by Lavinia Kent
“Where did that come from?” He was surprised by her sudden vehemence. “I thought we were playing with manners.”
“Only in front of Robert and the staff. After last evening it seems a bit late for manners between the two of us.” She brushed at her skirts as if trying to brush all trace of him away. He could not tell if she succeeded.
She turned her face back to him. “Now why are you here?”
“I have come to assure myself both of your welfare—don’t raise that brow at me—it is true. I am not used to sending shoeless, cloakless women out into the streets. And I wished to assure myself that no harm had befallen you.”
She considered his words, her brow clenched—and then relaxed. Yes, she could see the truth of that. “And your other reason?”
“You will not be as charmed by this one. I merely sought further reassurance that I was not letting a master thief loose on the county. I am aware that you have decided that I never intended to summon the magistrate. I admit that I didn’t want to take the time away from my quest that would have been necessary to pursue a prosecution. I intended that fright would do the job for me.”
“Only I don’t frighten easily.”
“No, you don’t. I would have thought awakening tied to a strange man’s bed would have been a cause for alarm.”
Lady Westington slid back in her chair, making herself comfortable. At the same time, her very comfort highlighted the curves of her body. “That might have been true if it had been the first bed I had awoken tied to. I was more distressed by being tied fully dressed than I would have been bare as a newborn babe. Then I would have understood the rules by which we played.” Her smile grew catlike, and he found himself focused on her lips, waiting for her tongue to caress them.
There was a scratch at the door, and a maid came in with a tray of drinks. She poured them quickly and then vanished like a shadow.
Masters shook his head, breaking Clara’s spell. She’d done this before at the tavern with the bacon, one smile, one grin, one bite, and all his thoughts fled to his trousers. It was an art she clearly wielded with great precision.
He was no innocent boy to be taken in by such games. He forced his glance up to her eyes. They did not portray the confidence of the rest of her expression.
She caught his glance and he could see her eyes harden and grow more calculating, giving the impression that she knew exactly what she did and why she did it. Her tongue did dart out then, but he ignored its invitation.
He coughed. “It is clear that I am not as familiar with these games as you. I have always considered myself a country gentleman despite my recent time in London. I might never have spent more than a fortnight there were it not for my sisters—and my bankers.”
“Violet did say the estate was a shambles when you inherited.”
“And she did not know the half of it.” He leaned back, resting his head on the high back of the chair. It sometimes felt as if he had the entire world to worry about instead of only two sisters and an estate that, after more than a decade, was finally paying for itself. He wished he could close his eyes and sleep before the fire. His head was beginning to pound. The quiet of the house was inviting with the rain pattering outside and only the distant noises of chattering maids to disturb him.
Of course, the quiet could not last. “Why didn’t you share your problems with Violet—forgive me if I call her that, I have never thought of her as Lady Carrington. Your sister cannot be but a few years younger, and she would have given her all to help.”
He sat up, letting the veil of disapproval fall about him. “It is really none of your business. All I will say is that she did help.”
“By marrying a man more than five decades older. I am not sure that was the type of help she would have chosen.”
He turned his head to look at her fully. She was stiffly upright, leaning slightly toward him, fully focused on his face. His answer was evidently of great importance to her. “It was the only help possible.”
She leaned closer. Although her voice was quiet, the force of her sentiment was unmistakable. “That’s easy to say when you weren’t the one paying the price.”
“I’ve never understood why my sister and now you must harp on the issue. It is over and done with.” He fought the urge to rub his temples. A dull pain was building, pressing ever stronger in his temples. At least she did not remark on the rumors that had come last year with Isabella’s disappearance. “Don’t look at me like that. I know that marriage to a seventy-plus-year-old is not every girl’s dream, but Dratton was a good man and he cared for her. Do you imagine her life would have been better penniless, without a home? Who would have wed her then?”
“But what of love?” Her voice was softer, more inquiring.
“Love. I don’t know that it even exists. I am sure it does not exist when one is starving and cold. My sister has the life she has because of the choices I made.”
“They should have been her choices.”
“You sound just like her.” He stood and walked away from her. His head was pounding now. “I am so tired of opinionated women. Can you never just trust a man to take care of you?”
“There is no reason for us to. We can take care of ourselves.”
He turned back to her. “By flirting and flaunting your body. By depending on your sexuality to get you what you want. Is that what you call love?”
There was a momentary stillness to her features. Life normally filled her in a way he had never before seen, and then in one instant it was gone. Until he experienced its lack, he had not realized its importance.
He saw her shake herself, although she made no movement. “No, that is not what I call love. I would be a fool to say that sex is not part of love, but love is not dependent on it.”
“Then what do you call love?”
Her soul hurt. His simple question of her flirtation had caught her unawares, and now she felt ripped open. She was not normally so fragile, but the desolation of not remembering that night was still with her, and his question struck at it.
At least she could relax her suspicions of him again. Violet might not care for her brother, but she had spoken of him as honest. She might not like what he did, but he never hid his actions.
That did not make his words less painful now. Clara did flirt. She did smile and flaunt and use every bit of her feminine wiles to control a situation.
It was the only way to survive.
She wished it were not so. Women who managed to survive without using those tarnished resources earned her greatest admiration. There were so few of them.
Men criticized a woman for using her femininity and punished her for not. It was the way of the world.
“Do you have no answer for me? I thought women could spend days talking of the wonder of love. You rebuke me for forcing my sister to marriage—a marriage she never once complained of to me until it was over—and then you can’t even tell me what this magical love is.”
She drew every inch of that feminine power to her and she smiled up at him. She relaxed the muscles around her eyes, making them soft and young. Her chin lowered, making her peer up at him through her thick, sooty lashes. And she smiled. Not the smile of a schoolgirl. Not the smile one gives when presented with an unexpected surprise.
This was a woman’s smile full of knowledge and mystery, a smile of full lower lips, of darting tongue, of knowledge of just what a mouth can do. “Yes, I know what love is. I know it in all its aspects. I know the parts of it that draw and tempt a man to do things he would never do otherwise. I know the parts of it that grow and flourish as man and woman know each other with ever increasing intimacy.
“I know what it is to lie night after night wrapped in the same lover’s arms, never wanting to be anywhere else. I know the pain of being away from your love for even a moment and the joy of each reunion. I have been delighted by my husband’s smile and felt the pain of each disappointment more sharply than he.
“I remember the delight i
n the simplest of tasks because he was there with me. Walking across a field with him on a blustery autumn day was a far greater joy than the grandest of London balls.
“And I know love’s pain.” She let the smile fall from her face—this was something she did not speak of—lest this man, this near stranger, see the pain that she never revealed. “I know what it is to lose it all and to wonder if it was real. There is a pain in love, in always wondering if one is enough, if one does enough, if one is ever loved as much as one loves. And when one loses love, those questions never fade. One always remembers, and wonders.”
She dropped her face into her hands, not crying, but unable to face him and see the reflection of her emotion. The reflections of herself that she saw in others were always the most painful. It was easier to hide in a mirror than in the open eyes of another.
“You speak of your marriage.” His tone was flat, and she was thankful. Sympathy had never been her desire.
“Yes.”
“I am sorry. I’ve heard little of your life with Lord Westington beyond that he was a good man.”
“He was the best.” She still did not look at him. “I know that his goodness is forgotten in my actions after his death.”
“But only by others, never by you.”
“No, never by me.” She did look up then, letting him see the full irony of her expression. “Would you believe that everything I have done since then is because of him? That I live my life the way I do in his memory?”
His brows drew together, emphasizing the leanness of his features. “I can accept that it is so, but would confess no understanding.” He raised a hand and rubbed his temple.
She was glad of the gesture. It freed her from the temptation to explain. “You are in pain.”
“It is nothing.”
“You should rest. I will have the maid freshen a bed, and you should lie down for a few hours.” She issued the invitation before she could think—and was then left with too many thoughts. Had she wanted him to stay? Or had she only been acting with proper kindness?
“No. I did not mean to stay. I truly only came to bring your things.” His brows had not relaxed, and she wondered if his expression was caused by the ache in his head rather than her own revelations.
She picked up the bell and rang it sharply. “That matters little now. You cannot go out in this weather when you are not your best.” She gestured to the window, where the rain was now pouring by barrels not buckets. “And if you will not think of yourself, think of your poor coachman. He’ll drown before you make it back to town.”
The maid arrived, and she gave direction without further ado, leaving him little choice. They did not speak again until the maid returned and led him away. She should perhaps have shown him to his room, but the desire to be alone was growing upon her.
She heard one muttered comment about managing women as he left, but it was not enough to bring even the hint of a smile to her face.
“The gentleman is burning with fever, my lady.” The maid’s voice filled the quiet room.
Clara glanced over at Robert, before carefully putting her wine down. He grimaced, and she could sense the words behind the expression. After their earlier comments that their visitor would find a way to prolong their hospitality, the irony of the situation seemed rife.
“Are you sure?” Clara could not resist the question.
The maid hesitated before answering. “Yes, I went to wake him as you asked, and I found him still sleeping and flushed. I tried to rouse him, but he only grumbled at me. There was no mistaking the heat rising off his person.”
Robert put his own half-full glass beside hers and headed for the door. “I suppose I must check on him. He will have to stay, of course.”
“Of course,” Clara answered, but she was already speaking to herself. She picked up her wine and downed it in a single swig. She considered Robert’s brandy before repeating the gesture.
Masters had been sent her to bedevil her. There could be no other explanation. She was being called to task for all the misdeeds of her life. There was no other reason he should leave her so unsettled—cause those strange tingles of awareness that so distracted her.
A loud crackle of thunder shook the floors, and she resisted the urge to stamp her foot in answer. Instead, she placed Robert’s now empty glass beside her own and went to advise the cook that dinner would be delayed.
She had only just returned when Robert entered.
“The maid is correct,” he said. “He has clearly taken a chill. I’ll have the physician summoned, but I am sure either of us could guess the outcome: rest, liquids, a dose of willow tea, and a good measure of hope.” He picked up his empty glass, stared at it a moment, shrugged, and placed it back on the table.
“I’ll have his coachman advised that they’ll be spending the night. I am sure he won’t regret not traveling in this weather.” She walked back to the door, eager to escape as she examined her own emotions.
She was not distressed by illness, and not because it required his stay. No, this distress lay deeper, and she feared to examine the reason. Her emotions were raw enough without this added complication.
She could only wonder what would happen if she was forced to interact with the blasted man on a prolonged basis.
Chapter 5
Masters wondered if she’d ever take that step into his bedchamber. Everything he’d ever heard of her daring reputation seemed counteracted by the toes that never inched over the threshold—not in all the seeming eternity of the days he’d been stuck in this bed. The siren that all London had spoken of would never have been held by the bounds of strict propriety, but Lady Westington never took that single step. Only the sharpness of her gaze and the occasional undertone to her voice ever betrayed the woman he was convinced she hid within.
“Aren’t you going to feel my brow?” he asked. “How will you know if I am progressing?”
Lady Westington stood in the doorway and lowered her chin. “I can tell from the glint in your eye that you are doing well. The feverish look is gone. And your voice no longer sounds like you’ve a throat full of rusty nails. You may even be allowed out of bed tomorrow.”
“But what of today? If I stare at the bed’s canopy even a moment longer I will enter a state of madness and you may never be rid of me.” He tried to inject humor into his voice, but was afraid he merely sounded peckish. He was sick of being in bed now that he again felt human, tired of being waylaid from his quest to find Isabella and her secrets. He needed to be up and moving.
“You sound like a child.” She spoke without the tinge of sarcasm he had come to expect. “I’d offer to have you moved to the library to sit by the fire, but I fancy you’d object to having the footmen carry you down the stairs, and I would not wish you to become dizzy and fall.”
“I do believe I can manage a flight of stairs without assistance. I have been walking for a few years now.”
She smiled with absolute kindness. The expression caught his breath. Where was the temptress of the first day? The woman who could make him grow hard while eating a slice of bacon? The woman who would peer at him so knowingly from under her lashes before slicing him down with her words? The woman who stood here now was neither of those. She was soft and feminine in the extreme, but her eyes offered nothing but comfort and solace.
And she wouldn’t step into his room.
What trick was she about?
It was impossible to ask her about that or anything when she stood where anybody might hear. Perhaps that was her plan.
It was maddening.
She stepped into the hall, and for a moment he feared she was gone. Instead, he heard her call for a maid and ask that the fire in the library be stoked.
“I shall probably regret this,” she said as she stepped back to the threshold. “You will need to let me go first on the stairs in case you should become dizzy.”
He examined her from the rounded toes of her slippers, up past the slight if well-rounded hips, ov
er the slender ribs and perfect bosoms, finally ending on her slim shoulders. He could not imagine what she thought she’d do if he did fall. Most likely he’d sweep them both down the steps.
The words were on the tip of his tongue when he stopped. She was chewing on her lower lip and was not convinced that she was doing the correct thing. If he said anything she was likely to change her mind and leave him staring at the ceiling.
If he could get her alone in a room he might begin to question, to find out what she was about.
He nodded. “I promise.” He started to swing his legs over the edge of the bed. “Is my robe here? I notice that my own nightshirt has miraculously appeared.”
“I had your driver fetch some of your belongings from The Dog while you were not quite yourself. Your valet has apparently arrived in the village and should be making his way here by the end of the day when he has put your trunks to rights. It appears that you suffered from the same illness as he. Hopefully, that means that you also will be up and about soon.”
She glanced up, mouth agape, as his bare calves made an appearance from beneath the covers and his bare feet slid to the floor. “Stop, I’ll get somebody to help.”
“I am quite capable of getting out of bed. Of course, if you think I need help, you’re more than welcome to give me an arm.” He hated that his legs wobbled as he stood.
She actually took that daring step into the room, hand extended toward him. Then he took another step, this one firmer.
She turned, her skirts spinning about her, and stepped back into the hall. “I’ll be right here if you need help. The robe you were inquiring about is hanging in the wardrobe. I am sure you can find it—or do you want me to call the maid?”
“I’ll manage.” It gave him a moment to walk unobserved to the cabinet. He pulled a pair of trousers up under his nightshirt and then yanked out the deep red velvet robe. The lush fabric had been a Christmas present from Violet, and he’d never known quite what to make of it. Was it a gift of warmth and color, or a comment on the stark way he chose to live his life?