The Lady Risks All

by Stephanie Laurens

  “I managed to nod off.” Roderick limped through the parlor door Roscoe held open. “That helped. I don’t feel so wrung out anymore.”

  “Excellent.” Miranda drew out a chair by the table. “I hope you have an appetite—the food here sounds quite good.”

  So it proved. They spent a pleasant hour and a half over the meal, chatting about this and that. Seeing an opportunity, Roscoe grasped it, turning the conversation to the life brother and sister led at Oakgrove. From there, it was a small step to comparing likes and dislikes of life, to learning that neither sibling had ever seen the sea, nor had any experience of barge, boat, or ship.

  When, after clearing the main course, the innkeeper’s wife asked if they wished for a platter of cheeses and fruits, and Miranda glanced his way, he nodded. “We’ve plenty of time—no need to rush.”

  Miranda smiled and resumed her description of the gardens at Oakgrove, telling him which trees, plants, and flowers were her favorites. His next question was whether she was drawn to scented flowers, and if so, which.

  Where the compulsion to use the minutes to learn all he could of her sprang from he didn’t know, but he felt it, along with the weight of knowing that time was running out, that too soon these moments of easy rapport would be past.

  When they left the inn, Roderick smothered a yawn and waved Miranda to the curricle. “I’m going to nap, so you may as well ride with Roscoe.”

  She acquiesced and allowed him to hand her up, and then they were off again, relaxed and comfortable. Having informed the coachman which Oxford hotel he’d decided to put up at for the night, Roscoe no longer needed to hold back his blacks, yet still he didn’t let them range ahead. Wouldn’t let them go faster and cut short the time he had to spend with her by his side.

  “Tell me,” he said, “do you ride in town at all?”

  She sighed. “No. I used to almost every day in the country, but in town . . . well, Aunt Gladys never was keen. Too much potential for disaster.”

  “So what sort of horse do you prefer? Do you hunt?”

  He kept the questions rolling, easily extrapolating from one to the next, and she slipped in several in return, yet the sense of this being a last hurrah, that the magical, unexpected interlude in Ridgware was over and, regardless of what he might wish, their personal association was therefore on the cusp of ending, hung in the air.

  When the spires of Oxford rose ahead, the thought of simply driving on—driving off somewhere else and leaving both their lives behind—flared in his mind. After a second, he shook aside the silly notion.

  He was who he was, and she who she was; changing their physical destination wouldn’t alter that.

  He’d decided to stay at the very best hotel in Oxford. It wasn’t one of the large hotels that anyone in the ton might visit but a smaller and commensurately more exclusive, exceedingly private hotel run by a family who had multiple reasons for wishing him and his well.

  “We’ll be safe here.” Dropping his driving gloves on a sofa table in the sitting room of a well-appointed, quietly luxurious suite, Roscoe studied Roderick. Seated on the sofa, the younger man was massaging the muscles of his calf above his broken foot.

  Feeling his gaze, Roderick looked up and grimaced. “Just stiff. Nothing serious.”

  Miranda strolled out of the bedroom she’d chosen. “What’s not serious?”

  “The reason I’m rubbing my leg,” Roderick replied. “No need to get worried.”

  Roscoe watched her teeter on the brink of doing just that, but then she drew breath and nodded. “All right.”

  He inwardly smiled; she was trying to let go. “I have the room beyond yours, but I don’t imagine we’ll have any nighttime visitors here.”

  “The staff seem very attentive—not like at the hotel in Birmingham.”

  “Indeed.” Roscoe looked at Roderick. “I suggest we have an early dinner served up here, and then we should get as much rest as we can. If we start at a decent hour tomorrow, we’ll have you in Claverton Street by midafternoon.”

  Roderick nodded. “Good plan.”

  Miranda didn’t look quite so eager, but she crossed to the bellpull and tugged it, then met his gaze. “Do you want to order, or shall I?”

  “You can—I’ll go and check that they’ve brought up my bags.”

  The rest of the evening passed comfortably. Roderick grew tired soon after dinner. He bade them a weary good night and, assuring them both he needed no assistance, limped into his room and shut the door.

  Worry in her eyes, Miranda shifted her gaze from the closed door and arched her brows at Roscoe.

  He hesitated, then offered, “It’s most likely the low-level but constant pain that’s dragging him down, rather than anything being wrong.”

  She pressed her lips together but said nothing.

  He cast his eyes over the local news sheet; she picked up a ladies’ magazine and idly flicked through it.

  A maid arrived with the tea tray. They sat and sipped, neither, it seemed, inclined to conversation. For himself, he was content enough simply being in her company, able to glance at her whenever he wished, and he saw no reason to precipitately embark on what would be their last night sharing a bed. He could sleep any night; tonight he wanted to stretch each stage, each moment, to the fullest, to extract the maximum he could from each. To not let go.

  Eventually, she balanced her cup on its saucer, then set both on the low table before the sofa. Sitting upright and raising her head, she looked at him, met his gaze.

  He’d already deposited his cup and saucer on the tray, and had been sitting simply watching her for some time.

  Holding his gaze, she rose.

  Uncrossing his legs, he got to his feet.

  She said nothing, simply held out her hand.

  He read her eyes, then reached out and closed his fingers around hers, and let her lead him into her room.

  Closing the door, he caught her gaze as she turned to face him. Raising the hand he held, fingers twined, he pressed a long, lingering kiss on her knuckles.

  She smiled an innocently seductive smile and stepped into his arms. He closed them around her, bent his head as she raised hers. Their lips met, and desire flowed. That simply, that easily. That responsive to their call.

  It was so easy, so effortlessly straightforward to step into the flames with her. To let the heat rise, to let passion lick over their skins and sink into them, to let desire set its spark and ignite their need.

  For him, tonight, his goal was clear. This night was for laying up memories, for creating moments of quivering awareness and imprinting each second of her response, and his, on his mind.

  Memories. Of the soft susurration of silks sliding to the floor. Of silken skin glowing pearlescent in weak moonlight. Of the contrast of his darker, hair-dusted limbs twining with her smooth, slender paleness.

  Their bodies came together in heat and in passion, but again neither rushed. Both drew the moments out, not just savoring but examining and absorbing every individual scintilla of delight, every fractured second of pleasure, every moan, every gasp, each tensing grip.

  The steady coiling of the inevitable tension, the swelling promise of its release.

  He reached for each moment, enshrined each in his mind—every brush of her lips, parted and swollen from their kisses, every seductive caress, every grasp of hands, lingering yet urgent, every desperate pant, each harsh and ragged exhalation.

  Every breath, every touch, every nuance of their loving.

  He gathered them all in, assumed she was doing the same. This was, after all, the end—the extent of their forever. They’d reached the limit of what, for them, could be. These were their last hours, the last time they would savor the shattering moment when he slid into her body, the senses-stealing intimacy as, joined, they moved together, every last iota of their senses and wits focused on the link, on the giving and the taking, on the transcendent joy.

  Eyes closed, senses and wits whirling, Miranda clung an
d rode their tide, seeking and recognizing, reiterating and reaffirming that this—this glory—was what they could have. Now and forever.

  This wasn’t some passing connection. This power and glory wasn’t something that would simply fade and die—not if they didn’t kill it. Not if they fed it and kept it alive.

  Through the overriding, all but overwhelming demands of their passions, she yet searched and tried to see, to look through and past the intimacy to what in him lay beneath, to what he thought, what he felt, what emotion drove him.

  She looked, summoned the last vestige of her awareness and through the cascading delight and scintillating sensation sought, yet all she saw, all she could discern, was his absolute and unwavering immersion in the moment, his devotion to each heartbeat of pleasure.

  They’d reached some other plane. Had together breached some higher level of physical and mental communion, one where touch and intent, will and desire, passion and need fused into one entity. Into one swelling, swirling, rising tide.

  Driven by a need whose power she didn’t comprehend, desperate to learn—here, now—what might be, she held tight, hauled in a ragged, shallow breath, and reached deeper, not with her senses but with her soul.

  And he did the same. He bent his head and their lips met, despite their breathless state melded and clung.

  And together they raced on, up, higher, their bodies mere vessels for their joyously desperate souls.

  He couldn’t hold back from her, not here, not in this.

  Not this time.

  He’d always kept a wall between his actions and his feelings, a screen that no other had ever stripped away; with all his previous lovers he’d had no difficulty holding emotionally aloof because his emotions had never truly been engaged, not as they were with her.

  Regardless, he’d instinctively tried to maintain that wall, that last bastion of emotional safety, but with her, night by night, day by day, that wall had steadily eroded.

  Now, tonight, there was no reason to fight to retain that separation, that screen, his shield, his inner safety. Tonight was the moment beyond which nothing else lay; for them, tonight was their all, their end.

  Her body tightened about his, beneath him, around him, her arms tensing, hands clutching, the cradle of her hips embracing, her thighs clamped to his flanks, the evocative clutch of her sheath strengthening as together they rocked and raced up ecstasy’s peak.

  She was with him, her mouth a cornucopia of passion, the taste of her an elixir that wreathed his brain and beckoned and lured with the promise of a togetherness powerful enough to succor his soul.

  He let go. Dropped all restraint and let the unruly, intractable feelings that had been growing since he’d first set eyes on her free, let them surge and swell and reach for her, for the bounty she offered.

  He wanted, clear and simple, and let his need show, let the maelstrom of it manifest and infuse him, flow to her and bind them—let it blend with her much more openly declared passion to create . . . something more.

  Something wild and untamed, rich and glorious.

  He gave himself up to it, sensed, felt, and knew she did the same.

  What followed was beyond his experience, beyond his comprehension, barely within his ability to sustain.

  They reached the peak in a cataclysm of sensation, the elemental moment heightened, given color and potency by flaring emotion—his, hers, theirs—transforming their desperately urgent climax into a spectacular conflagration that seared them, wracked them, shattered and fragmented them.

  That flung them to drift, for one fleeting second, like empty husks in the void, hollowed out and yearning.

  Then glory surged—brighter, more brilliant, more powerful and potent—and filled them. Remade them.

  Into something finer, better, more complete, forged in passion’s fire.

  They sank together into the soothing sea, buoyed on the golden waves of aftermath. Clinging, trying to catch their breaths, trading gentle kisses and wonder-filled touches.

  Simply being.

  He clung to the fragile, delicate moment, didn’t want it to pass.

  In that moment of clarity, of crystal-clear vision, he saw—could all but touch—the emotion that bound him.

  So powerful, so true.

  So unexpected.

  He’d never thought he would find it, not in him.

  He hadn’t understood that uncovering it wasn’t up to him, wasn’t a decision within his power to make, but that the power to evoke that most potent of emotions rested instead with someone else—with her.

  He hadn’t realized, but now he knew.

  Slumped on his back with her stretched alongside him, her head on his shoulder, her legs tangled with his, his arm holding her close, he closed his eyes.

  Now, at last, he understood, and tomorrow they would part.

  Miranda woke the following morning to find herself alone in the bed. The sheets beside her were already cool. Beyond the window the skies were leaden, a soft drizzle already falling.

  She focused on the clock on the mantelpiece. “Blast!” Tossing back the covers, she rose and quickly washed and dressed.

  Once more garbed in her widow’s weeds, she swiftly packed the few items she’d unpacked the night before, then carried her bag, her cloak, and her bonnet and veil into the sitting room next door.

  Roderick was there, applying himself to a reassuringly well-supplied breakfast plate. He waved a fork. “Good morning. I was wondering if I would have to come and wake you.”

  She’d slept like one dead, deeply and dreamlessly. “I must have been more tired than I’d thought.” More deeply sated.

  The table had been set with three places. Drawing out the chair before the last setting left untouched, she considered the other, already used plate. “Where’s Roscoe?”

  “Out seeing to the horses. We just need to ring when we’re ready to leave, and the footmen will come up for the bags.” Roderick sighed. “And they’ll tell Roscoe, and he’ll come up and help me down.”

  She grimaced in sympathy. “We’ll make up one of the downstairs rooms at Claverton Street so you won’t need to negotiate the stairs.”

  He shook his head. “No—I need to keep at it. The stairs don’t hurt so much as they’re awkward, and m’foot’s aching less and less with every day.”

  She hesitated but didn’t argue.

  After she’d finished her breakfast, they departed the suite. She went down first, leaving Roderick negotiating the stairs with Roscoe. Veil once more in place, she watched as a footman stored her bag in the coach’s boot, then Roderick arrived, hobbling on his own again, Roscoe walking by his side.

  Roscoe glanced at her, met her eyes; somewhat to her surprise, he didn’t smile, and once again she could read nothing in his expression.

  He nodded to the coach. “It might be best if you get in first.” In case Roderick needs help once he’s inside.

  She heard the rest of the statement. After a moment’s mental dithering, she nodded and turned to the carriage door. Lengthening his stride, Roscoe reached for the handle, opened the door, waited for the footman to fold down the steps, then offered her his hand.

  She gripped his fingers, felt his grip hers, sensed the connection still there, still strong. Steadied indeed, more assured, she climbed the steps and crossed to sit in the far corner of the coach.

  Roscoe drew back. A minute later, with his assistance, Roderick climbed awkwardly into the carriage. With her help, he managed his crutch, his strapped shoulder, and his splinted foot, eventually turning to sink carefully down on the opposite seat.

  Roderick blew out a breath, then shot her a weak smile. “Done.”

  She smiled encouragingly. From the corner of her eye, she saw Roscoe shut the carriage door.

  He strode away; an instant later she heard him giving orders to the coachman. Half a minute later, she heard the lighter rattle of the curricle’s wheels on the forecourt as Roscoe turned his horses out into the street.

&nb
sp; Ponderously, the coach eased into motion and followed.

  Which was how she came to be whiling away the miles settled in one corner of the traveling coach while Roderick dozed on the opposite seat.

  The situation afforded her an extravagance of time to think and consider, to ponder, weigh, and clarify her thoughts. Her wishes, her wants, her intentions. Her possible ways forward.

  She couldn’t help but contrast her current view of the latter with her expectations when she’d traveled the same road in the opposite direction, heading out of London alongside Roscoe, rescuing Roderick uppermost in her mind.

  Now . . . for a start, she accepted, absolutely and without quibble, that her time as Roderick’s protector had ended. He was his own man now and no longer needed her; more, any further interference on her part would infringe on his right to make his own decisions, to live his own life.

  She’d always known the time would come, the moment when she set aside that role completely and turned fully to the scripting, as it were, of her own future. Until she’d left London and driven north, her assumption had been that that future could follow one of only two paths. She could remain a spinster and die an old maid, or she could marry some suitably respectable man, like Wraxby. Some man who considered her suitable and sufficient to fill the role of his wife—a role he, rather than she, would define.

  Courtesy of this journey, her eyes had been opened. There were other paths—more interesting and potentially more fulfilling paths—that she might take. They were there, perfectly real and acceptable; all she needed to do was make up her mind and take whichever she chose.

  She could immerse herself in charitable works at a more involved level than she’d previously thought possible; there were multiple avenues she could take in that direction. She could be an adventurer, a traveler, a student of history and civilizations, if she felt so moved. She could be so many things.

  If she chose . . .

  But what did she want most?

  There was one unarticulated lesson she’d learned at Ridgware—that she should choose as her path her most strongly held passion. She’d seen passion for the local school—the local children—transform Caroline, had seen passion for her family still burning strongly in Lucasta. Even Edwina was following her passion albeit alongside her husband.