The Tempting of Thomas Carrick

by Stephanie Laurens

  She could feel his gaze on her, felt the intensity increase as he tipped his head and studied her face.

  “Lucilla.”

  One word, but it was greeting, question, supplication, and much more.

  She forced air into her suddenly tight lungs, then glanced briefly at him—too briefly to get caught in his amber gaze. “Why are you here?”

  Refixing her gaze on the verbena and carefully clipping another long shoot, she waited—for the answer to the only question that mattered.

  He sighed softly, so softly she wasn’t sure she was supposed to hear. Then he shifted to face the burn; after a moment, he sat on the stone wall alongside her, his hands gripping the coping on either side of him.

  Not so close that he was in her way, but within easy arm’s reach.

  She glanced at the leg closest to her. “How’s your wound?”

  That was the healer in her speaking; she hadn’t meant to show any interest, at least not yet, but that other part of her had raised her head and claimed her tongue.

  “A lot better. I had a doctor in Glasgow take out the stitches.” He paused, then added, “He was amazed by your work—both the stitches and the effect of your salve.”

  She humphed.

  And waited.

  More than a minute ticked by before he said, his voice low, but without any real inflection, “You asked why I’m here—why I’ve come back. The answer is because…I was a coward.”

  That hadn’t been any part of Thomas’s rehearsed speech, but sitting there in the quiet of the garden, with the one woman who meant so much to him, he’d finally understood what Richard had meant when he’d said: What’s the one thing you have that you haven’t yet laid at her feet?

  He hadn’t given her the truth—the simple unadorned truth—because he hadn’t wanted to lay aside his pride.

  He looked down at the toes of his boots. From the corner of his eye, he could see her face—see her arrested expression, see her hands paused, hovering, no longer smoothly working.

  She was as surprised by that confession as he.

  So he had an opening—a moment when her guard was down.

  Drawing breath, he seized the chance and plowed on, “You asked, and I explained why I resisted the attraction between us—because it wasn’t a part of my plan, the definite plan I had for my life.” He fixed his gaze on the tumbling waters of the burn. “I told you of my plan—but I didn’t tell you why I had a plan. Why adhering to that plan was so important to me.”

  At the edge of his vision, he saw her blink, saw her expression grow distant as she remembered that night and what he’d told her in the corridor—before some blackguard had invaded her room and made it all irrelevant.

  Head tilting slightly, she murmured, “I didn’t think to ask, either.”

  “You were caught up in absorbing what I said.” He remembered her concentration, her focus; even then, before they’d been intimate, the connection between them had run deep.

  After a moment, she flicked him a glance, this time allowing their eyes to meet. “So,” she said, “why did you have a plan—one that you’ve clung to for so long, and so doggedly?” She looked back at the straggly bush and rather viciously snipped another long shoot. “That same plan was behind you returning to Glasgow, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see and said, “Yes.” Shifting his gaze back to the burn, he drew in a breath. Held it for a moment as he ordered his thoughts. “I can remember when I first started working on my plan. I was ten years old. It was a month or so after my parents died.” He nodded beyond the burn, to the north, toward the Carrick estate. “I was at Carrick Manor at the time—after my parents died, Manachan brought me back to the clan, and I spent that next year there.”

  He fell silent.

  Lucilla glanced at him but didn’t prompt. She wanted, so much, to understand, and she only would if he told her in his own words, in his own time.

  After a moment, he went on, his voice deeper, his normally smooth tones rough, “I was an only child—my parents and I were close. Very close. We were holidaying in the Highlands, but I had a tutor and still had lessons. My parents left me with my books and went out for an afternoon drive in my father’s curricle.” He looked down. “Only their broken, lifeless bodies came back.”

  She resisted the urge to reach out and touch his arm. It was an old wound, one that needed no more healing.

  After a moment, he raised his head and drew in a breath. “When I finally…woke up again—that’s what it felt like when I came fully back to myself and re-engaged with normal life—I was at Carrick Manor with the clan. And I decided that what had happened…that I was never going to let that happen to me again. So I started to plan exactly how my life would be—I thought that if I controlled all the important aspects, if I determined my own life and always kept control, then I could make sure that whatever happened, I would never be hurt like that again. But even as a ten-year-old, I knew that the most important aspect of avoiding being hurt like that again was ensuring that I never cared for anyone like that again—not in the way I had cared for my parents.”

  He looked down at the ground before him. “I was a boy, a male—I didn’t use the word ‘love.’ But that’s what I meant—I needed to remain in control of my life so that I could ensure I never again loved anyone to that extent. To the point where it opened up a vulnerability inside me—to where, if anything happened to that person, my heart would again be ripped in two.”

  He exhaled, then raised his head. “That was the real reason behind my plan—it was my way of ensuring that I was never hurt again—and that’s why I clung to it so tenaciously.” His voice lowered. “And that’s why, above all other reasons, my carefully planned life could never include you.”

  She looked at him.

  He turned his head and met her gaze, and there was no screen in his amber-gold eyes, just an open heart and honesty. “You couldn’t be a part of my life because I knew I would care for you. In exactly the way I didn’t want to care for anyone. You were my Achilles’ heel, and I’ve known that for a very long time. I’ve felt the connection between us, the attraction, for as long as you have.”

  She saw in his eyes that that was the truth, and her heart started to lift, to lighten.

  His focus turned inward. “Over the last years, when you didn’t marry and it became clear that that attraction wasn’t fading, I deliberately avoided meeting you. But then the Bradshaws and everything else happened, and…you stepped past every barrier I erected, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold you back—or to hold myself back from you.” He paused, then with a tip of his head, admitted, “And, for a while, I fooled myself that a liaison would work. I wanted you and you wanted me, and as long as I never forgot my plan and the reasons behind it…I told myself that I would be safe.”

  He looked down at his feet, and she got the impression that it was getting harder, not easier, for him to speak—to expose himself as he was.

  He drew a short breath, and the planes of his face hardened. “But then, here, when I finally realized that I was teetering on the brink of giving up my plan, that…coerced by what I felt for you, blinkered and overwhelmed by yours and your Lady’s seductions combined, I was bordering on doing exactly what I had always held so strongly against…when I realized that, I panicked and fled.”

  Thomas rolled straight on, giving himself no time to rein back the words, to censor them. “And in that, I was a coward, because I knew all along exactly what I was fleeing from, and why. I’ve always known the reason behind my plan—it was a conscious decision, not an unthinking, instinctive one. I knew I was running from…” He glanced briefly at her. “If not love, then the prospect of it. So I ran because, even after all these years, I was still too much of a coward to risk the pain of loving and losing again.”

  Dragging in a tight breath, he shifted on the cold stone. “So I rejected you and hurt you. I turned my back on all that I might have had here and ran back to my tig
htly controlled, forever-to-be-safe life in Glasgow.”

  Gazing, unseeing, at the rippling burn, he felt faintly lightheaded from the effort of forcing the words out, yet, at the same time, he felt curiously lighter, lightened—not precisely absolved, but as if, in cataloguing his actions aloud, he’d at least acknowledged his failings and had regained a measure of honor through that.

  “And?”

  Uttered in a quietly encouraging rather than imperious tone, her question slid across his mind.

  The answer was there, obvious and true. “My carefully organized, eminently safe life didn’t fit me anymore.” Raising his gaze, he looked north and east, toward Glasgow. He filled his lungs, then shrugged. “Something happened while I was here—when I reached the city again, I wasn’t the same man who’d ridden south. I’d…tasted ambrosia, if you like. I’d sampled a different sort of life, one that suited me so much better than my carefully constructed life in the city. Living here, in the Vale by your side, satisfied me in ways that I hadn’t known were possible. Just those few days here opened up parts of my soul that I hadn’t known were there and filled them up.”

  He turned his head and met her eyes. “You asked me why I’m here. I came because I’ve changed my mind. I want to claim all you offered me—the position by your side. To be your lover, your defender and protector, your consort—your husband.”

  He’d hoped to see…forgiveness, compassion, perhaps even sympathy in the emerald green. Instead, all he saw was a shield—an impenetrable screen he’d never seen before. She’d never screened herself from him before. The realization rocked him, but almost immediately his instincts steadied him; he’d known she wouldn’t make this easy.

  He hadn’t known she could cut him off so completely—hold him so much at a distance.

  Instead of directly replying to his statement, still holding his gaze, she slowly—imperiously and a touch arrogantly, too—arched her fine brows. “So you ran from love? Does that mean you love me?”

  He’d hoped against hope that she wouldn’t ask, yet he’d known she would. He thought of simply saying yes, but…after what he’d done, lying to her seemed a very bad idea. He searched her eyes yet saw nothing; it was as if she held a reflective screen between him and all hint of her feelings. He felt his jaw clench but forced himself to say, “The only honest answer I can give is that I don’t truly know. I’ve avoided love—steadfastly and concertedly—for twenty years, all my adult life. I don’t know what love looks like, feels like. I don’t know that love for you doesn’t already live inside me—I only know that, if I remain here, with you, it might and most likely will.”

  Truth. Absolute truth. And no matter what it cost him; that was what he’d vowed during the ride there to give her. He owed her that, at least. And so he went on, “You ask whether I love you. While I can’t answer that, I can say that I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I cannot exist—not as I wish to exist—without you.” He dragged in a breath and forced the rest of his declaration—the only one he could, with complete honesty, give—from his chest to his lips. “I now know that, after this, after returning here, if you refuse me and my suit and send me away, that I won’t go far.”

  A short, rather hollow laugh slipped past his guard and expanded on the words “I’m so in thrall to you that I seriously doubt I would ever be content with letting you out of my sight, my reach, my keeping. Even if you didn’t want me close, I would still be here, compelled to be here to keep watch over you.”

  “I did tell you that you couldn’t escape.” Calmly, she turned from him. Returning her gaze to her hands, she snipped a leafy branch. “Precisely because you are, in truth, my consort, my protector and defender, you will always feel that way. I warned you that it’s not possible to avoid the effects of what links us.”

  So she was going to be difficult; he supposed he deserved that. All but gritting his teeth, he pointed out the convoluted logic behind her statement. “Being your consort, your protector and defender, isn’t what links us.”

  She gave a little nod, as if he’d passed some test. “No, it’s not. Those qualities are consequences, not the cause.”

  When she said nothing more, he narrowed his eyes on her face and quietly asked, “So what does link us?”

  She had the answer ready. “A power greater than any other—and one even less likely to let you go.”

  He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So what am I supposed to take from that? That because I feel so strongly about protecting you, I must be in love with you?”

  When she didn’t answer, he spread his arms in appeal. “What do you want me to say, Lucilla? I can’t claim to love you if I don’t know that I do.”

  She didn’t respond, just cut another bloody branch; his temper was starting to fray. Then he remembered. “Manachan said something on that last afternoon we were there, when he was convincing me to bring you back to the Vale. He told me that I needed to learn to think with my heart as well as my head. I didn’t understand then, but now perhaps I do. I tried—with everything in me, I tried—to keep my heart closed against you. And I failed. This connection between us, whatever it might be, isn’t something my heart will allow me to walk away from.” He tried to bite back the next words, but they tumbled out. “It certainly wasn’t my head that brought me back to your side.”

  He saw a faltering in her shield—a brief primming of her lips as if she struggled to hold back a smile.

  But still, she said nothing.

  He watched her openly and saw no sign of encouragement, yet neither did he feel any sense of being pushed away. Not even of being truly locked out. She just hadn’t let him in again, hadn’t yet accepted him back.

  He sighed. He could see that they might go around and around for hours, even days, debating the fine point of whether he loved her or not—whether he would say the words, even if he wasn’t yet certain.

  Looking down, he linked his fingers, stared at them for several seconds, then said, “I went to Glasgow because I didn’t believe the position by your side was the right one for me—for the man I wanted to be. But in Glasgow, I learned a deeper truth: That I can’t be the man I wanted to be—I can only be the man I am.”

  He looked at her—waited, and waited, until at last she glanced at him. Capturing her gaze, he simply said, “The man I am is yours, Lucilla—the only life I now want is one by your side, filling the position of your husband, your consort, and all that comes with that.” He drew in a deeper breath, exhaled, and said, “So if that position’s still vacant, I’m here to claim it. Will you have me?”

  She didn’t really have a choice. Lucilla knew that, yet still she held back. Not from any wish to prolong the discussion, to extract more revelations from him, or to make the interview more difficult for him. He’d come back to her of his own accord, exactly as she’d needed him to, exactly as she’d prayed he would. Yet his going had opened a vein of uncertainty inside her, and that was something she was ill-equipped to deal with; she had no experience handling…not being sure.

  So now she hesitated, wanting to simply say “yes” and have done, yet…

  She continued to hold his gaze. He’d been open and honest; she had to be the same. She dragged in a breath, and let it out with the words “If I accept you as my husband, are you sure you won’t, at some point in the future, come to regret it—to resent the demands the position makes of you—and leave me again?”

  With those few simple words, that straightforward question, she cut Thomas to the quick. She didn’t lower her shields, didn’t let him see her emotions, yet those words communicated them oh, so clearly. She had never doubted her power—would never have questioned the very force they’d been discussing—before.

  Before he’d turned his back on her and walked away.

  He drew in a long, slow breath—then, his eyes still holding hers, he slipped from the wall to stand beside her.

  She shifted to face him, her shears in her hand. He recalled Marcus’s warning but ignored i
t. She wasn’t going to stab him with her shears; she’d already stabbed him with her words, with the proof of the vulnerability he was responsible for creating inside her.

  He’d spoken of his own vulnerability; he knew what it felt like, recognized the effect of it in others.

  Slowly, giving her plenty of time to react if she would, he raised both hands and cupped her face.

  Instinctively, she shifted closer as he tipped her face to his.

  He looked down into her eyes, reached as deeply as she would allow. With the force of everything inside him, he stated, “I will never—ever—leave you again. I will never quit the place by your side. I want you, but more, I need you—you and only you. You are the center point, the pivot, the fulcrum of my life, the anchor about which I must and always will revolve.” Drowning in green, he paused to draw breath. “You are, and always will be, all and everything I want—all and everything I need.”

  Her free hand rose to cup the back of his.

  And, at last, with that feather-light touch, through that and the thinning of her shields, he saw acceptance bloom within her, gradually strengthening in her eyes.

  He lowered his head, drawn to kiss her, to claim her mouth at least.

  She didn’t retreat but came up on her toes to meet him.

  He paused with a bare whisper separating their hungry lips. So hungry—he could feel her hunger rise to meet his. Once their lips touched, all talk would be behind them.

  He spoke breath to breath. “Do you accept me as yours, forever and always?”

  Her lids rose; green fire met his eyes. “Yes.”

  He exhaled and briefly closed his eyes. “So my lady’s—your Lady’s—prophecy is fulfilled.”

  She didn’t answer, just slid her hand to his nape and drew his lips to hers.

  * * *

  So my lady’s—your Lady’s—prophecy is fulfilled.

  But it wasn’t. Not quite.

  Thomas knew that as surely as he knew the difference between a negotiated agreement and an effective partnership. They’d managed the first; they had yet to achieve the second.