anything wrong between you two?” Andromeda asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  “Between . . . ?”

  “Colin and you.”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  The other woman shrugged and slipped down off the table easily. Her new athleticism seemed to have made her graceful. “Don’t know. Just a feeling.” She raised her voice and said, “Hey, you two, it’s my turn.”

  “Do you plan to fight me?” Colin said in a teasing tone, turning from his opponent.

  “No, because you will not be as kind to me as Parnell will,” she said, laughter in her voice.

  Rachel, strangely, felt tears well up in her eyes. She had never heard nor seen Andromeda happier, and it touched her deeply. Of all of them Andromeda deserved this happiness, this rich reward for being a good sister, valuable neighbor, and faithful friend. The saying went that virtue was its own reward, but a tangible recompense was deserved for a lifetime of service to others. No one deserved happiness, long deferred and richly earned, more than Andromeda Varens.

  When the mitts were changed from Colin’s to Andromeda’s hands, she and her lover squared off and began to box, sometimes falling into a laughing clinch. Colin stayed close by them until his sister, with a look and a word, shooed him away. He reluctantly joined Rachel.

  Annoyed by his obvious reluctance to speak to her, her first instinct was to snipe at him. She generally made it known when she was angry, but how well had that served as a way to go on? And was she not interpreting his disinclination to join her through her own emotions? It could have nothing to do with her. She would ignore it, for now.

  “How odd to see Andromeda so involved in your sport, when she was so against it at first,” Rachel said to Colin, determined to begin on a light note. “And yet I don’t think I have ever seen her so happy.”

  “She almost does not seem like my sister,” he replied, his tone bemused. “She said just this morning that the butler disapproves of her, and she doesn’t care. Belowstairs’ opinion used to matter most profoundly to her. Appearances and all that.”

  “Maybe it was because she had nothing but appearances to cling to,” Rachel said pensively, finding in those words something to ponder.

  He shot her a swift glance, and then looked back to the combatants. “I would never have guessed when I went to Sir Parnell for training that he would someday be my brother-in-law.” He leaned up against the table and ran one hand through his perspiration-drenched curls.

  “It is fortunate that you have so much in common. Your family will be close.” Silence fell between them, but Rachel, determined not to ignore what she had really come there to discuss, broke back into awkward speech. “Colin, I wanted to ask you about last night, and—”

  “Nothing to last night. Just the impulse of the moment, you know.”

  Rachel fell silent again. It was noteworthy that he knew immediately that she was asking about the kiss, but . . . was that truly all it was to him? It had felt like much more. And yet, hadn’t she been wondering if men had many different reasons for kissing, only one of which was genuine caring? If that was the question she had come to get an answer to, it appeared that her quest was fulfilled. It had been the impulse of the moment, and nothing more. And yet she could not leave it alone so easily.

  The two combatants had stripped off their gloves and approached, arm in arm.

  “We’re going to cool off in the garden,” Andromeda said. “You two are welcome to join us there for lemonade.”

  Colin was about to follow them, but Rachel caught his arm. “Wait.”

  When the others were gone, she faced him. “Colin, you say kissing me was the impulse of the moment, but impulses come from somewhere. What did it mean?”

  “Who knows,” he said irritably. “Why must we poke and prod everything, turn it over and over and assume it means something? Can it not just be a kiss?”

  Hand on her hips, Rachel said to him, “You are just as infuriating now as when you mooned over me relentlessly. Do you know that? Then you were a pathetic puppy, following me around and proposing twice a year. Now you are as closed as a clamshell.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing to examine,” he said, his face expressionless.

  “How can you say that?” She considered letting it go, stalking out and going back to not speaking to him. But no. That was letting him off too easy. There had to be something behind him kissing her the previous night and he owed her an explanation. If he would not talk, then—

  She reached up, curled her hand around his neck and pulled him down, kissing him on the lips before he had time to protest.

  He didn’t protest. His arm snaked around her back and he pulled her close. She could feel his damp heat through the fine lawn shirt he wore, and the hard-muscled wall of his chest. One kiss became two, and then many. He pressed against her, trapping her against the table at her back, cradling her head in one hand and running his hand down her spine with the other. He consumed her with a ferocious hunger that communicated itself to her in his intensity, his greedy appetite for her. It was thrilling and frightening and bewildering, all at the same time.

  Colin, for his part, knew he was lost. Every moment he swore to himself he would stop, and then he would kiss her again, finally separating her velvet lips and tentatively tasting her mouth, dipping into her secret recess even as his body grew hard against her. If she had murmured one protestation he would have stopped, but she was passive in his arms.

  Damn. Damn. Passive. She was quiescent and unprotesting, not pulling away or demanding he stop, but neither did she match his eagerne
ss. He pulled away from her, wretchedly feeling the throb of lust and passion spiral through him in waves. He stared down into her bewildered eyes, torn between confessing there and then that he still loved her, loved her more than ever, in fact, and walking away. He had been rejected so very many times, and he had no reason to think this time would be any different. He couldn’t risk it.

  Without a word he strode away, refusing even to look back when she called his name.

  • • •

  Rachel, after a time spent regaining her composure and resettling her bonnet, which was askew, joined Sir Parnell and Andromeda in the garden, where a tiny summerhouse held a table and chairs.

  “I must go.” Her voice was almost steady; she should be proud of herself. Anyone looking at her would think her as calm as ever, no doubt. Instead all she felt was wretchedly unhappy and unsettled.

  Andromeda, her eyes bright with curiosity, walked back through the house with her, but as they approached the front door she asked, “Did you and Colin talk?”

  “I don’t think there is anything that we have to talk about anymore. He has changed, and so have I.”

  “But . . .” The older woman seemed on the verge of saying something but remained silent. She bit her lip, and as they came to the door, uncharacteristically pulled Rachel to her in a hug. Her body felt angular, but the embrace was oddly comforting. “You have changed, Rachel, but it has been a good change.”

  “Has it?” she asked dully, taking her shawl from her maid. “I used to know what I wanted in my life, and now I am adrift. I don’t understand men in the slightest.” That was revealing too much. She had not meant to say anything. She smiled at her old friend. “But I am so happy for you, Andromeda,” Rachel said, squeezing her friend’s hands.

  “Thank you. I never expected this kind of happiness; I had quite given up. I wish the same for you. Not to give up on it, you know, but to find it.”

  “Perhaps I’m the one who will remain a spinster.”

  “That would be a shame, especially when you and . . .” She looked over her shoulder, back into the house, and shrugged. “You know, the one thing I never expected about marriage was that it would . . . set me free. Love, oddly enough, the closest tie that binds two humans, has a way of doing that . . . setting you free. Free to say and do things you never would have thought possible. I never expected that. I think I thought of marriage as another kind of service, like the church or being a good daughter, but it is so far removed from anything else I have ever experienced.”

  “I must go,” Rachel said, releasing Andromeda’s hands.

  “Remember that,” the older woman said with a fervency in her tone. “Love can give you great freedom.”

  “Certainly.” Rachel, not at all sure what she meant but anxious to be alone with her thoughts, exited, asking to be remembered to Belinda.

  Andromeda, left inside the cold, echoing confines of the great hall, firmed her lips and whirled, striding off to find Colin and give him a piece of her mind.

  Chapter Twenty

  Colin, deeply shaken, sat alone in the library, head in his hands, staring at the figured carpet. He dug his fingers into his curls and pulled, frustration and confusion ripping at his gut. What was he to think? Rachel had demanded to know what the night before had meant, and then had kissed him. She had definitely made the first move, but his own yearning had overpowered him and he had let loose all the repressed longing in his soul and body. For a few seconds it had been heaven, until he had realized how quiet she was, passive, quiescent. That was not what he wanted. He wanted her to kiss him back, love him as deeply as he loved and needed her.

  He pondered the years of their acquaintance, all the rejections, all the times he had thought he was making progress, only to find she disdained his suit just as always. What was he now to think? With any other girl he would imagine her kiss to mean she liked him, and welcomed him as a potential suitor, but he had learned through long, hard trial and error—more than anyone else knew, even Andromeda—that it did not do to make assumptions with Rachel. He was as confused as ever.

  The library door squeaked open.

  “Colin? What are you doing sitting in the gloom like this?”

  “Go away, Andy. I have things to think about.”

  “Hmm. ‘Things’ meaning Rachel Neville?”

  “Not your business, old girl. Leave it alone.” His tone was grim, he knew, and he meant it to be. This was no time for anyone to be bothering him. He wanted to be alone with his misery.

  “I won’t.”

  That figured. Andromeda was more stubborn than any other woman he knew.

  “Colin, I don’t know what went on between you two just now,” she said, coming over and crouching at his knee. “But I do know that when she left she looked . . . confused. Troubled.”

  He laughed shortly. “Poor, poor Rachel! She is certainly troubled. Probably because I won’t propose again so she can reject me one more time.”

  “Colin! Don’t sound so bitter!”

  “Don’t tell me how to sound.”

  “But she’s not like that anymore.”

  “You are such an innocent, Andy.” He stared into her dark eyes and shook his head. “Just because you are the soul of honesty does not mean most women are like you. Women are like that. Rachel is like that. She has led me down the garden path before and I fear she is doing it again, just to amuse herself now that all her suitors have . . . well, no, that’s not true.” He thrust his fingers through his tousled hair again and clutched at it in frustration. “She could have her pick of men to court her if she wanted. God knows there are dozens of them fools for her. Just like me.”

  “Not just like you! You know her; they don’t. Colin, give her a chance. Believe that people can change. It is possible.”

  “I have thought so before—”

  “I told you then that you were a fool!” she said vigorously. “I knew what she was about, but you didn’t listen to me. She was an unhappy, bitter girl then. I see such a difference in her now, and you are a great dolt if, feeling the way you do—”

  “You have no idea how I feel,” he said, exasperated. Andromeda had always tried to order his life, but it was enough. He was a man and would not stand for it anymore. “Just go away, Andy.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Shut up and go away!” He was being unconscionably rude, and he regretted it immediately. He stood and stretched, his sister rising as he did. He took her shoulders, gazed directly into her eyes and said, “I will manage my own life. I will not die without Miss Rachel Neville, I promise you that.”

  Andromeda’s eyes filled with tears and she laid her palm flat on his cheek. “I just want you to be as happy as I am, little brother. And if you love Rachel as I love Parnell, then only having her will make you happy. Life with love is so full, and rich, as if all the colors are new and all the sights you have ever seen are fresh. It changes you, I think. Transforms you.”

  “Oh, Andy! What will I do with you now that you have turned so wise?” He gave her a quick, uncharacteristic hug and as swiftly released her. “Once we had unrequited love in common; you with Haven and me with Rachel. Now I am alone. I don’t think I like it.”

  “Then you do still love her.”

  He sighed, unwilling or unable to battle it anymore. “I do. I love her more than ever, with every fiber of my being.”

  She frowned at him, her expression full of puzzlement. “How can you love her if you think so poorly of her, that she would lead you on purposely yet again? I never did understand that.”

  He frowned, wondering about that himself. How could you love someone you didn’t trust? Was it merely lust, then, or frustrated desire? No, there was more, much more, in the tangled web of his feelings for Miss Rachel Neville. It was deeper, more complex, a part of his soul and his definition of himself, and had been for years. And yet it was not just a habit he had gotten into, as he had begun to believe. “I have always known that there is something within he
r, something fine and precious buried under the layers of social manners and elegant affectation. I love that. I want that. But I am resigned now that it is so deeply buried she might never let it come forth.”

  “Or maybe you are blinded by years of rejection,” Andromeda said gently, reaching out and tousling his curls just as if he were a boy still. They were silent for a few moments in the vast, faintly musty cavern that was the Strongwycke library. When Andromeda spoke again, her voice was hushed, quiet, and yet rich with feeling. “Have you ever considered that perhaps you have been underestimating her, and her ability to change, to grow? Maybe she is now all that you thought she could be.”

  “Why?” He shrugged and shook his head. “No, Andy, I am no different than in the past. I have no more money, nor better status, nor am I better-looking. I am still just me. Ugly, uncouth Colin. How can I believe her feelings toward me would have changed?”

  “Because the change never needed to come from you, it needed to be within her. And she is different, more thoughtful, more—”

  Finished with the subject and sick of speculation, Colin turned his sister and gave her a push toward the door. He was tired of all of this introspection; it gained him nothing that he could see or feel or touch, and that was all that mattered in the end. Here and now was all he had, all he would ever have. “Go back to your knight in shining armor and leave me to sort out my romantic woes on my own. I promise I will be as happy as a grig at your wedding and shall dance ’til dawn.”

  • • •

  Alone in the Haven House drawing room—everyone’s least favorite room, and therefore private most of the time—Rachel, curled up on the grim, indescribably ugly sofa, sat staring out the muddy glass to the street scene trying to understand her own feelings, much less Colin’s continued rejection of her in contrast to his enthusiastic participation in their kisses.

  He had enjoyed it as much as she had. And she had liked it, not in any remote sense, but because it was Colin. She had wanted to kiss him. Him. Colin Varens, old friend and neighbor, companion of her youth. The previous night had awakened some hunger that was not yet sated. Maybe it never would be. His ravenous kisses of that morning had just sharpened her appetite into a craving. She hadn’t known how to understand it, hadn’t imagined the force with which it would consume her, and so had gone still, quiet, trying to fathom her reactions to Colin’s caresses. But the hunger had not abated.