Gentleman Jim

by Mimi Matthews

  “Oh, can’t I?” she shot back. “I’ve spent the last hours frightened to the heart that you were injured somewhere on the road from Chiswick. Do you have any idea what that feels like? To know I couldn’t go back for you? That I couldn’t help you? I couldn’t even ascertain if you were alive or dead. And now you expect me to leave. To just…what? Hail a hackney to take me back to Green Street?” Her face crumpled slightly. “Confound you. I thought I’d lost you all over again.”

  His breath burned in his chest. He hadn’t thought—hadn’t considered. It had been too long since anyone cared about him. Not the title or the succession, but him. “I’m sorry I caused you distress.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just…let me look after you. I won’t be satisfied until I see for myself that you’re going to be all right.”

  He could do little else but stare at her, his jaw clenched hard against the emotion dammed up within him. She couldn’t possibly comprehend the danger she was in. Not only the fact that she was here, at a hotel in the dead of night, but that she was here. Alone with him when he was in such an unpredictable mood.

  He wanted her, damn him. He needed the solace of her arms. To lose himself in the sweet-scented feminine softness of her body.

  It was already impossible to be near her without longing for her like a lovestruck pup. Thus far, only the respectability of daylight—of mannerly visits in the Trumbles’ parlor and polite encounters on Bond Street—had kept that longing in check. And even then, he’d faltered. The day they’d kissed in Hyde Park, and then again when he’d waltzed with her on the Parkhursts’ terrace. With each touch of her lips and clasp of her hand, he’d lost a little more of his implacable resolve. The very resolve that was meant to see him through this.

  If only she’d waited until the morning to call on him, he might have regained some semblance of control over himself. But now…

  “Let me see.” She stretched out her hand to loosen the tie of his banyan.

  This time he made no attempt to stop her. He didn’t back away, merely stood there, holding his breath as the silken garment slipped over his shoulder and down his bare arm, exposing the bullet wound to her view.

  But it wasn’t the bullet wound that caught Maggie’s eye. It wasn’t his arm at all. It was his naked chest.

  She froze in front of him, her gaze riveted to an old scar that slanted from the bottom of his neck down over his pectoral muscle. Long faded, but still quite visible, it was the sole reminder of who he was and where’d he come from. The lone memento of a past he’d tried very hard to forget.

  Bloody blasted hell.

  He hadn’t meant to reveal it to her. Not here, not now. Had he been thinking clearly—

  But it was too late.

  A strange expression came over her face. She went pale and flushed by turns. And then she touched him. The slightest brush of her fingertips against his exposed flesh. It sent an earthquake through his vitals. A shudder he could neither hide nor suppress.

  She inhaled a ragged breath, as though she felt it too. That deep bond of connection, forged so long ago, unbroken by time and distance. “Great God, I knew it.” Her eyes found his, a glimmer of triumph shining in their liquid sapphire depths. “It really is you.”

  Maggie had scarcely touched him before St. Clare was, once again, moving away from her.

  He pulled his banyan back over his shoulder, and tying it with a jerk, strode into his bedroom. A table beside the bed held a bottle of brandy and a single glass. He poured out a generous measure and drank it down in one swallow.

  She followed after him. Surely he wasn’t going to continue to deny it? Not now. The scar across his chest was definitive proof. She’d recognized it instantly, remembering the bloodied gash left by Fred’s whip as if it were yesterday.

  “Look at what he did to me,” Nicholas had said on that fateful night so many years ago. “I ask you, is this the work of a gentleman?”

  St. Clare slammed his glass down on the table. “I told you that you shouldn’t have come here.”

  Maggie knew she shouldn’t have come. It was reckless and wild. A very real risk to her reputation. Worse than that, it was unfair to Bessie (who Maggie had told), and doubly unfair to Jane (who Maggie hadn’t).

  But Maggie hadn’t cared about burdening her servant, or keeping secrets from her friend, not when St. Clare’s well-being hung in the balance.

  Nicholas’s well-being.

  They regarded each other across the short distance of his bedchamber like two adversaries on the verge of battle. A pulsing heat throbbed between them. A palpable tension that was as much a product of hurt and anger as desire.

  “You lied to me,” she said.

  His gaze was locked with hers, his heavy-lidded eyes almost sullen. “I know.”

  “You made me doubt myself. When all the while—”

  “I know.” Bitterness and frustration sounded in his voice, along with a raw edge of genuine regret. He raked a hand through his golden hair. His tousled locks, usually combed into meticulous order, stood half on end.

  She’d never seen him less poised. Less in control of himself. “Why did you do it?” she asked.

  He turned away from her for a moment, his countenance half-hidden in the shadows cast from a branch of guttering candles on his bedside table.

  And she felt it, the tremor that went through his body. The anger and frustration and soul-deep remorse. The roiling conflict that warred within him between the past and the present.

  “Is it so terrible to recall it? To remember who you were?” She took a step toward him. “Who we were to each other?”

  He shook his head, his face taut with some inexplicable emotion.

  “I knew it was you. All I wanted was the truth. For you to acknowledge—”

  “Acknowledge what?” The question was practically a snarl. “I never expected to see you again. How was I to know you’d be here? That you’d come to me as you did that night?”

  “You must have been surprised.”

  He made a choked noise. It might have been a laugh. “You’ve developed a talent for understatement.”

  “And you’ve developed a skill for hiding your true feelings.”

  “Whatever skill I had has left me. I am as you see me now, without a shred of my armor.” He poured himself another drink. “You’ve taken it all from me.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “You can hardly blame me for your present condition. It wasn’t I who—”

  “No. It’s my own fault. I have no control at all where you’re concerned. I never have.” He drained his glass. “You should go,” he said. “I’m not myself.”

  She gave him a wry look.

  “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. You’re upset with yourself for acting so impulsively on my behalf. And you’re in pain, I suspect, which accounts for your drinking.”

  He scrubbed his face with his hands. “You have to go,” he said again. “I mean it, Maggie.”

  “Undoubtedly. But first things first.” She came closer, backing him against his bed. “Let me have another look at your wound. A proper one this time.”

  “Haven’t you seen enough?” he growled at her.

  “Sit down.” Her pulse was fluttering madly, but her voice was under admirable control. “No more nonsense.”

  Muttering something that sounded like an oath, he grudgingly sank back onto the edge of his mattress. His hands were braced at his sides, his feet planted firmly on the floor.

  Maggie stepped forward between his legs. When he was seated, the two of them were of a similar height. It gave her a sense of command over the situation she didn’t entirely feel. “You’re like a great lion with a wounded paw. A wounded paw and a sore head.” She untied his banyan and pushed it off of his shoulders. “You don’t often drink too much, do you?”

  “Rarel
y.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it.” She moistened her lips. Her mouth had gone dry. And no wonder. He was bared to the waist in front of her. An arresting sight. It made her cheeks heat and her stomach quiver. She forced herself to focus on his arm. To behave in a clinical fashion, not in the manner of a lady on the verge of having the vapors.

  It wasn’t easy.

  His chest might have been chiseled from a slab of marble. Every hollow and groove of his naked flesh was perfectly defined. As elegant with power as a statue of some Grecian God or hero. All lean muscles and tightly coiled strength.

  The Nicholas of her youth had been spare and lanky. Far less intimidating to her senses. She wondered what he’d done to earn all these muscles. Jane had said he was a sportsman, but the smattering of faded scars on his chest and shoulders spoke less of pleasure than survival.

  And he had survived.

  More than that. Somehow, someway, he’d forged a life for himself—an entirely new identity. He’d become, in these ten years, a completely different man.

  Maggie frowned as she examined the wound on his arm. The torn flesh was stitched together rather neatly with black thread. “Enzo’s work, I presume. I trust you cleaned it thoroughly beforehand?”

  St. Clare made a hoarse sound of assent.

  She touched the edge of his wound. He flinched under the brush of her fingertips, and again when she drew her knuckles down the hard length of his bare arm. She doubted whether his reaction was entirely provoked by pain. Indeed, the more she touched him, the more she suspected that, underneath his taut exterior, he was as dry-mouthed and quivery with longing as she was.

  Her gaze met his. “Does it hurt very much?”

  He looked steadily back at her. “It’s an agony.”

  Her heart thumped hard. “For me, as well.” She slipped her hand into his, gratified to feel his fingers engulf hers. His clasp was hard and firm. Possessive. His head lowered as she leaned into him. “Nicholas—”

  His mouth found hers, silencing her with a kiss. There was nothing gentle about it. His lips shaped to hers, rough with heat and want and raw masculine demand. A desperate kiss, far more than a sweet one.

  And she melted.

  There was no other way to describe it.

  Her knees weakened and she melted against him. Into his arms, and into his kiss. Clinging to him as his mouth captured hers.

  “Maggie,” he murmured low in his throat. “I can’t—”

  “It’s all right.” Her arms circled his neck. And when he might have drawn away—mustering some scrap of gentlemanly restraint—she pulled his face back to hers and kissed him again.

  He didn’t require a great deal of encouragement. Indeed, the more she responded to him, the more he demanded. She gave it willingly, her half-parted lips molding to his. He tasted of brandy and male heat. A thrilling combination. It swiftly robbed her of her senses.

  St. Clare appeared to be experiencing a similar effect. He was breathing heavily, his big hands moving at her waist and back, curving around her neck to hold her steady as his mouth fused with hers.

  One kiss led to another and another, the next one beginning before the first had come to its natural end. All the while, an ache built within her—a longing for something she couldn’t express. It made her as wild and desperate as he was, kissing him until she couldn’t catch her breath. Until she couldn’t seem to support the weight of her own body.

  His arms wrapped around her in a powerful embrace. He lifted her onto the bed, settling her back against the rumpled pillows and coverlet. She had but a moment to gather her wits before he came down over her, caging her in his arms and kissing her again, hot and deep and breathless.

  Goodness.

  Goodness.

  She gasped against his mouth. “Wait.”

  “I’ve waited too long already.”

  Her fingers twined in his hair, tugging at him weakly. “You’ll smother me.”

  “I want to devour you.” He pressed hot kisses to her cheek and jaw and throat. “If you knew what I’ve suffered—”

  “And what about me? What about what I’ve suffered?” She gave another tug to his hair, forcing him to meet her eyes. Her body was trembling with yearning for more of his kisses. More of his touch. But she yearned for something else even more. She wanted—needed—the truth. “Why didn’t you come back to me?”

  He stared down at her for a long moment. The heat of passion slowly faded from his face. It was replaced by an emotion she couldn’t identify. His throat spasmed on a swallow. And then he lay down at her side, his head coming to rest on the pillow next to her. “I wanted to.”

  “But you didn’t. You didn’t send me so much as a single letter.” She looked at him in the waning candlelight, their faces only inches apart. “Why?”

  “Because…” There was a peculiar sheen to his gray eyes. “In order to move forward…I had to let you go.”

  St. Clare had never contemplated saying the words aloud, let alone uttering them to Maggie Honeywell herself. Confessing to her that once he’d left Beasley Park—once he’d begun his transformation into John Beresford, Viscount St. Clare—he’d been obliged to think of her as an inextricable part of his unfortunate past. A past that had been better left forgotten.

  I had to let you go.

  It had been the only way to survive.

  “I understand,” she said. That didn’t prevent the hurt from welling in her eyes.

  The sight of it made his chest constrict. He touched her cheek. Her skin was soft as warm silk beneath his fingers. “Maggie—”

  “I do. I even understand why you sought out Fred.”

  The mere mention of his rival’s name was enough to make St. Clare’s muscles tense with anger. “I didn’t seek him out.” He hadn’t. Not initially. “I saw him quite by chance one afternoon in Bond street, not long after I arrived in London.”

  Fred had been strolling down the opposite side of the street in company with a fashionable companion. It was impossible to mistake that bulldog gait and copper-colored shock of hair. Impossible to forget that look of smug entitlement.

  In that moment, emerging from Weston’s after having just been measured for a half dozen new coats, the long-suppressed reality of St. Clare’s past had rushed upon him with a frightening power. All the slings and arrows of his youth. All that roiling anger. The deep sense of unfairness about it all, and the bone-deep desire to, one day, balance the scales.

  He’d thought he had put those feelings behind him. Locked them away and thrown the key into the depths of the Tiber. He’d left them there, buried in Italy—a necessary sacrifice in order to affect the transformation into the gentleman he was today. But in Bond Street, those feelings had been brutally resurrected.

  “And later?” Maggie asked. “At the gaming hell?”

  “That, I’m afraid, wasn’t as much of a coincidence as it seemed.”

  She didn’t appear surprised. “You contrived the whole of it, I gather.”

  “I did.”

  It had taken little effort to discover where Fred spent his evenings, and even less for St. Clare to arrange to be there himself. The gaming hell had been smoke-filled and dark, and Fred’s powers of recognition none the better for drink. He hadn’t known St. Clare at all.

  But St. Clare had known him.

  Indeed, there had been little in his life more satisfying than putting a bullet through Fred’s shoulder.

  “You could have contrived to meet me,” Maggie said.

  “I couldn’t.” St. Clare paused, adding darkly, “And not because of what you said in Hyde Park, about my hate for him outlasting my love for you.”

  “Then why?” A glimmer of vulnerability shone in her eyes.

  He held her gaze. Lying beside each other on the curtained bed, the two of them face-to-face in the shadows, it felt as
if they were children again, sharing secrets.

  But not quite children.

  He was a man grown—shirtless, injured, and half drunk. And she was a beautiful, alluring woman. His woman.

  It was impossible to be anything but honest with her.

  “Because…I knew if I saw you again, I’d go all to pieces. Everything I’ve worked for—my title, Allendale’s support, the very life I live now. If I saw you again, I knew I’d risk it all to get you back, even if it meant destroying myself in the process.”

  She gave him a reproving look. “What a bleak way you have of viewing the matter. You saw me again that night in Grosvenor Square and your world hasn’t ended.”

  His mouth twisted. She didn’t know. Couldn’t comprehend the power she had over him. The way the sight of her had affected him that night. One moment he’d been John Beresford, standing in front of the library fireplace after a night at his club. And the next he’d been Nicholas Seaton again. As if a crack had opened up in the universe and wrenched him back to Somerset. Not to the loose box in Squire Honeywell’s stable, but to the forget-me-not covered grass where he’d lain with his blue-eyed love, his heart full with the promise of tomorrow.

  No, his world hadn’t ended, but the landscape of it had changed dramatically. Maggie’s late-night visit had conjured the past for him more vividly than could a dozen encounters with the likes of Frederick Burton-Smythe. Not the anger and the rage of it, but those singular moments of sweetness. Of warmth, and unwavering devotion.

  It had been all he could do to keep his countenance. To maintain the coldness of his reserve, and to preserve in his voice the hard-earned accents of a gentleman. The only saving grace had been that she hadn’t seemed to recognize him.

  Or so he’d thought, until their drive in Hyde Park.

  “Weren’t you at all curious about where I was or what I’d done with my life?” she asked. “Even if you didn’t wish to see me, you might have at least made inquiries.”

  “To what end? I assumed you’d be long married. Settled down with a husband and children of your own.” He grimaced. “I’d rather not have known the precise details.”