by Rebecca King
The second his lips slid across hers everything changed. The kiss ignited a wave of passion that built into an inferno within seconds. Neither of them could escape it, even if they had tried which they didn’t. Neither of them could move, would move, would deny themselves this hedonistic delight. Nothing could tear them apart, not doubts, intrusion of any kind, even their own worries and fears for the future. Hands scoured dips and hollows, seeking to memorise the touch and feel of the other. Lips mated as bodies pressed closer together. Hearts pounded as melodically as the birds sang in the trees. Neither Morgan nor Sissy heard them. Neither of them heard anything but the roar of the need that deafened them to the world around them.
If they had been listening they would have heard the excited chatter of a group of people approaching. They would have been able to break apart and be standing at a more decorous distance from each other when that party of guests rounded the corner of the privet. But they didn’t and they were caught in a passionate clinch.
The first thing to register on Morgan’s senses was the not-so-discrete cough. His head snapped up with a muffled curse. That curse turned into a low moan of dread when he saw Mariette standing amongst her friends, who were all either tittering or smirking as they studied both him and Sissy.
‘What in the Hell do you think you are doing?’ Mariette demanded loudly.
Morgan threw her a malevolent glare. ‘I could ask you the same question, Mariette. I do believe you have been told to stay off my property.’
Mariette glared at him, clearly outraged at being put in her place in front of her friends. ‘I didn’t realise it was because you wanted to entertain your mistress.’
‘Sissy is not my mistress,’ Morgan growled. ‘And I should thank you to speak to me with more respect. Get your friends out of here.’
He released Sissy only when he could be sure that she wasn’t going to run off and get herself even more lost than they already were.
‘Good on you, my old man,’ one of the guests piped up. ‘It is up to you if you want to entertain the local doxy in your maze. At least it isn’t in the house, eh?’
‘Shut up,’ Morgan growled. ‘Sissy is not a doxy, my mistress, or a harlot before any of you get any more insulting. Get out of here, all of you. This is private property. Mariette was wrong to give you the impression that you were free to avail yourself of it.’
‘No, I think that you are availing yourself of enough for free, apparently,’ another of the guests murmured with a spiteful look at Sissy.
Sissy, thoroughly humiliated, turned around and ran. She had no idea where she was going. Behind her, she could hear muffled laughter fade but didn’t stop even when she was out of sight. Instead, she ran and ran, crashing into the privet walls of the maze blindly as tears streamed down her face.
Morgan cursed but didn’t go after her. He knew she couldn’t get out without help. She had inadvertently headed straight toward the centre of the maze. It was going to take an age to find her, but for now he knew that she wasn’t going anywhere until he had the chance to talk things through with her.
And we are going to talk, just as soon as I have dealt with my spiteful sister.
‘I don’t care what any of you think you are doing here this is private property and none of you are welcome on it. Get out of this maze. Now. Keep your spiteful opinions to yourself while you leave. None of you have any right to be so offensive to anybody on my property. I don’t care what Mariette says, I own the Dowager House as well, and none of you are welcome to remain there either now. Summon your carriages and get off my property. Don’t any of you ever come back.’
‘You cannot do that,’ Mariette protested coldly.
Morgan rounded on her and leaned forward until they were almost nose-to-nose. When he spoke, his voice was nothing more than a low snarl of rage. ‘I can do what I damned well like on my own property and I don’t need permission from you. Now shut up, get your – associates – off my land and out of my Dowager House, and don’t any of you ever insult my fiancé like that again or I shall have to make sure that a few of your skeletons get rattled out of your closets.’
Morgan then turned to Mariette’s guests. He raked the man closest to him with a dour look. ‘Like you and your opium addiction.’ He speared an elegant blond woman with a spiteful look. ‘Like you and that lover of yours who is three times your age but that is acceptable because he is wealthy and able to pay for things you cannot afford seeing has your purse has run dry.’ He ignored her outraged gasp and glared at a furious Mariette. ‘Like you and your spendthrift ways, which are now so appallingly greedy you don’t mind helping yourself to the contents of my coin pouch when you think nobody is watching. Do that again, Mariette, and I shall have you arrested for theft.’
Morgan stepped back and pointed to the gap in the hedge behind them. ‘Now get out of here and don’t come back.’ He didn’t bother to wait to see if they complied with his order. He was so angry he wanted to punch something but contented himself with trying to find the woman who mattered more to him with each passing day instead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Morgan?’
Morgan cursed when he heard his mother’s voice. He glanced over his shoulder just as he was about to turn the corner and looked at both his mother and Norma. He didn’t need to ask them if they had heard every word. The truth was written on their faces.
‘I told you to get Mariette’s rudeness under control,’ he growled at Alicia.
Alicia glared at her daughter. ‘Oh, believe me I will.’
‘My behaviour,’ Mariette cried. ‘Oh, that’s rich coming from him. He has just been caught in a passionate clinch with his doxy.’
‘Hush your mouth, girl,’ Alicia snapped. ‘Sissy is not a doxy.’
‘She is to be my future wife,’ Morgan growled, interrupting before Mariette could say anything else demeaning. His challenging gaze met his sister’s. ‘Say anything else, one more word, Mariette, and I shall cast you off without a penny. You shall be thrown out on your ear this very night and that is not a warning.’
Mariette snorted. ‘You won’t do that.’
‘Really? Then consider yourself cast out. You are to collect your belongings from the Dowager House, leave with your friends, and don’t come back,’ he declared coldly.
‘Morgan.’ Alicia looked pained.
‘I have given her enough chances. She has been afforded all of the opportunities and given everything she has asked for. She is spoilt, bad mannered, ill-bred, and a stain on the family name. I will not have her cast aspersions on any guest in my house no matter what that guest is caught doing, especially when Mariette is doing something she has been expressly told not to do. This house is not an open house for any waif and stray to venture into. I don’t care who her friends are, I am not going to pay for them, or accommodate them when they are here to keep company with someone so petulant and spiteful. Mariette’s behaviour is uncouth and no longer going to be accepted or excused. Seeing as she sees anybody without wealth as beneath her, she has to have a better appreciation of other people’s circumstances. She won’t get that here, with my purse likely to be plundered whenever she wants something new. She can live the life Sissy lives. There is a rental house on the outskirts of town, Farmer Martin’s property. Mariette can live there if none of her friends are prepared to accommodate her.’ Morgan lifted his brows and looked at each of Mariette’s friends.
Mariette looked desperately at each one, her eyes silently pleading with them to agree to allow her to stay with them just to spite Morgan. But they all avoided her gaze and awkwardly remained silent.
‘Maybe you should be a little more careful about who you call friends, Mariette. It seems that they are more than willing to accept my benevolence but aren’t prepared to return the favour.’ Morgan turned a cold gaze on each of the guests. ‘Now get out, all of you.’
He turned and left before Mariette could argue. He heard a chorus of discontented murmurs behind him but didn’t
bother to wait around to hear what they were all saying. Instead, Morgan lengthened his stride and went in search of Sissy. He now wished that he hadn’t chosen the maze to try to future his cause with her.
‘Now even I cannot damned well find you,’ he grumbled.
Ten minutes later, he did. In the centre of the maze, on a small bench put there specifically to give anybody who managed to reach the centre the chance to rest before they tried to escape. He didn’t need to look at her face to know that she had been crying. It was there in the droop of her shoulders; the soft sniffle she did her best to hide.
‘I am sorry to have embarrassed you,’ she murmured when she felt him sit beside her.
‘It is me who should apologise. Mariette should never behave like that toward any of my guests. If I was embarrassed by your presence in my home, my life even, I would never have invited you to dine tonight. I wanted to surprise you about the house purchase, to tell your aunt that you didn’t need to move,’ he said.
‘You could have just told us when you paid a visit, or you mother could have told us the next time she called by to take tea,’ Sissy whispered.
‘But that would have defeated my purpose,’ Morgan argued. ‘I wanted to see you. I wanted to spend some time with you.’
‘But why?’ Sissy cried.
‘Do you not feel it? This emotion between us?’
‘It is foolish,’ Sissy replied.
‘How? How can it be foolish? It is about the one decent, honest emotion I have ever felt. It doesn’t lie to me. It doesn’t make me doubt myself. It is solid. As solid as you and I. Do you deny it exists?’
‘Of course not.’ But saying that made Sissy cry.
When Morgan tried to touch her, she jumped up as if struck, and darted away from his touch. He cursed and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He knew then that tonight had done more damage than it had fixed things.
‘I apologise for Mariette’s behaviour. I am afraid that at her age one can no longer use youth as an excuse for her bad behaviour. It is rude and churlish, and far beneath her,’ Morgan hissed.
‘She is young, and consequently is a little more forthright with her opinions. At least she tells people what she thinks, Morgan. Most people tend to gossip behind people’s backs, but are just as spiteful with what they say, even more so when they think that their victim cannot hear them.’
‘I don’t indulge gossips,’ Morgan snapped. ‘I am not going to have anybody scorn either of us.’
‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t regret it,’ Morgan pleaded.
‘But this is foolish, isn’t it? They were right, weren’t they? They aren’t the only people who will take that kind of attitude when they hear about us. Others, people you know, your friends, will scorn us. I am beneath you in status and wealth. Everyone knows it. There is no point trying to deny it.’
‘I am not trying to deny it,’ Morgan argued. ‘However, I don’t agree to having anybody insulted in my home, especially in my presence. I invited you here as my guest this evening and I damned well expect you to be treated with the same deference as everyone else who comes to visit me. It isn’t for anybody to insult you. Why, look at that lot. Look at how rude and ungracious they are. They are embarrassing. You have never behaved that way toward anybody while in my presence. I doubt you have that kind of behaviour in you.’
Sissy had to concede that he had a point. She wouldn’t dream of talking about somebody so cruelly or take so much enjoyment out of ridiculing someone as spitefully as they had.
Morgan cursed when she looked sadly at him. ‘Don’t.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you dare try to put some distance between us again,’ he growled. ‘Not again.’
‘This can go nowhere, Morgan,’ Sissy whispered. ‘You need to marry someone who is wealthy. Your equal. I cannot and will not be your mistress.’
‘What about love? Does that not count?’
Sissy huffed a cynical laugh. ‘But you don’t love me,’ she whispered. ‘It is preposterous to even consider it.’
‘Preposterous,’ Morgan repeated blankly. ‘Why?’
Sissy shook her head and raked him with a look. ‘Look at you. You are sitting here on a seat in the middle of a maze that is at least triple the size of the house I rent. You are dressed in clothing that probably cost as much as I get annually from my allowance. You have nobody to answer to but yourself because you are the lord of the manor. People daren’t offend you. In contrast, my feelings and opinions don’t really matter. People don’t care how much they upset me because I am not wealthy, titled, or well connected like you. We couldn’t be any further apart if we lived on opposite sides of the country.’
Morgan, struggling to find a way to argue against the facts she was throwing at him, began to lose his temper. ‘So why did you kiss me then? Not just once but twice? Why did you accept my invitation to dine if you knew it was wiser to keep your distance?’
Because I love you.
Sissy didn’t have the courage to say the words hovering in the back of her mind, no matter how tempting it was. They would be her downfall if she did utter them. She had run away from the sneering crowd earlier but seeing as she had been stuck in the maze hadn’t put enough distance between them before Morgan had launched into his tirade. Despite her upset, she had heard every word he had said, including his declaration that they were engaged.
‘I told Norma about your invitation to dine because I knew your mother would mention it to her. Norma would be upset with me if she missed the opportunity to dine with your mother and you if I kept your invitation to myself and declined it without discussing it with her,’ Sissy replied.
Morgan stood up and moved toward her. She backed away but soon found that there was nowhere she could go. When her back touched the privet hedge, Sissy tipped her head up, at first defiantly, but she was too miserable to maintain it. Tears welled until he became a blur.
Morgan cupped her chin and tipped her head up when she would have looked away. ‘Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are. Don’t allow the weight of other people’s contempt to curb what you want. You will regret it. I know you think it is easier for you, but I have to still face people like that as well. It isn’t just you they will talk openly about.’
‘Just go and speak to Mariette. Tell her that you used the fiancé business as an excuse. That what happened was a mistake she interrupted. Please, Morgan,’ Sissy cried when Morgan began to shake his head.
‘Mariette has got her own problems to contend with. I am not going to seek Mariette’s help with anything at the present moment. Her friends can think what they like. What I want you to understand is that I am not going to make any apology to anybody for what we have shared, even you.’
‘I didn’t ask you to apologise for what happened,’ Sissy countered. ‘But you have to understand that being connected to someone like me is going to affect your mother and Mariette as well.’
‘If other people’s judgement is to have such an impact on my decisions then I would much rather have no further part in this life of mine,’ Morgan snapped.
‘This is your life, Morgan. It is what you were born into, born to be. You cannot walk away from it. What about the servants? Your tenants? Your sister and your mother? They need you. All of them.’
‘You need me too,’ he whispered.
‘I have my aunt. We even have the house we live in now, thanks to you,’ she countered sadly. ‘It has to stay that way. I can no longer be a part of your world as you can be a part of mine. You belong here. I don’t. It is foolish to have people thinking you are engaged. Your friends will not be pleased when they realise who I am. It isn’t right.’ Sissy was oblivious to the tears that coursed down her face as she whispered the heartfelt words. They were torn from her soul because they shattered her world, crushed her dreams, and ruined her future, but they had to be said. She loved him too
much not to say them.
‘So you are saying that it is wrong to be happy, are you? That I have to live my life by everyone else’s dictates, is that it?’ Morgan demanded in a voice that was loud enough to be heard several feet away. ‘Well, I refuse. I don’t care what anybody else thinks, wants, likes or dislikes. This is about me, my happiness. I am expected to pay for everyone else’s lifestyle and put roofs over everyone else’s head. What about mine? Who is going to provide for my happiness? Does anybody else give a damn?’
Not for the first time in his life, Morgan felt constrained by the life he had been born to. Some would consider him well off and look at him with awe. They would scoff and scorn if he dare raise issue with any part of his gilded life, but he knew his life was more of a cage than anybody really understood.
‘My life is as restrictive as yours really, Sissy. I am free but to do what? I have responsibilities here, like you have just said. I haven’t chosen to have them. I have been born into them, with the expectation that I will spend the rest of my life running them, looking after others. I have no choice but to do as other people expect. The one thing, the only thing, I would expect to have a choice in is who I take to wife. If I cannot have that choice then I would prefer never to marry. I would prefer a cousin I hardly know to inherit this place and either run it or ruin it. In reality, I don’t care what happens to the damned hole. It is nothing more than a luxurious prison cell.’
Sissy stared at him in shock but also with an incredible sadness. She lifted a hand and touched his cheek. He immediately captured her chilled fingers and pressed them against his warm flesh but only after pressing a loving kiss into her palm.