Seeming surprised, he nodded to the Trotter. “Don’t you want to buy it?”
She hesitated, biting her lip, tempted, but then she shook her head. “No,” she said and turned away to resume walking. “There’s no point. Not anymore.”
As she spoke, she was startled by the tinge of bitterness in her voice, the bitterness of a long-ago, almost forgotten disappointment. As he fell in step beside her, she could feel his eyes watching her, and it goaded her into speech.
“Do you remember you told me that once a dream is dead, you don’t want to give it a second chance?”
“I do, yes. Photography was a dream of yours, was it?”
She nodded. “When I was about twelve, I got this crazy idea I’d follow my father out West and be a photographer. That I’d go with him, take pictures of what we saw, be the first woman to photograph the Wild West . . .” She paused a moment, thinking of the girl she’d been then, a girl who’d thought her father still wanted her, a girl who’d made every excuse in the world for him. “It was stupid.”
“It doesn’t sound that way to me,” he said gently. “Why would you think it so?”
“You have to ask?” She turned her head to look at him, laughing, trying to make light of it. “My father letting me tag along with the two of you?”
“I suppose not,” he muttered. “Did you learn photography at school?”
“Oh, no. Forsyte Academy is a prestigious finishing school. Girls are taught the classical arts—sketching, watercolors, painting in oils.”
“But those didn’t appeal to you?”
She glanced at him, making a face. “I can’t draw.”
He chuckled. “I see. But if you didn’t learn photography at school, how did you learn?”
“A local photographer in White Plains offered a course on the subject when I was fifteen. I thought it was my chance, and I begged Mrs. Forsyte to let me sign up. She agreed, on the condition that I persuade at least one other girl to participate, so I roped in my friend Jenna, who you’ll meet today. She was always up for anything fun.”
“And did the course live up to your expectations?”
“I loved it. And I was good, too,” she added proudly. “The instructor said I had a true talent. But—” She broke off and swallowed hard. “I gave it up.”
“Why? Not because of anything to do with your father, I hope?”
She shook her head. “The photographer offered to apprentice me—outside my studies, of course—but Mrs. Forsyte refused to allow it. She didn’t think it appropriate.”
“I can’t think why. Women have been taking up photography for decades. It’s not considered unwomanly.”
“Perhaps not, but you’d probably have agreed with her reasons. The photographer was an unmarried man. It was absurd,” she added at once. “The poor man had no designs on me. He was sixty if he was a day, and I was only fifteen.”
“Still,” he began.
“Oh, I know,” she agreed at once. “One must observe the proprieties or tongues will wag.” She shot a meaningful glance in his direction. “At least, that’s what people keep telling me.”
He smiled. “As your guardian, I am duty-bound to agree with Mrs. Forsyte that it would not have been proper to be that man’s apprentice. But as your friend . . .” He paused, his smile fading. “I’m sorry you had to abandon something you loved for the sake of propriety.”
She shrugged, forcing aside past disappointments. “It’s all right. I have a different dream for my life now, so it doesn’t matter.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “It does matter. It matters to you.”
The quiet certainty in his voice startled her, and she stopped walking, but she couldn’t quite look at him. “What makes you say that?”
He stopped beside her, bending a bit to look under her hat brim and into her eyes. “Because when you said you had to give it up, you looked like a dying duck in a thunderstorm.”
Marjorie couldn’t help laughing at his way of putting it. “A dying duck? You British have the strangest expressions.”
“Given the look on your face a few minutes ago, the metaphor was appropriate. And if you want to take up photography again, you needn’t worry about any objections from me, and I’m sure Irene would approve. And you certainly wouldn’t have to worry about what Mrs. Forsyte would think of it.”
“Thank goodness for that,” she said wryly.
“Was it very bad?” he asked, grimacing. “At Forsyte Academy?”
“Awful,” she said at once, striving not to smile at his abashed expression. “Like a workhouse in a Dickens novel.” She shook her head with a sigh of long suffering. “And you expected me to stay there.”
His lips twitched. His shoulders relaxed. “Only for eight more months.”
“During which I’d have died of boredom. It’s true,” she insisted as he made a skeptical sound. “Everyone was very kind, and everything was very proper and staid and so damnably boring. When I was a student, it wasn’t so bad, for I had my friends, and we’d get up to a bit of mischief now and again.”
“You?” He grinned. “I’m shocked.”
“I never got into any serious trouble,” she assured him. “Just silly stuff—sneaking out sometimes, pranks, smoking cigarettes, that sort of thing. But once I became a teacher, there was no more fun of that kind. A teacher at Forsyte Academy,” she intoned in an excellent imitation of the school’s headmistress, “must set a proper example for her students and be impeccable in her conduct at all times.” She sighed. “It was very dull.”
Jonathan chuckled. “I can see how you might find it so.”
“Exactly. Which is why I came up with a more exciting plan for my life.”
He gave her a dubious look. “You think being married to a British peer and living on a country estate will be exciting?”
“More exciting than teaching girls to curtsy and speak French,” she countered at once.
“I’ll grant you that, especially since you intend to spend all your money on furs and jewels and extravagant house parties.”
“I was teasing you about that part,” she admitted. “But the main reason for my choice was that I knew I wanted to be married and have children of my own, and there was no way that would ever happen if I stayed teaching at Forsyte.”
“Because schoolteachers can’t be married?”
“And because I’d never meet any men there. So, I had to do something.” She paused, swallowing hard. “You see, I’d figured out by then that my father was never going to let me join him. And don’t you dare make excuses for him,” she added as he opened his mouth to reply.
“I won’t,” he said quietly. “I’ve come to accept the fact that my friend wasn’t much of a father. Though I do think his illness played a part in his decisions, Marjorie. I honestly do.”
She tried to look at it that way, and after a moment, she gave a reluctant nod. “Perhaps. But he should have told me he was sick. I had the right to know.”
“I won’t argue that point. What’s remarkable is that you both had the same future in mind for you. He wanted you to have all this—the sort of life your mother had in South Africa. He felt he’d taken that away from her, and he wanted you to have it.”
“That must be why he chose you to be my guardian.”
“I think so, yes. Did he get the idea from you? Did you tell him what you had in mind—to come here, join your friends?”
“No, never. I didn’t want to give him the chance to refuse.”
He grinned at that. “Better to ask for forgiveness afterward than permission before?”
“Something like that.”
“I shall keep this tactic of yours in mind for future reference. I think I’ll warn Irene, too.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, laughing. “I’ve given myself away now, haven’t I? Either way,” she added as they turned toward the entrance to Claridge’s Hotel, “I hope you see now why I wasn’t about to let you go off and leave me behind.”
; She started up the wide front steps, where a liveried doorman was holding the door open for them, but Jonathan’s voice stopped her. “Marjorie?”
“Hmm?” She turned to look at him and was startled by the sudden, strange intensity in his face. “What is it?”
His lips parted as if he intended to reply, but then he pressed them tight. Slowly, he shook his head. “Nothing.”
I would have come back for you.
The words hung in the air, unsaid, as Jonathan watched Marjorie walk away, her shapely hips swaying in her close-fitting dress of white silk, jet buttons, and black lace as she walked up the wide steps of the hotel entrance. He still wanted to say them; even now, they hovered on his tongue. But what would be the point?
Everything he’d told her in the carriage two weeks ago was true. He’d used truth to push her away, to protect her, and he’d succeeded. They were friends now, a nice, safe middle ground, if he could keep his head. He ought to be relieved. So why the hell would he want to tip the scales and undo that delicate balance by trying to pull her close again?
Even as he asked himself that question, he was beginning to fear he already knew the answer. Hadn’t he always known, from the moment he’d first set eyes on her?
Marjorie stopped at the top of the steps and turned, the flaring trumpet hem of her dress swirling in a froth of black and white to settle around her ankles. Beneath her white straw hat, an outrageous affair of stuffed gray doves, white ostrich plumes, and black silk ribbons, her brows drew together in a puzzled frown. “Aren’t you coming?”
Left with no choice, he mounted the steps and followed as she turned and went through the doors. Once inside the hotel, they walked together across the foyer and through the lobby to the entrance of the tearoom, where his sisters and Carlotta were waiting with a dark-haired man—Rex’s cousin Paul, no doubt. Beside him was a girl so similar to him in looks that she had to be a sister, and though Jonathan was reasonably sure he’d never met the woman before, the man seemed oddly familiar.
“You two took your time,” Irene chided good-naturedly as he and Marjorie came abreast.
“Are we late?” Marjorie asked.
“No, no,” Irene assured her at once. “Your friends have not yet arrived, so the maître d’hôtel informs me, and Rex isn’t here yet, either. But his cousins are,” she added, gesturing to the couple beside her, “so I’d best go ahead and make the introductions—”
“Some introductions won’t be necessary, Irene,” the man called Paul put in as he grinned at Jonathan. “Hullo, Jack.”
Startled, Jonathan blinked, then he began to laugh, realizing his initial impression of familiarity had been right. “Good lord, Paul Chapman? I’ll be damned. You’re Galbraith’s cousin? I had no idea.”
The two men shook hands, and as they drew back, Jonathan realized everyone was looking at them in surprise. “Schooldays,” he explained. “Winchester.”
“And Oxford,” Paul added.
“That hardly counts,” Jonathan demurred. “I was only there half a term.”
“Half a term, but still a legend,” Paul said. “Or have you forgotten carving naughty limericks into the ancient oak trees?”
The girl beside Paul spoke up before Jonathan could answer. “Since Paul’s ruined any hope of formal introductions,” she said, giving her brother a jab in the ribs, “we shall have to make informal ones. I’m his sister, Henrietta, but if anyone calls me that, I tend to ignore them—”
“It works like a charm,” Paul interrupted, earning himself another jab.
“Call me Hetty,” she said without batting an eyelash and turned to Marjorie, holding out her hand. “You must be Miss McGann. What a smashing dress.”
“Thank you.”
Hetty returned her attention to Jonathan and grinned, an impish grin in a pretty, rakish face. “Back from the wilds, Mr. Deverill, so I hear. We shall expect stories over tea.”
He was given no time to respond.
“Marjorie?”
All of them turned, watching as a dark-haired young woman in green silk approached their party, a pale blonde in blue following her.
“Dulci! Jenna!” Marjorie cried, rushing to meet them. “Oh, it is so good to see you.”
She wrapped an arm around each of her friends in an uninhibited embrace, too delighted to notice their uncomfortable glances around the lobby, but Jonathan noticed. He also saw the way some of the hotel patrons were staring at her askance, and he wondered how long it would be before her American joie de vivre was snuffed out by his own nation’s staid sensibilities. That would be for the best if she was going to adapt to life here, a fact he’d been trying to make her see all along, but as he looked at her face, so radiant and happy, he was rather glad he hadn’t succeeded.
Paul leaned closer to him. “You devil,” he murmured. “How in hell did you manage to become guardian to that stunning lovely?”
Jonathan drew a deep breath. “Just lucky, I suppose.”
“And she’s not engaged, or attached, or mooning over some chap back in America?”
Jonathan set his jaw and did the honorable thing. “No.”
“So, once she’s out of mourning, I’ve got a chance?”
“You?” Jonathan turned, smiling, and honor went to the wall. “Not a chance in hell.”
Chapter 16
Marjorie’s reunion with her friends seemed a smashing success. But then, why shouldn’t it be? Jonathan thought, watching her with her friends across the tearoom’s large round table. This was the life she wanted.
I am going to laugh and dance and enjoy myself and wear whatever colors I please. I’m going to do the season, meet young men, fall in love, and get married.
What a blessing, he thought, to know what you wanted. To be so certain of your course and your future. He envied her that. He hadn’t felt that way about his own life for over a decade.
This was the world she would move in, marry in, live in. She found some things about British life incomprehensible, but that wouldn’t last. With Irene’s help, she would soon find her place here, like a piece fitting into place in a jigsaw puzzle.
He, on the other hand, was more like a stray puzzle piece accidently tossed in the wrong box. Or maybe he didn’t have a box. Maybe he didn’t fit in anywhere, and no matter where he went, he never would.
What do I want? he thought, glancing around the tearoom, exasperated by his own discontent. For God’s sake, what do I want?
Even as he asked himself that question, his gaze swerved to Marjorie again, pulled to her by the same magnetic forces that had pulled him through the doors of Claridge’s a short time ago—impossible forces of desire and need, the same forces that had caused him to take her into his bedroom aboard ship and wrap jewels around her throat, that had impelled him to haul her into his arms and kiss her. The same need he desperately wanted to deny because he knew it could lead nowhere.
Nonetheless, as he remembered those passionate moments aboard the Neptune, arousal began thrumming through his body as impossible fantasies ran through his mind—of taking down her hair and running his fingers through the fiery strands. Of undoing all the black jet buttons down her back and pulling that frothy gown down her hips. Of finding and kissing every inch of her creamy skin, from the tip of her nose to the soles of her feet.
Here, in the elegant ambiance of Claridge’s tearoom, he let his imagination run wild. He touched that magnificent body, shaping the exquisite fullness of her breasts and the lush curves of her hips. He caressed her, the cries of her pleasure echoing through his head and drowning out all the civilized sounds of crystal and china and polite conversation around him.
As if sensing his scrutiny, she turned her head in his direction, and as their gazes met, he strove to keep his face impassive and his torrid thoughts hidden, but when her eyes widened, her lips parted, and her cheeks flushed a delicate pink, he knew he’d failed, and he felt every bit as naked as he’d been in his imagination.
Desperate, he tore his gaze
away. Reminding himself of the safe middle ground that was supposed to be between them now, he strove to regain his control, but even after he’d accomplished that feat, he still felt as transparent as glass, and he knew he had to get out of here.
Thankfully, fate decided to take pity on him. Rex chose that moment to say something about having business matters to attend to, and when he excused himself from the group and stood up, Jonathan did the same.
“Going to Deverill Publishing?” Jonathan asked, hoping he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt. “Mind if I come along,” he went on as the other man nodded, “and have a look at the new premises?”
“Not at all. I did offer you a tour, after all.”
Relieved, Jonathan bowed to the ladies, agreed with Paul that they needed to meet for a drink soon, and followed Rex out of the tearoom.
“Thank you,” he said as the doorman hailed them a hansom cab.
“Too much high society?”
He was happy to seize on that excuse. “I’m not used to it these days, so again, thanks for the chance to escape.”
Rex chuckled. “I think Paul should thank us both,” he said as the hansom pulled up to the curb and rolled to a stop. “You’ve done him quite the favor, leaving him a clear field to your lovely ward.”
Jealousy, powerful and raw, smote Jonathan with such force that he paused by the cab, paralyzed. His blood, barely cooled after his imaginings in the tearoom, heated again—not with desire, however, but with the same primal sense of possession that had nearly led him to toss the Count de la Rosa over the side of the Neptune, a feeling he had no right to claim.
“Don’t worry about Paul,” Rex said at once, seeing his reaction before he could try to mask it, but also, thankfully, misinterpreting it. “He’s not the wild chap he was at school. No title, obviously, but plenty of money and a post in the diplomatic. He’d be a very good match for the girl, in fact.”
Reassurances like that were no help at all, but they should have been. They damn well should have been.
Heiress Gone Wild Page 19