One Dangerous Desire (Accidental Heirs)

by Christy Carlyle

  “We can at least show him the designs,” May agreed. Giving up every interest beyond marriage would make her a supremely boring bride. And helping to spruce up Ashworth House might lead to introductions to more of the many noblemen in the family’s wide circle of friends.

  Male voices filtered in through the open sitting room door, and May once again turned her head to listen. The duke was no longer making strange noises, but he did he sound extremely pleased with his American visitor.

  “Excellent, Mr. Leighton. I shall see you next week? If I can’t convince you, surely my daughter will insist.”

  “He’s asked him to the party!” Emily gushed in a voice between a whisper and a squeal. Her excitement was infectious, and May stood to have a peek at the gentlemen who’d made such a favorable first impression on her friend.

  Both women approached the doorway and then dashed back inside the room when they heard the men’s footsteps approaching.

  The duke strode into the sitting room first, stopping and gesturing toward the American.

  “My dear, you must help me convince Mr. Leighton to join us next week. And see here, sir, we can even supply a fellow countrywoman to encourage you. Miss Sedgwick, may I present Mr. Rex Leighton.”

  The duke was speaking, making introductions. The minuscule part of May’s mind still capable of processing words and considering polite etiquette told her to curtsy or extend her hand, but she couldn’t manage any of it.

  A man she’d relegated to her dreams had crashed in and collided with her Thursday afternoon. Impossibly, he stood before her. The man she kept confined in her heart and mind. The same man, and yet so changed. He was no longer the poor shop clerk she’d pined for, impossibly yearned for year after year until she’d almost forgotten how to yearn for anything else. The eyes were the same mercurial brew of gold and azure, and all the angles of his face still aligned with irritating perfection, set off by a divot in the center of his chin. That gleaming dark hair she’d once sifted through her fingers shone like rich mahogany in the afternoon light.

  But his gaze was remote, impassive, as if a pane of murky glass separated them. She was the one stuck on a curio cabinet shelf, and he was coolly examining her from the other side. His clothes were those of a prosperous gentleman, not the outdated and oft-mended single suit owned by Reginald Cross. Worst was the arrogant tilt of his chin. The Reg of her memories had only ever looked at her with admiration and pleasure, what she imagined in her silly youthful way was love. No one had ever made her feel as important with a single glance.

  He wasn’t the same man. Couldn’t be. The duke called him Leighton, not Cross. A striking resemblance. Nothing more.

  May reminded herself to breathe and stepped forward to be introduced to the polished gentleman who could not be the shop boy who’d broken her heart in New York City.

  Mr. Leighton took two steps forward, and her momentary grasp on composure faltered. Reg. His scent, the firm line of his mouth, the large, elegant hand extended toward her—they belonged to Reginald Cross. Smarter, wealthier, older, and with an abundance of confidence his younger self had lacked, but still a man she’d once known. The only man she’d ever loved.

  Emily touched her arm, urging May to accept his offered hand. She obeyed and moved toward him, sliding her fingers against his until their palms met. Warm. How could a memory be so warm? But he wasn’t a memory. He was real. Alive. He was in London, had been for goodness knew how long, and she was meeting him in her dearest friend’s sitting room. By complete and utter chance.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Sedgwick.”

  Same deep-toned voice. Same ability to raise shivers across her skin. Even when there was something silvery and practiced in his timbre, even while he still wore that placid mask.

  “How do you . . . ” The rest wouldn’t come. May knew the words she was expected to say. Felt the gazes of Emily and her father. Sensed their discomfort at her odd behavior.

  His hand tightened around hers, and the glass between them shattered. He blinked, a quick fan of sable lashes, and then those unique eyes of his saw her. Not as a stranger to whom he was being introduced, but as the woman he’d held and kissed. The woman to whom he’d broken every promise he’d ever made. She detected his recognition in the tremor of his lush lower lip, felt it through the heat of his skin, read it in his blue-gold gaze that flitted from her mouth to her eyes and over each aspect of her face.

  “May.” He breathed the word quietly, intimately, just for her to hear, as if a duke and his daughter weren’t standing nearby.

  Grief, too long repressed, welled up like floodwaters, fierce and fast and just as unstoppable.

  May wrenched her hand from his with a burning friction of skin against skin. When she spun around, Emily’s face whirled past, a blur of confusion and concern. Moving, walking away from him, felt good. Like victory. Like strength. Like she would finally get to choose the conclusion to their tale. She needed it to end and had never gotten the satisfaction of a proper parting. She would explain her rudeness to Emily later, but for now, she needed to find the mettle to keep going. To leave him as he’d left her.

  Chapter Four

  “WAIT!” REX SHOUTED the word and forced himself not to follow her. He would not chase May Sedgwick down the street like a lovelorn fool. He started breathing again when she stopped, but May didn’t turn back. She halted on the pavement as if she’d hit a wall.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he waved off Lady Emily, who stood watching from Ashworth’s front step. The lady dipped her head and retreated inside, apparently content with his brief explanation that he and May had known each other in their youth.

  A few steps ahead, May stood stiff and still, her fists clenched at her sides. She hadn’t even bothered to retrieve her cloak and gloves when she’d fled Ashworth House, and he shrugged out of his overcoat as he approached her from behind. He moved as he would toward a skittish creature, afraid she might bolt at any moment.

  Before he could settle his coat on her shoulders, she twisted around and glared at him.

  Letting her go would have been the wiser choice. Her accusing gaze bore into him and there was nowhere to hide, no time to feign disinterest and smooth his expression into one of indifference as he had in Ashworth’s sitting room.

  Whatever he was, whatever the yearnings of his twisted heart, he suspected she could read every shade of it in the way he looked at her.

  Her mouth had gone round in shock when she’d first seen him, and he’d hated himself for wishing for something more. Some flicker of pleasure. Some glint in her eye to tell him she remembered the parts of their past that haunted him. When her mouth trembled, he’d waited for tears. Now it was clear she would give him nothing but wrath. And he couldn’t even claim he didn’t deserve it.

  “I thought perhaps you were dead,” she said, her voice breaking on the final word.

  He’d thought so too for a while. Maybe some piece of him had died when they parted. Certainly he’d shed that naive and hopeful fool Reginald Cross long ago. There’d never been another choice. Being fearless, willing to do anything to survive had meant the difference between wallowing in misery and stepping forward into a chance at success.

  “You almost sound as if that would have pleased you.” He lifted his coat to arrange it around her shoulders, careful not to step too close or touch her. Electricity never sparked more brightly than May’s eyes as she stared at him, warily watching his every movement.

  When he reached up to tug the coat snug at her neck, she shoved his hands away and pulled the lapels together herself.

  “Truth pleases me most of all, Mr. Leighton, or Cross, or whatever it is you call yourself now. Do you even know how to tell the truth?” Her breath puffed out as she spoke, and the cool air rouged her cheeks and mouth into tempting daubs of color in her otherwise pale face.

  “I never lied to you.” He couldn’t meet her eyes, couldn’t let the loathing in her sapphire gaze seep in beyond his well-constru
cted walls.

  “You said I should wait for you. I went to Central Park, just as you requested, and you never came.” She swallowed convulsively, as if she was choking on the words. “You promised we’d never be parted. The least you did was lie to me.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words came out too quietly. Memories connected to them were raw as a fresh wound. With Sedgwick’s threats fueling him, he had gone to the park, determined to be with May, whatever the cost. But certainty faltered as she’d approached up Fifth Avenue. Ten dollars tucked into his pocket was all he’d managed to save after months of legitimate work. What could he offer one of New York’s wealthiest heiresses?

  Retreating without her seeing him, he’d battled the urge to turn back with every step. He hadn’t kept his promise, but leaving her alone in the park had torn something inside him that still ached.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated more loudly.

  She made a little sound. Distress or disgust, he couldn’t be sure which, and he reached for her. He owed her comfort, at least. Once, he’d wished to give her so much more.

  “Don’t touch me. You never get to touch me again.” She dipped her shoulder and moved away from him, then turned and began striding along the pavement.

  “Leighton was my mother’s surname.” He shouted it in the middle of the Ashworth’s fashionable London street, when he hadn’t ever acknowledged the truth of it to anyone but Sullivan.

  She stopped walking but didn’t look at him.

  “I don’t wish to be known by my father’s name, Miss Sedgwick. Or his deeds.”

  When she did an about-face, he thought perhaps she’d soften, that she would give him a chance for the explanation she deserved years before. Instead, she began stomping toward him and then sidestepped around, wafting her achingly familiar rose scent in the air.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my carriage. It’s this way, and I’m cold.” She stopped long enough to peel back the lapels of his coat and lift the heavy wool garment out to him with both hands. “Thank you and good day, Mr. Leighton. I hope you enjoy your visit to London.”

  Retrieving the coat, he sank his hands underneath and savored the heat of her body radiating off the fabric. Watching as she continued her angry march to the door of a finely turned-out carriage, he waited until she settled herself inside, then he ate up the pavement in four long strides to reach the vehicle.

  Just as she lifted a hand to signal the coachman, he leaned against the brougham. “I am not visiting London. I live here.”

  An alarming jolt of energy pulsed through him at the interest that comment sparked in her gaze. May Sedgwick could play no role in his plans. She would never be part of his future. He’d given up on that dream. He couldn’t give her the title she craved, and she wasn’t the blue-blooded English bride he needed to secure a foothold in London society.

  Yet whatever had been between them was not yet finished, and he hated loose ends.

  She watched him. Watched and waited, when all she had to do was signal to her coachman and disappear from his life again. “Does my father know you’re in London?”

  “No, and I would prefer to keep it that way.” Ensuring that Sedgwick knew nothing of him, his business, or where he resided was part of the reason he employed Sullivan. His agent reported on Sedgwick’s movements weekly. The name change had given Rex a clean slate in London and, as far as he knew, Sedgwick was unaware of his presence in the city or his ventures.

  But now his daughter knew, a woman who glared at him with long-simmering anger.

  “He wouldn’t be pleased to see you.”

  “I cannot disagree.” The last time he’d met Seymour Sedgwick, the man had promised to have Rex jailed for theft or hanged for something worse if he didn’t end his relationship with May.

  She looked past him, avoiding his gaze, and asked in a softer, unsteady tone, “Will you be attending the Duke of Ashworth’s soiree next week?”

  “I will if you will.” Something slid free inside him, but it wasn’t a pleasant liberation. Pain cut through him like the agonizing sting of a bandage ripped from a cut. He bit down hard and tasted the metallic tang of blood.

  May lifted her gaze and it snagged on his.

  They’d said the words before. He couldn’t remember who spoke them first during the gilded days of their summer romance. She’d risked much more than he to take their walks in the park or escape her father’s oversight to meet him at less-than-fashionable coffee shops. The phrase sealed their agreement when arranging clandestine meetings. They’d last said it on the day they decided to leave New York and begin a life together. She’d been willing to risk everything to be with him. He’d been a pathetic coward, more interested in saving his own neck than defying her powerful father.

  “I am attending the party.” May pitched her voice in that haughty tone he loathed. “I understand the Earl of Devenham will be in attendance.”

  The earl was one of many cash-poor aristocrats who sought wealthy brides. May, and a few American heiresses like her residing in London, were appealing prey for gents like Devenham. American wealth shored up their shallow coffers and maintained their outdated family estates. Rex understood the man’s interest in May, if that was what she was attempting to imply. Suddenly, it seemed very important that he find out.

  “Are you brokering a marriage deal with him yourself, or has your father been invited too?”

  She’d been watching him with wide eyes, but her gaze narrowed at his sarcastic tone.

  “My father won’t be there. He has a prior engagement, and his presence isn’t necessary for me to choose a man to marry. Although I do find it’s useful when the man himself shows up, and the Earl of Devenham is terribly reliable.” She banged a fist against the interior carriage wall and the coachman directed the horses into motion.

  Rex jerked back to keep the rear wheel from rolling over his toes. He stared at the pavement and then glanced at Ashworth’s townhouse, but he could see nothing clearly. Wherever he looked, two thick-lashed blue eyes glared back at him, like twin suns seared on his corneas as punishment for staring at her too long.

  MAY GRABBED THE seat on either side of her thighs to keep herself from leaning forward to catch a glimpse of him as the carriage rolled away.

  How dare he look so . . . fine? Completely and perfectly well. Hale and hardy, with muscles bolstering his previously lean frame, and a glint of fire in his eyes. As if he’d failed her that night so many years ago and then never thought about the incident again. Had, in fact, made a better and brighter life without her. Now he was this new man. Rex Leighton—wealthy, confident, handsome. He’d always been attractive, but now his looks were combined with an air of self-assurance she didn’t remember her New York Reg possessing. Beyond the newfound poise, there was also more than a hint of arrogance.

  She released her grip on the tufted leather seat and reached for the drawing pad and pencil she kept in the corner of the carriage. Drawing had become a daily habit, and she’d gotten quite good at sketching quickly, even in a moving carriage. After anchoring her wrist at the edge of the paper, she pressed the pencil lightly and defined a few basic lines to represent his face. Bending over the pad, May worked to define the shape of his eyes. She varied the weight of her lines, attempting to capture their rich shading, smudging the pencil marks to give the gradient more depth. When she sat back to examine her work, sensuous tip-tilted eyes gazed up at her from the page.

  When she’d first met Reginald Cross, he’d seemed such a kind, easygoing antidote to her father’s domineering and Mama’s endless admonitions. Reg never dictated to her, attempted to manage her, or told her how to behave. He’d given her the first inkling that beyond Papa’s name and Mother’s molding, she might actually be interesting on her own. She still had the sketchbook that had been his first gift to her. Reg encouraged her to go beyond the boring still-lifes of fruit her governess taught her to draw. In the end, she’d filled most of the book with terribly rudimentary an
d far too complimentary portrait sketches of him.

  “Kind?” she huffed, laying in a few crosshatches to indicate the shadow between his cheekbone and angular jaw. “Easygoing?” That certainly didn’t describe the man she’d just met.

  Her pencil strokes slowed as she shaped his mouth, carefully tracing the full curve of his lower lip and symmetrical peaks of his upper. The upticks at each edge eluded her. She’d often thought of them as twin promises of his rare but devastating smiles. A shiver of pleasure chased up her arm when she smudged the lines of his bottom lip, recalling its softness, the taste of him, the breath-stealing heat of his kisses.

  None of it was gone. Not a single memory of their brief courtship had dulled. And now, having seen him and spoken to him again, memories of pleasure were as sharp as the pain.

  After the carriage drew to a stop in front of the townhouse she shared with her father, May tucked the drawing back in the corner and bounded up the steps. One of the maids opened the door and appeared unusually harried for a young woman looking after what May assumed to be empty house.

  The girl reached for her cloak mechanically and then realized May wasn’t wearing one. “No cloak or gloves, my lady?”

  “I’m afraid I left them behind during my visit today.” May had no intention of explaining why. To anyone. “Would you see to preparing a traveling case for me, Sarah? I’m returning to stay with Lady Emily and her father until Saturday.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, my girl.”

  May and the maid jumped in unison at the sound of her father’s voice. He stood grinning down at her from the top of the second-floor landing.

  “Father, I didn’t expect to find you home. Your note said you wouldn’t return until—”

  “Never mind my note. You’ll never guess who’s come to pay us a visit here in London.” He gestured to his left, and Douglas Graves stepped into view. “Come say hello to Mr. Graves.”