Carousel of Hearts

by Mary Jo Putney

  Obviously Judith and Simon’s strategy was failing. It seemed less and less possible to separate Antonia and Adam, and their conspiracy was having disastrous and unexpected consequences for Judith. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “I don’t know what is going to happen, but good wishes are premature. What you saw was a—a momentary aberration of no significance.”

  Antonia looked skeptical but didn’t press the point, for which Judith was intensely grateful. More and more, she had the feeling that the four of them were caught in the toils of a Restoration comedy, the kind with revolving doors and ever-changing partners.

  A bad Restoration comedy.

  * * * *

  Adam and Antonia tethered their horses in the narrow dale, then climbed the steep hillside, Adam carrying a hamper of food while Antonia coped with the voluminous skins of her riding habit. Before today, their rides through the hills had not brought them to the Aerie, perhaps because on the last occasion she had been mourning the loss of Simon.

  But the spot was a significant part of their mutual past. It was time she reintroduced Adam to the Aerie.

  They passed through the narrow cleft in the rocks and emerged on the ledge to see the peaks rolling out to the hazy horizon. Adam caught his breath, his eyes fixed on the breathtaking prospect. Antonia watched from the corner of her eye, hoping he might recognize the place but not wanting to ask.

  Sensing her unspoken question, he said, “I don’t actually remember being here, but I am sure I have been many times.”

  “Yes. We called it the Aerie, and it was our favorite retreat when we were children.”

  Adam’s gaze scanned the flower-strewn patch in front of the rocky overhang, then went out to the vastness of space before them. “Up here, we can almost pretend that we are birds ourselves.”

  “You spent hours watching the hawks, wondering what it would be like to fly.”

  He turned to her with a smile. “What did you do while I watched the hawks?”

  “I was always too restless to watch for long, so I would bring along a book and read.” She grinned. “If I finished it and hadn’t brought another, I would tease you until you decided it was easier to leave than to put up with me.”

  He chuckled. “Brat.”

  “Yes, but you were always amazingly tolerant.” Antonia gestured at the hamper. “Traditionally, the first thing we do is sample Cook’s wares.”

  “Heaven forefend we should break with tradition.” Adam took the folded blanket from the basket and shook it out over the grass.

  Cook’s crumbly crusted meat pies were always delicious, and outdoors they were even better. They were accompanied by pickled onions and tangy ale. One could not ask for a better meal.

  The day was warm so they removed their jackets and used them as pillows as they lay back on the blanket and absorbed the sunshine. It was the sort of intimate, mindless contentment that they had often shared as children.

  Antonia was drowsing when Adam said with deceptive casualness, “Of all the things that I can’t remember, the most frustrating is that I know so little about past relations between you and me. You say that we have known each other all our lives and that we are to marry, yet there is a reserve between us that seems wrong for a betrothed couple.”

  Antonia jolted awake, wondered if her too-perceptive cousin had deduced that their engagement was somewhat irregular. Propping herself up on one elbow, she looked across the two feet of space that separated them and found herself mesmerized by the intensity of Adam’s gaze.

  His wide, powerful shoulders were emphasized by his white shin, and even half-reclining on the grass, he radiated controlled strength. “Have I forgotten something important that I should know about you, Antonia?” he asked. “Did I hurt you, frighten you so badly that you fear me?”

  Acutely aware of his male strength, she recognized that she did fear him a little. The cousin Antonia had grown up with represented safety. All her life she had depended on his protective strength.

  But Adam was not her brother, nor a eunuch content to admire her and no more. She had chosen him to be her lover and her husband. If they were to have a true marriage, she would have to yield herself to that frightening masculinity, trusting him not to harm her.

  If she could not trust Adam, there was no trust or hope anywhere. “You have never hurt me, ever. I’ve held myself back, and your amnesia has much to do with that,” she replied, speaking some of the truth. “I didn’t want to make demands or overwhelm you when you were adrift in a strange new world.”

  Her breath quickening with a blend of anticipation and anxiety, Antonia leaned forward, closing the distance between them. “I want no barriers between us.”

  When her lips met his, Adam made a sound deep in his throat. His arm wrapped around her waist to pull her against him.

  Her kiss had been tentative, but his response was not. The length of his body burned against hers. He untied the ribbon that held back her hair and buried his fingers in the glitter-bright mass, whispering, “I have wanted to do this since the moment I first woke and saw you.”

  Antonia clung to him, shaken by the passion that lanced through her. There was nothing brotherly in Adam’s embrace, and nothing sisterly in the hungry way she kissed him back. The nature of their relationship changed in an instant and could never be the same again.

  She had always loved Adam. Now that love expanded into a new dimension she had never entered before. She lay back on the blanket, wrapping her arms fiercely around him, surrounded by his strength, glorying in the feel of his weight and hard muscles.

  Her earlier anxiety burned away like morning mist in the sun, already almost forgotten. When Antonia had kissed Simon, there had been the sweetness and magic of romantic dreams come true, but what she felt with Adam was fire and earth, passion and reality.

  When his hand found her breast, she gasped with pleasure and arched against his expert caress. She hated the fabric that separated them. She burned to possess and be possessed.

  For a few intoxicating minutes they shared madness, all Adam’s questions about Antonia’s feelings swept away by desire and his judgment very nearly gone as well. He wanted her with an urgency that was pain, and he knew that she would welcome whatever he chose to do.

  But the blanks in his memory made him wary. With his last shreds of control he lifted himself away from her. “I don’t suppose we ever actually . . . ?”

  Antonia’s eyes opened, the cinnamon depths dazed, her breasts rising and falling as she gulped for breath. Understanding his incomplete question, she shook her head. “No. No, we had not become lovers.”

  If they were already lovers, nothing could have stopped him, but they hadn’t been. That…mattered.

  Adam rolled onto his back, gripping her hand in his with numbing force. “I did not think I could have forgotten that,” he said raggedly. “Was I behaving as a gentleman of honor or a slowtop?”

  She made a choked noise that was part laughter, part frustration. “You have always been the soul of honor.”

  “What a pity.” Adam lifted her hand and kissed it, then held it against his cheek. “It’s also a pity that I’ve forgotten much that is useful, but still remember that society would censure us for doing what is so utterly natural.”

  “I have never cared greatly what society thinks,” Antonia said. In her eyes he saw the same mixture of desire and doubt that he himself felt.

  “I’m not sure that I do either, not for myself.” Under control again, he rolled onto his side so they lay face to face, a foot of space between them. “But for you, I want everything to be right.”

  Antonia’s lips were parted, soft and inviting, and her shining apricot hair lay in a cloud around her face and shoulders. He ran his hand along her slim body from shoulder to hip in a sensual caress before cupping her breast.

  She gave a gasp of pleasure. “That feels…very right to me.”

  “To me also.” Exercising all of his considerable willpower, Adam pulled away from he
r and sat up. “If I don’t stop now, my good intentions are going to be lying in the grass in broken flinders, along with all of the pieces of that very complicated riding habit.”

  Antonia sat up as well and began raking her fingers through her hair to remove the tangles. “Doubtless prudence is the wiser course,” she said wistfully. “But you’re right. You always are. When we were growing up, I used to think that was the worst thing about you.”

  He was grateful they could laugh together about what had happened or, more accurately, what hadn’t happened. He’d never felt closer to Antonia.

  Feeling a need to explain, he said slowly, “I feel incomplete. There is too much of me missing, so I must be careful about doing anything that would have serious consequences for anyone else.” He reached out and caught Antonia’s hand, needing to touch her. “You say that I have never hurt you in the past. I don’t want to begin now.”

  Antonia tensed. “Is this a roundabout way of saying that we should not be betrothed?”

  “No!” His grip on her hand tightened. “Just that it is better not to set a date quite yet. In a few weeks or months, I will either have remembered my past or come to terms with my life as it is now. When that happens, I hope you will marry me with all possible speed.”

  Antonia sighed with relief, then closed the distance between them, sliding her arm around his waist and laying her head against his shoulder. “Good. I was worried for a moment.” She raised her face for a kiss. “We have waited a long time. We can wait a little longer.”

  This kiss was gentler, deliberately restrained, though fire still burned beneath the sweetness. There would be time enough for passion later. For the moment, sweetness was more than enough.

  Chapter Eleven

  Something had changed between Adam and Antonia. Judith could see it in the way that they looked at each other, the way they found reasons to touch. Nothing vulgar, but unmistakable to a watchful eye.

  She didn’t know if they were technically lovers, but the emotional bond between them was so strong that it was almost tangible. Even if it could be broken, she no longer believed that she or Simon had any right to do so.

  Judith accepted that Adam was lost to her and that perhaps that was for the best. She herself, in the bitter nights, admitted that she loved Simon Launceston.

  At first, she’d pretended she was attracted to him only superficially, that she felt no more than a normal woman’s admiration for his striking good looks. But when they had kissed, she had lost her ability to delude herself. She loved Simon’s dreamy brilliance, his innate kindness, and his occasional flashes of unexpected mischief.

  In her heart, Judith believed that she would make him a better wife than Antonia could. If Simon won Antonia back, there would be less room in his life for the matters of the mind that absorbed and challenged him. But it was Antonia that Simon wanted, and who could blame him?

  Since the evening in the garden, the easiness between him and Judith had disappeared. He withdrew behind his mask of impeccable politeness. She’d upset and confused him, and sometimes she felt his quizzical gaze on her.

  He also watched Antonia, and Judith suspected that he was beginning to realize that the situation was hopeless. When Simon finally accepted that fact, he would leave Thornleigh, and Judith would never see him again.

  She took advantage of the present to store up secret images. When she was old and gray, in some distant place, she would still remember the turn of Simon’s head, the abstracted beauty of his face in thought, his unconsciously graceful movements, his long deft fingers.

  In spite of the pain of unrequited love, Judith was grateful for all that had happened. Without even knowing it, in a few moments of one-sided passion Simon had restored her ability to dream.

  * * * *

  Adam had written his man of business, Whittlesey, about his amnesia, and Whittlesey now sent documents with a brief description of the history behind a transaction, probable results, and his own recommendation. Assuming that Whittlesey wasn’t seizing the opportunity to rob his employer blind, it was an excellent system. If Adam was half as good a judge of character as people said, his agent should be honest.

  A new sheaf of papers had just arrived from London, and Adam was perusing them in the library. There was also a letter from Manchester, and Adam opened it, then chuckled over the contents.

  Antonia was curled up reading in a wing chair. She glanced up. “Something amusing?”

  “Rather. James Malcolm, engineer of the infernal steam engine, has written to say that the explosion made him aware of a serious design flaw that he has now rectified. From now on, all Malcolm engines will have not less than three forms of safety device.”

  “And none too soon,” Antonia said tartly. “What are they?”

  Adam glanced down at the letter. “There will be two safety valves, one of them tamper-proof, a mercurial steam gauge that will blow out if the safety valves don’t work, and a lead plug that will melt and release the pressure if the water level becomes dangerously low. Mr. Malcolm commends the new design to my attention, and is willing to call it ‘the Yorke safety engine as a commemoration of the most regrettable incident.’”

  Antonia slammed her book shut and jerked upright in her chair. “ ‘The most regrettable incident’! That man’s engine almost killed you, and now he’s trying to turn you up sweet so you’ll invest in his company anyhow!”

  Adam laughed. “That’s true in one sense, but he’s just being a good businessman. The fact is, most progress is a result of changes made after something goes wrong. At least, no one was killed in the process of learning that the engine needed some improvements.”

  Antonia gave him a mock scowl. “You may be casual about your pas de deux with St. Peter, but I am not.”

  “Good.” The sunlight gilded her hair to a halo of fire, and Adam feasted his eyes on the sight. “Have I mentioned recently that you are incredibly beautiful?”

  Antonia laughed. “Now you are trying to turn me up sweet.’’

  “Precisely.” He rose from his desk and circled around to her chair, then lifted her chin for a kiss. “And no one tastes sweeter than you.”

  She reached up to link her arms around his neck so he couldn’t escape, then returned his kiss with enthusiasm. There were many stolen kisses like this, embraces that left them both in a state of simmering desire.

  There was aching pleasure in the denial, and Antonia knew that in the future, when they were married and could make love whenever they wished, she would still remember this interval with a special kind of nostalgia. Now was the season for anticipation, and the richness of that would make fulfillment all the better.

  When the need for air ended the embrace, Adam pulled back and kissed the end of her nose. “I’ve finished with business for the day. Shall we go out to the summerhouse to read?”

  “Sounds delightful.” Antonia retrieved her novel, which had slipped unnoticed to the floor. “Do you have an interesting book?”

  “Simon recommended this volume on the natural history of the Midlands. He said there were some intriguing theories in it.”

  The weather was continuing warm, and the summerhouse was a delightful retreat from the heat. The upper part of the structure was vine-covered lattice that admitted air and light, and the wide padded bench that ran around the inside walls was a comfortable spot to lounge and read.

  Antonia was just settling down when Adam remarked, an odd note in his voice, “Lord Launceston has interesting taste in bookmarks.”

  She glanced up curiously and saw that he was reading an unfolded sheet of paper. “According to this, the world is notified that Antonia Thornton, Lady Fairbourne of Thornleigh, has done Simon Launceston, Lord Launceston of Abbotsden, the honor of consenting to become his wife.”

  He looked up, his eyes filled with cool question. “Was this wishful thinking on his part, or is it one of those things I should know about?”

  Blast Simon and his absentmindedness! It must be one of the a
nnouncements he had forgotten to send to the London journals. Antonia would prefer not having to explain, but there was no avoiding it.

  “We considered marrying,” she admitted, “but very quickly decided that we would make each other miserable. So we ended it and he left Thornleigh.”

  “Everything must have been very quick indeed,” he said dryly. “I seem to recall being told that Lord Launceston and I returned from India on the same ship, about two months ago. My present memory goes back three weeks to Macclesfield, so you must have met Simon, fallen in love, separated, then accepted an offer from me in five weeks or less.”

  “It sounds rather awful, put like that,” Antonia said, her cheeks coloring, “but…that is more or less what happened.’’

  “What was I doing when all of this high drama was taking place?” Adam asked with dangerous mildness.

  “You were right here,” Antonia’s answer was less than steady, “soothing me and giving me good advice when I was having the vapors.”

  “What a boringly virtuous person I seem to have been.” Adam’s voice was lightly reflective, but underneath Antonia heard a note that frightened her.

  “Do you know, I had become so accepting of the amnesia that I had forgotten how woefully uninformed I am about the most important things in my life. Did you accept me because I was the most convenient choice to make Lord Launceston jealous? Or was it to prove you weren’t wearing the willow for him? Either way, I find that I dislike being in the dark about what must be common knowledge for everyone else at Thornleigh.”

  Setting his book aside, he stood and stalked across the summerhouse, not looking at Antonia. “No wonder there was a lack of physical intimacy between you and me. There had hardly been time to develop any.”

  He turned to face her, and the angry ice of his eyes was a vivid reminder that weak men do not make fortunes in a handful of years. “Was it difficult to pretend to enjoy the touch of one man when you were longing for another?”