An Immoral Dilemma For The Scandalous Lady (Steamy Historical Romance)

by Olivia Bennet

  “I made my promise to him nonetheless.” Phoebe raised her chin defiantly, heat prickling behind her ears and her throat swelling with emotion. “Whatever affections I may have once held for Lord Boltmon were done away with long ago.”

  “His affections for you are not done away with. Lady Phoebe, I am going to tell him that he is released from our courtship. I will wait some time before accepting the courtship of another. If you find yourselves drawn together, as I believe it will inevitably be, then I will step down gracefully and be obedient to the laws of love as they are. If this does not happen, then in due course, I will seek to meet him again to see if there is anything to be salvaged between us.”

  “Do you truly believe I would betray my fiancé so soon after he has been lost? How can I know that he has even perished?” Phoebe’s voice rose in anger and upset. “Lord Boltmon knows how I feel about this situation. I have always been loyal to his brother.”

  “But Lord Huxley is no longer with us.”

  Phoebe felt her back stiffen as a cat’s does when it is approached by a threat. She was horrified that before one brother was mourned, the other was being thrust into her line of sight for review.

  She had spent years learning to bury her feelings for Owen, and now she was being encouraged to bring them back into the light while still grieving for the gentleman she had put all her energy into envisioning as her future husband.

  It was far too great an emotional burden for her. She stood suddenly from her chair, her spine straight and chin raised.

  “Forgive me, Lady Ann. I’m not feeling well. I’m going to ask my brother to accompany me home.” She paused. “Please take heed of the words I have spoken here. Lord Boltmon cannot replace Lord Huxley—nor shall he.”

  * * *

  Lady Ann had unexpectedly come to visit Owen with her brother as her chaperone. She asked him to wait just outside the drawing room as she invited Owen to sit with her.

  “My Lord, I will not keep you long. I’ve come to speak with you about a matter that has been on my mind of late.”

  “Anything, My Lady.”

  Owen braced himself for Lady Ann to make some suggestion that it were time he offered her a proposal. After all, they were both getting older and were more than of marrying age. They had been courting for some time. He had the approval of her family, and she had the approval of his. They were well matched in status and reputation. They were companionable.

  Lady Ann was dressed in an uncharacteristically dull dress. It was an ashen grey with a bland bonnet with only simple white flower decorations. Her blonde hair was pulled back and tied in place. She looked more a maid than a lady of high standing. It was cause for concern.

  “Tell me, Lady Ann, what is on your mind?”

  “I have come to a decision, and it is one from which I shall not be dissuaded.”

  An ultimatum to be married. Owen waited expectantly. He was prepared for this moment.

  “And what decision would that be?”

  “I believe we should bring a pause to this courtship.”

  Owen frowned and sat back in surprise. “I don’t understand.”

  “I am not the lady you yearn for. You are in love with Lady Phoebe.”

  “We’ve discussed this before, My Lady. You know that I have put her from my mind and that I have chosen to be with you.”

  “It was no choice, My Lord. Your hand was forced when she was betrothed to your brother but things are different now. She is widowed before she has been wed and it is not unusual for another brother from the same household to step up in these instances.” She bowed her head. “For the first time in all the time you have loved her, she is available to be yours.”

  “She is in mourning, Lady Ann. As am I.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I am inclined to believe you’ve lost your mind.”

  “I have never been more sane.” She fixed her determined gaze upon him, seeming more sophisticated and refined than ever before, more graceful than she had ever been. Dignified. “My Lord, I do not have suitors fighting duels over me nor begging my father for my hand. Whatever becomes of you and Lady Phoebe, I shall still be here when all is done. Either as the lady whose hand you will take in marriage, or as a wedding guest when you say your vows to her.”

  “You’ve been reading too many romantic novels.” Owen stood and began to pace. “One cannot simply take his brother’s place. He does not simply take the hand of the one he loves without consequence.”

  Lady Ann’s smile grew even more sorrowful and resigned. “There it is, My Lord. In your own words. She is the one you love.”

  This time it was she who stood. She continued, “Take some time with my blessing to pursue Lady Phoebe. If it is to be, then I shall cause no fuss and make no attempt to shame nor guilt you into marrying me. If you do not take her hand, then I will give mine freely to you in marriage, secure in the knowledge that you will not resent me nor despise me for not being her.”

  Owen stepped forward and boldly took her hands. “How could I ever despise you?” He dropped to one knee. “Be my wife, Ann. Forgive me for taking too long to make my commitment to you plain and clear. Let us be married.”

  Lady Ann let out a sob and turned her back away from him. “Don’t be a fool, My Lord, and don’t make a fool of me. Do not use me as a means to force yourself to forget about your love for Lady Phoebe. I know full well that I am only a distraction.”

  She turned and knelt down too so that they were eye-to-eye upon the floor. “Grieve with her, comfort her, be with her. Let what will be, be. If there is nothing between you then this will become apparent in time. If that time should ever come, you know where I will be.”

  * * *

  Owen let a whole day and night pass as he thought on what Lady Ann had said. Over and again, he let his proposal and her rejection play out, and he dwelt upon her words.

  She was entirely right, of course. Owen had been using her to distract himself from the fire of a forbidden passion. She had been the cold water upon his flames of love, leaving only the scent of smoke in the air, the memories of his love for Phoebe.

  He pictured Phoebe now, her warm smile igniting a spark within him. He imagined her dark hair shining in the sunlight. He’d always loved the way her back arched and her chest rose when she lifted her hands to push her hair back. It drew his thoughts toward forbidden fantasies of her back arching in the bedroom, her arms above her head as he kissed her, her smooth hair wild against the pillows.

  Lady Ann wished for him to pursue Phoebe now but could such a thing be done? He would be taking his brother’s place. Society would either view his actions as predatory or protective. It was hard to know which way the balance would fall until he made his move.

  “What would you have me do, Evan?” he said aloud as he sat on the edge of his mattress alone in his room. “For heaven’s sake, what would you have me do?”

  Chapter 17

  Phoebe was alone in the glasshouse at Bentley Manor. Her father had bought her the most wonderful flowers to plant. They would not flower for some time, but they were green and vibrant and had waxy leaves.

  She spent some time organizing and cleaning the space before she started to use it. First, she swept the dust from the ground and pulled the weeds from the pots full of soil. She cleared the surfaces between the pots of grime and dirt and polished the glass so that she could see every tiny leaf on the hedge that surrounded it.

  After she had tidied, she pulled herself up onto the central display to sit a while. She took in the scent of damp earth and must, closed her eyes, and thought of Evan.

  She thought of all the letters still gathered in the drawer of her vanity table and the sweet words they contained. She thought of all the nights she had lay awake at night, imagining how life with him would be.

  When she thought of Evan, it did not take long for thoughts of Owen to follow. As she recalled how she had lain awake envisioning life with Evan, she remembered too all the nights she had cried, wishing she wer
e betrothed to Owen. She thought of all the time her body had hurt with missing him and all the hours spent in turmoil fantasizing about a world where they could be together.

  In this fantasy, they were more than friends, more than social acquaintances bound by their fathers’ joint enterprise. They were liberated lovers. She’d be deceiving herself to say she’d never imagined their secret meetings in the grove becoming more intimate.

  In her imaginings, Owen would step forward, cradle her head in his hands, and kiss her with a passion that would make her tremble.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she realized how fevered her thoughts had become and her cheeks flushed red. She quickly began tearing weeds from the soil in the pot in front of her to stop herself thinking of him.

  “Phoebe.”

  She turned and saw Owen standing behind her as if thoughts of him had caused him to materialize before her.

  It made her heart cease to beat. Only a moment before, he had been bare-skinned in her mind, and now here he was. She could not stop herself from undressing him in her mind all over again.

  Evan is dead. You should be repulsed by these thoughts. Shame on you, Phoebe.

  “You startled me. You know we shouldn’t be here alone.”

  “Who is to know, with hedges as high as these?”

  “Your mother, for one. She watches me like a hawk when I am here. I know I am not truly welcome here yet I can’t keep myself away. I have unfinished business in this glass house. A promise to keep.”

  “A promise I knew you’d keep. That’s how I knew I’d find you here. You have always been the most sentimental person. Memories flourish under your hand.”

  “My father bought me flowers to plant here.”

  “These?” Owen knelt down beside the earthy bulbs with roots still bound in paper and leaves paler than they would be when planted. “What shall grow from them?”

  “Lilies.”

  “A funeral flower.”

  “Yes. But they are beautiful and smell so sweet.”

  “They are fitting for the first flowers to grow here.”

  “I hope they will grow. I have never nurtured anything living before. I don’t imagine I shall ever forgive myself if I turn this place into a graveyard of things that should have become beautiful.”

  She had avoided looking at Owen but now she turned and set her eyes upon him. He was as handsome as ever. He was dressed in a finely-tailored black jacket and beige trousers with knee-high riding boots. His dark hair was overgrown but combed back neatly. He carried an air of sartorial elegance about him; he seemed even more refined for the paper he held beneath his arm in a sketchbook.

  “Are those legal documents?”

  “Drawings.”

  “Drawings? You haven’t spoken of art to me for some time. I believed it had become a former passion.”

  “I’ve rediscovered my taste for it.”

  “May I see?”

  Owen hesitated. “I’m somewhat embarrassed by them.”

  “Oh, I doubt your talent has decreased that much. You were so talented, after all.”

  “It is not the execution that bothers me so much as the content matter. It is private.”

  Phoebe blushed. “Are they…intimate portraits?”

  The thought aroused her. She squeezed her legs together and wet her mouth, which had become dry at the thought of Owen drawing her nude.

  “Phoebe!” Owen laughed. The sound was so welcome. “The places your mind goes. I have half a mind to tell your father!”

  She smiled at him, knowing he was only teasing. The pair of them had been pushing the boundaries of social conduct together their whole lives.

  “If they are not intimate then why should you be embarrassed?”

  “They are sentimental.”

  Phoebe hopped down from her perch on the table and Owen opened his sketchbook upon the surface. When Phoebe saw the pictures within, she gasped and then tears began to roll down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Owen. These are the most beautiful portraits I have ever seen.”

  His pictures were sentimental indeed. He had a dozen or so sketches of Evan through the years. There were some portraits of him as a child, playing with a sword; there was a drawing of him in front of his father’s ship. There was one that was simply Evan in profile, smiling broadly, a sparkle in his eye. Then there was a sketch of him gifting Phoebe a certain flower locket.

  “They are not very good. I had to draw them from memory, but I felt the urge to draw them before my memory failed me. We have portraits of Evan, but they are posed and superficial. None of them show him as he truly was. I wanted to capture something of his positivity, pride, and youth.”

  Phoebe ran a finger softly down the image of Evan’s face, leaving charcoal on her finger. “This is him. Exactly as he was.”

  “You may choose one to keep if you’d like.”

  “Really?” She blinked back tears. “I have so little to remember him by. Do you know I have struggled to picture his face sometimes? It seems the more I try, the more distant it becomes; it is as if my memory is trying to abuse me.”

  “Grief affects memory in such strange ways.”

  She picked out the picture of the locket being gifted. “May I keep this one?”

  “Of course.” He smiled. “That is the one I imagined you’d choose.”

  “You drew this from memory?” She shook her head in disbelief. “It brings back the recollection so clearly. I hardly remember either of us being this young, yet there we are as if you had drawn the scene as a witness in the moment.”

  “I’m glad it brings you comfort.”

  “It brings me much comfort, Owen. Thank you.” She paused. “You’ve been thinking about him too, then.”

  “Constantly. I always thought of you and I, Evan and Roger as something of a team. Now it feels like we are a gentleman down. And I admired him greatly. I’ve certainly lost an ally and a friend. My brother.”

  Owen’s face was dark with sorrow but he was no less handsome for it. He had the brooding attraction of a poet or intellectual; traits that had always been highly attractive to Phoebe.

  She longed now to press her body against him and feel his arms wrapped tightly around her. Did she long for his touch for comfort, or for reasons more salacious? The fast beating of her heart in her chest didn’t feel like grief any longer yet she wanted him to hold her still.

  Instead, she allowed herself only the smallest of touches. She placed her hand upon his forearm in the slightest gesture of comfort but when he met her eyes, the fire between them spoke of much more. One gaze was enough to shatter the pretence that nothing could, or would, ever happen between them. The power in that gaze had a will all its own that Phoebe was finding ever harder to resist.

  “I’ve been thinking of him too. I keep imagining the storm. It’s such a morbid pastime and not healthy in the slightest considering the fragility of my emotions at this time yet I can’t cease reliving his final moments and over and over in my own mind.” She ran her hand absently through some soil, letting the dirt trickle through her fingers like sand. “Perhaps he was writing to me when the winds picked up.”

  “I’m sure you were in his thoughts right until the very end.”

  “I’m not sure that brings me comfort.” She sighed. “The only thing that does is knowing how much he loved those seas. Perhaps it is more fitting that his final resting place is in the arms of his beloved ocean than in the cold dirt of the ground.”

  “It seems like poetry when you say it, Phoebe. It brings me comfort, also.”

  Owen paced around the glass house. He turned back to look at her. “You grieve for him.”

  “Yes. I grieve for him.”

  The air was heavy with all the things unspoken. Phoebe had heard through the gossiping of others that Owen and Lady Ann were no longer courting although the reasons given were unclear. Phoebe understood that this meant Lady Ann had spoken to Owen and given him her reasons plainly.

  She
was doubtful Owen knew that the Lady Ann had spoken to her also. Both of them knew that she had made space for their love to blossom, knowing it had been a seed beneath the ground for so long just waiting for the chance to bloom.

  “Lady Ann has decided to cease our courtship,” Owen told her.

  “She told me.”

  “Then she told you why?”

  “She gave me her reasons although I didn’t see that she’d been given any cause to hold such beliefs.”

  “No cause at all?”

  “Owen…” Phoebe let her voice trail off and took in a deep breath. It pained her to reject him, to make him wait, to make him think. She didn’t want to think at all. She wanted to be with him, to seek comfort in his arms, and when the grief had passed, to find a future there. “Lady Ann did not give consideration to how carefully we must weigh these decisions.”