Would he find her upset? Or was she even then laughing at him?
He knocked on her bedroom door.
“Leave me, Lucy,” Ada called out. “Leave me in peace.”
She certainly didn’t sound happy.
Without giving her any warning, he lifted the latch and entered. She sat upon her bed, which he noted was a four-poster, her face covered by her hands, her elbows resting on her knees.
Closing the door behind him, he waited.
After a moment, she lifted her head, then gasped at his presence.
“How…?” she began, slowly rising to her feet. “What are you doing here?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer. She was so very precious to him. And looking at her, he hurt to think she didn’t think of him the same way.
“I suppose I’m here because we are not finished.” He considered her a moment. “At least, I am not finished with you. I certainly cannot speak for what you are feeling.”
“I am feeling wretched,” she declared. “I designed my clever plan, never thinking for a moment I might not be pleased should I succeed. I was so certain of my rightness in punishing you. And I never thought I’d feel ashamed at being found out.”
He ran a hand through is hair, knowing it was probably standing on end. She was speaking rationally, yet she made no sense.
Strange though—if he could turn back the hands of a clock and go back to when he’d picked up her packages from the pavement, even knowing they would end up at this particular excruciating moment, he would do it.
“Why?” Michael asked, unable to keep the tremor from his voice. Manly or not, tears were not too far away. “Why have you done all this? Why the ‘clever plan’?”
She closed her eyes a moment and then sighed. “Still, you don’t know? It’s hard to believe.”
There was only one explanation he could think of why a female would seek to exact revenge on a man.
“Because of Jenny? Some sort of retribution for the pain I caused her? For I swear to you, Ada, I wouldn’t have hurt her for the world.”
Her eyes snapped open, their blue depths boring into his.
“It was me you hurt, not her.”
He was confounded.
“What do you mean?” he stepped closer. “I have tried my utmost in all the time we’ve known each other never to do anything which could hurt you. Remember, the scene on the terrace of Stafford House, it was a misunderstanding.”
She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes, making them shine brighter.
“Not recently,” she explained, her voice thick with emotion. “Before. Three years ago.”
“Three years!” He considered who he was at that time and felt a little sick. But surely, he would remember her of all people, especially if he had wronged her.
“In a garden, in a gazebo, to be precise.” Her words seemed to choke her. She sniffed loudly.
“In a gazebo?” He knew instantly what she meant. As if he’d had scales upon his eyes, they fell away and he realized the truth. “My golden goddess!”
She recoiled at his words, as if she’d heard them before and they had caused her pain.
No! She couldn’t be. That young woman had been an experienced member of the ton, ready and willing for a tryst. Of that, he’d always been certain.
Snaking his hand out, he snagged hold of her wrist and pulled her close. Unresisting, she let him, completely limp in his arms as he put his face to her hair, her neck. He loved her scent. It was familiar and warm. It was his Ada.
But it wasn’t the scent of his dreams, of his memories, of his goddess.
“You don’t smell like her.”
She drew back, a frown on her face. “I don’t…?” Then her expression cleared, and she gave a small, bitter laugh, devoid of joy.
“I used to wear jasmine flower perfume.” Her tone was brittle.
This was all too incredible, and he couldn’t begin to sort through what he was feeling. Joy at having found her, sadness at her duplicity.
“I’ve never smelled the scent before or since.”
“My father procured it for me in a business dealing,” she explained. “It’s rather rare, imported from Asia.”
Tugging her arm free, she went to her dressing table and pulled open a drawer. Grasping something, she returned to him. Without looking at it, she pressed a bottle into his hand.
“There is your golden goddess,” she whispered. “After that night, I couldn’t bear the scent as it reminded me of… of…” She stopped speaking on a half sob and then hiccuped.
Staring at the stoppered vial in his hand, he lifted it to his nose. He didn’t need to open it for the fragrance to flood his senses, transporting him back to that evening. He had been rather foxed, he recalled, on both champagne and brandy, and then a luminous creature had approached him and, with very few words, she’d let him—
“Good God!” he exclaimed, staring at her. “It was you.”
Nodding, she sat down heavily on her bed.
His pulse seemed to be pounding in his ears, and his world tilted. All along, she’d been right there.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” his voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.
“You must be joking,” she said. “I never speak of that night, not to anyone. It was my ruin, the singular most humiliating experience of my life. Why would I confess to you, my tormentor?”
He groaned and grabbed his hair with both fists, tugging in frustration.
“But I haven’t been your tormentor, have I? I’ve loved you and cared about you for months.”
She hung her head.
“Michael, I came to London to ruin you entirely. Instead, I helped you to grow your fortune… and I fell in love.”
“I can’t believe this.” He sat down beside her. “I looked for you after that night at every event I went to. After a month or so, I stopped.”
“You obviously wouldn’t have known me, even if you’d seen me. It was dark, and you were too far in your cups to retain a memory of my face. Undoubtedly, that’s why my scent made such a strong impression because your other senses were impaired. In any case, I left immediately for the country, the very next day in fact, and I never came back.”
She sounded so weary, his heart hurt for her.
Keeping his feet on the floor, he tossed himself back onto the bed to stare at the canopy overhead, keeping the small vial clasped in his hand.
How many times had he wanted to be right here with Ada on her bed?
With his other hand, he grasped her upper arm and dragged her down beside him.
“I don’t know what to say?” he admitted. “Offering an apology and saying ‘sorry’ seem woefully inadequate.”
“Correct,” she agreed. “You cannot simply apologize for something like that. It was too enormous an event. Life changing. In all honesty, though, I don’t hold myself utterly blameless anymore, either.”
She angled her head to look at him. “I did, at first. I thought it was entirely your fault. But I strolled out into the garden like a wool-headed ninny, and I didn’t run when I saw you.”
“Why?” His tone betrayed his sheer frustration and misery. “Why did you seem as if you knew me? My memory of that night has always been of a willing female, thus, I imagined, you were also an experienced one. I remember thinking you wanted me to kiss you.”
“I did. I suppose I can now confess to having grown a tendre for you before we ever truly met. I had seen you during my first Season, and I thought you were superb.”
He groaned and closed his eyes.
“We spoke earlier that evening at the Fontaine’s ball, when you brushed by me on the dance floor, but I was so tongue-tied with nervousness over finally speaking to Lord Alder, the handsome viscount, it turned out I couldn’t speak at all.”
Opening his eyes, he looked at her again. “I’m sorry I don’t remember. As you know, I drank a lot then. You should, indeed, have run from me in the garden.”
She nodded. �
��I simply didn’t understand what would happen after I let you kiss me.”
“No, no, no,” he moaned, draping his arm over his face. To think he’d deflowered her in such a quick and callous way. Of all the sins in his life, the drinking and whoring, he’d never thought he’d taken a virgin, especially unwillingly.
He sat up. “I should be shot.”
“No,” she said, wiping tears away. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I should go to your father and confess what I did.”
“Then you probably would be shot,” she agreed.
Her disinterested tone worried him.
“I have to be punished,” he insisted.
“That’s what I thought, too. That’s what I was trying to do but failed. Luckily,” she added.
“No. You didn’t fail,” Michael insisted. “When you told me you didn’t love me and called me Lord Vile to my face, it was the worst moment of my life. Today, when I discovered you were behind the stock market advice, both good and bad, that was the second worst moment of my life.”
“It could get worse,” she said, and he glanced down at her.
“Are you making sport of me now?”
Shaking her head, she sat up, her expression dejected.
He groaned again. “Frankly, I’m not sure I want to know. Tell me first, what did your husband think of all this? I assume you told him.”
Then the awful thought hit him. “Or did he discover it on your wedding night?”
This time, Ada was the one to groan.
Michael’s imagination seemed to have sprouted wings. Had her husband beat her for her not being a virgin? Cast her out, perhaps?
“What? Tell me?”
Staring at him a long moment, finally, she said, “I had no husband.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Michael let her words sink in and even repeated them in his brain, but they made no sense. There were too many indications she’d had one.
“Your name is fictitious?” he asked when he could form a question.
“Yes, I made up the story of Mr. St. Ange, lost at sea, so I could be free in London, not under my parents’ control.”
“But this house? Your fortune?”
“Just as I helped to build up your account, I have created my own fortune over the past three years. With my father’s help at first, of course, then I believe I was helping him.”
With a slight shrug, she glanced around the room. “I bought this house with my own money.”
He whistled, realizing he couldn’t be prouder of her than he was. Not only was she the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, who grew lovelier the longer he knew her, she was also the smartest.
His brain sifted through the facts he had. She’d never been married, thus, not a widow, but she was evidently a mother to a boy of nearly three.
It hit him as a low hanging tree branch knocks a careless rider—three years ago, no husband, the gazebo, Harry! If she was the smartest, he was, indeed, the densest.
“Harry is my son,” his voice broke on the last word. “I am truly an imbecile. No wonder he reminded me of Gabriel as a boy.”
She merely nodded at him, and he found himself squeezing the perfume bottle in his fist.
By God, he had a son! A wonderful boy, whom he already loved, who gave him hugs.
Tears came unbidden and flowed unchecked down his cheeks. To Michael’s amazement, Ada wrapped her slender arms around his shoulders and cried with him.
After a few minutes, he said, “I will give him my name.”
He felt her nodding. They stayed silent together for a long while. At last, when he had reined in his wayward emotions and wiped his face on his sleeve, he asked, “How did you choose St. Ange? Such an unusual name.”
“I named him after you.”
He waited for her to explain.
“I knew Michael was the name of an archangel,” she said against his shoulder.
Ah, he understood. “Saint Angel in French.”
“That was even before I knew there was a Gabriel in your family.”
“Beyond that,” he told her, “Camille was named after another one, Archangel Camael.”
Ada straightened, and they finally looked into each other’s eyes.
“I suppose your parents hoped for three angelic children,” she guessed.
The irony was not lost on him. He, their first born, had been re-christened ‘vile.’ What an ass he’d been.
After another moment of silence between them, he reached over and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear.
“And why ‘Harry’?”
She shrugged. “No significance. I just liked the name.”
From weeping, he now wanted to laugh. “Perhaps we can keep St. Ange as his middle name after we marry. I prefer it to George.”
Her mouth had fallen open, and he closed it with his finger on her chin. And since he was touching her, he couldn’t help leaning forward and kissing her, too, stunned when she actually let him.
When he drew back and looked into her blue eyes, which were wide with surprise, he could think of only one thing that would destroy him.
“Please Ada Kathryn Ellis, don’t say no. Will you still be my wife?”
*
She was lightheaded from the turbulent emotions of the past half hour. However, one thing she knew—she loved Michael Alder with all her heart, with both his flaws and his virtues.
“I will,” she said, and pure joy flooded her.
He held up the vial of jasmine perfume, offering her a quizzical look.
“You didn’t destroy it. You even brought it back with you to London.”
She had to be honest with him. “I hate to tell you, but I kept it in my drawer to remind me of your vile behavior and of my own childish naivete.”
He winced.
“In a way, it was a source of strength,” she added. “And if Harry had been a girl, I would have used it to illustrate a cautionary tale, which I would have told her one day before her first Season.”
Leaning over, he kissed her again, tenderly, touching his tongue to hers. Then he withdrew.
“I should leave at once.”
His words caught her by surprise. “Whyever for?”
He smiled and cocked an eyebrow. “We’re in your bedroom, sitting on your bed.”
She felt her cheeks heat. “And?”
“And if I stay, I’m going to ravish you. Properly this time.”
Her heart started to pound.
“I’m a widow with a great deal of freedom. You may stay.”
He laughed. “You’re not a widow, though. Not really.”
“No one need ever know that, and I might as well put my independence to good use.”
Without further invitation, Michael dropped the bottle of perfume on the bed and proceeded to unfasten her gown. She ought to be irked at the skill of his fingers, for he undressed her more quickly than her own maid. But she was as eager as he was.
With his assistance, she was soon reclining on her bed, head on her pillow, completely bare to his gaze.
He stared for a long moment, swallowed hard, and then laid beside her.
When she expected him to kiss her again or even latch onto one of her breasts which were aching for his touch, instead, he pressed his mouth to her stomach in a gesture that felt far more like love than desire.
“I want to erase everything about that night,” he murmured, his lips against her bare stomach.
“Except Harry,” she reminded him.
“Except Harry, of course,” he agreed. “I want to start over, take it slowly, enjoy your innocence and give you a new first time.”
Raising his head, he looked into her eyes, and she smiled.
“I don’t know about the slowly part,” she told him. “I’m already undressed and, truth be told, I feel rather ready.”
A strange sound came from him, half laugh, half groan. He claimed her lips fiercely, tugging on her lower one as he pulled away. Then standing, he be
gan to strip off his clothing starting with his cravat, chucking everything hither and yon, making her giggle, until he undid the fall of his pants.
Her smile died as he dropped them to the ground and stood before her in only thin cotton drawers, which he also hastily removed. Then he climbed onto the bed again before she could catch more than a glimpse, enough to see he was as ready as she was.
“The first thing to do is always a long, lingering kiss,” he said, claiming her mouth again.
When he tilted his head, fitting his mouth perfectly to hers, a tingle of desire shot through her. Parting her lips for his tongue, she sighed with happiness. For the first time, she could return his kiss with a clear conscience and a peaceful heart.
How wonderful to have no lies between them.
After their tongues seemed to dance, with her hands in his hair and her body heating up, wanting more, he lifted his head, gazing at her.
“What are you thinking?” she wondered aloud.
He picked up the perfume bottle. “I will never ask again if you say no for, in truth, I love the smell of your skin.” To prove it, he nuzzled her cheek and then her shoulder, which he also licked, causing her to shiver.
“But this scent, as unusual and gorgeous as you are, suits you so perfectly. Will you wear it again? I promise, it will always remind me to be a better man than I was that night.”
Would it be a constant reminder of her own ignorance and his drunken carelessness, or could she think of it as the night Michael Alder made her his woman and gave her Harry? She smiled up at him and nodded.
He unstopped the bottle that had been closed so long, pressed his finger to the opening, and upturned it, releasing a few drops. Tracing his perfume-laden finger down her neck, he let the fragrance explode between them. He swept it across her collarbones, then to the hollow between her breasts.
Pausing only to kiss each peaked nipple, he helped himself to a second dose of jasmine flower and drew it down her stomach to the warm place between her legs. He didn’t stop, even though she found herself desperate for him to touch her there.
As if anointing her, he continued the trail of perfume oil down her left leg to her ankle and then up her right leg, leaving goosebumps of excitement in its wake.
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