In deep, penetrating thrusts he drove to the core of her, possessing her through every inch of her body. So the two become one flesh, flashed through her disjointed mind.
Never. Never one. Not now. Chance. Once. Lost.
Thoughts disintegrating to chaotic bits, she despaired of holding out any longer, when, buried deep within her, Alastair went rigid and cried out. A few moments later, he collapsed on her, then rolled with her to his side.
Heart hammering a crazy rhythm in her chest, she tried to steady her breathing. Please, let him fall asleep now, as he had the night before. Any illusions of courage abandoned, she would steal out as soon as his relaxed body and steady breathing told her he was beyond consciousness.
She couldn’t withstand a repetition of that assault on her senses.
With him limp beside her, she wriggled free of his entrapping arm. Silently, she threw on her skirt and fixed the pins of her bodice as best she could—thank heavens for the all-concealing cloak! She was groping for her shoes, ready to tiptoe out, when a hand reached out and grabbed her wrist.
She jumped, startled by his touch. Desperate to escape, she attempted a smile. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m afraid I must...must get home. Right now. My son. I’ll...I’ll meet you again. T-tomorrow?’
Sweet heavens, she was stuttering, her control a shambles. She had to get away.
‘He denied you passion, too, didn’t he?’
Unable, unwilling to answer, she stared at him, her eyes begging him for the mercy of release.
‘Why won’t you let me give you pleasure?’
‘Why would you want to?’ she shot back, anguish loosening the hold over her tongue.
His lazy eyes widened. ‘You can’t believe I’d try to hurt you?’
‘You have no reason to be kind. Please, Alastair, I’ll come tomorrow, I promise, but no more tonight.’
She was trembling now, light-headed with sensations denied, torn between her body’s eagerness for what he offered and her need to resist. If she didn’t get out soon, the battle might rip her in two, right here in bedchamber.
She nearly let out a sob when he let go of her wrist. ‘Very well. I would never keep you against your will. But...tomorrow?’
She nodded, her head bobbing back and forth like a child’s toy. This had been bad, much worse than she’d anticipated. But with twenty-four hours of calm reflection, away from his disturbing presence, she could figure out anything. ‘Yes, tomorrow.’
‘Goodnight, then, Diana.’
Whirling around, she headed towards the door. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her back as she scurried, like a mouse racing from the cat, out of the room and down the stairs.
* * *
After Diana’s abrupt departure, Alastair stared at the open doorway. Her effect on him had not been lessened after the first possession yesterday. In fact, with the enthusiasm of her ministrations, his climax tonight had been even more intense. So intense, his mind was still not functioning properly, or else he’d not have let her go so easily.
Instead, disturbed and disbelieving, he would have coaxed her to stay and questioned her further.
It was hard to credit that she’d truly been deprived of books and supplies. But years of gauging the veracity of men’s accounts from their tone and manner as they related them, a skill essential to an officer in an army at war, argued that what she’d revealed was the truth.
What kind of man would take away what most delighted his wife, only because she’d displeased him?
The same kind who would force her into marriage by threatening her father with debtors’ prison and her fiancé with ruin?
When she’d first related to him the reasons behind her marriage, he’d rejected the story with contemptuous disbelief. But from the bits he’d just pried from her, it was just possible that her tall tale might be true.
Another memory surfaced: once during their courtship, he’d read her a piece of effulgent, adjective-laden verse, then waited expectantly for her reaction. After a few moments, her lips opening and closing as she sought a response, she’d blurted, ‘Oh, Alastair, that was awful!’ After a moment of outrage, he’d laughed and admitted that it was overwritten.
He’d teased her that she’d have to marry him rather than some dandy of the ton, for as impossible as she found it to prevaricate, she’d never be fashionable. She’d readily agreed, confessing that her mind went completely blank when faced with constructing a polite evasion to mask her real thoughts, especially if pressed by her questioner.
As he had pressed her tonight.
What was he to make of what she’d revealed...and what she’d left out?
Puzzlement and something more than curiosity stirred in him. Something like compassion, and a concern he didn’t want to feel.
All he’d hoped for tonight was to have the gift he’d offered relax Diana enough to finally break the hold she was maintaining over her response to him. Still, he had to admit, he’d enjoyed looking for something to tempt her.
He’d always loved giving her gifts. She’d accepted even the simplest with joy, appreciative of the care he had taken in choosing them. He’d been delighted when he hit upon the idea of the paints, sure she would find them impossible to resist. He’d spent a good deal of time looking for the finest pigments and brushes available.
Instead of accepting the supplies with the pleasure he’d envisaged, she’d put them back in the box and recommended he return them.
He tried once again to take in the incomprehensible notion that a girl of her ability no longer painted.
Well, he’d not be returning them. It was a travesty for an artist of her skill to give up the brush, almost an insult to the father from whom she’d inherited her talent.
He’d have to try tempting her with them again.
Which reminded him of her shocking response to his offer to give her pleasure. Though he’d been stung when she’d seemed suspicious of his reasons, he had to concede her instincts hadn’t been all that far off the mark.
He hadn’t entered this affair for her benefit. Not that he’d precisely wanted to hurt her. Indeed, given how indifferent she’d appeared to him the last few times they met, he’d not considered it possible to injure her. He had, however, wanted to reach her and force a response.
He still wanted that. Every instinct he possessed told him that tonight, he’d come a hair’s breadth close to sweeping her beyond control. Next time, he was convinced, he would bring her all the way to completion.
But now, he wanted more than physical surrender.
Not just her body had responded to him. He’d caught her staring at him when he entered the parlour tonight; unaware he was inspecting her closely as well, she’d not been wearing the impassive mask behind which she normally retreated. In her unguarded expression, he’d read wonder, attraction, and a vulnerability completely at odds with the controlled, emotionless woman she tried to appear.
Had she truly been coerced into marriage? What had the Duke done to turn the vibrant girl he’d known into a woman who turned an indifferent face to the world, who seemed desperate to maintain a rigid self-control?
Now, he knew he couldn’t walk away from her until he uncovered the whole truth about Diana.
Chapter Seven
Having fled Green Park Buildings without waiting for a footman to call her a sedan chair, Diana quickly traversed the dark streets, keeping herself into the shadows. Arrived safely at Laura Place, grateful for the enveloping cloak that had allowed her to travel with her gown not fully fastened and to be able to remove it without having to wake up a maid, she crept up to her bedchamber. Knowing she was too distraught to think rationally or worry over what Annie would think of this sudden ability to get herself out of her gown without assistance, she’d shed her garments, thrown on her n
ight rail and wrapped herself, trembling, in the bedclothes.
With her dissatisfied body humming and her mind racing in panicked indecision, she slept poorly.
* * *
Diana woke early, hardly more rested than when she’d laid her head on the pillow. But the last hour before dawn was the only time she’d have alone to think before the household was stirring.
Escaping Alastair and his too-persistent questions last night had been the most temporary of solutions. She was still bound to return to him tonight, where she was likely to face even more pointed enquiries.
She could just tell him everything, rather than waiting for him to trick and dig it from her. But, with Graveston having methodically isolated her from everyone she’d known, she’d lost the knack of making confidences. Besides, how could she revisit those scenes of misery and despair, without the risk that some of the ugly emotions she’d worked so hard to bury might escape the pit into which she’d thrust them?
She was free of that place now, of him. She didn’t want to remember any of it.
She could still send Alastair a note, breaking off all contact.
The possibility tantalised. With no Alastair Ransleigh to challenge her control and distract her thoughts, she could bend all her energies into preparing herself to counter the move from Blankford she knew would soon be coming.
At the cost, of course, of whatever honour she had left.
She tried to talk herself out of that conviction; after all, ‘honour’ was a concept invented by the same gentlemen who wrote the laws allowing husbands to beat wives with impunity, assume control of all their assets and property to use or waste as they chose—and take away their children.
She tried to convince herself, but it wouldn’t wash; she was too much her father’s daughter. The idea that a pledge once given must be followed through, that a wrong done must if at all possible be righted, were precepts ingrained in her from earliest childhood.
But hard upon the swell of despair brought by that thought, a new, much more promising possibility occurred to her. One that set her needy senses racing.
Why not give Alastair what he wanted? What he truly wanted, which wasn’t the sordid details of her marriage, or some sloppy flood of emotion, but her physical surrender. If she allowed herself to respond to him, the nights at Green Park Buildings could be pleasant for them both, rather than exercises in frustration, as she tried to resist his touch. After inciting her to passion, he would be too satisfied and replete for conversation.
Excitement feathered through her, dissipating the lingering fatigue. She’d burned and hungered for his touch during their courtship days, eager for the feel of complete possession. What a dolt she was being, to have been offered that and refused it!
Even better, passion would possess her completely, too, eliminating any thought or emotion beyond the physical. No frustration and anxiety, nor any need either to armour herself against a revival of the love for him she’d buried deep, where its loss could no longer hurt her. There’d be only a firestorm of sensation and then the peace of fulfilment.
Best of all, she knew she could do this. Resisting his touch had been an exhausting, nerve-fraying battle of will. Letting go of that control, her secrets and emotions securely hidden, would be sweet as slipping between silken sheets.
Perhaps some day, when she’d learned to love her son again and figured out how to keep him safe, she might risk remembering the joy of that long-ago spring with Alastair. Their attachment had lacked only physical fulfilment to make it complete. If she claimed that now, in that far-away future she might merge the two memories into one shining, jewelled brilliance of a recollection—the image of a perfect love to sustain her the rest of her days.
She would do it.
Energised, she leapt from the bed and went to ring for the maid. Instead of dreading the dusk tonight, now she was almost eager to see the sun set.
* * *
On the other side of Bath, having also slept badly and thus not wanting to face his perspicacious sister, Alastair elected to breakfast in his room. Sipping his second cup of coffee, he was feeling more like a rational human being when a footman brought in his correspondence.
Idly he flipped through it, then halted at a gilt-edged note. Disquiet stirred when he read the card: Lady Randolph, who before her marriage had been one of Diana’s bosom-bows, had for some inexplicable reason invited him to tea.
Lady Randolph being the same Miss Mary Ellington whom, in the near insanity of his rage and grief after Diana’s stunning rejection, he’d subjected to a most improper, most insulting offer of carte blanche.
He felt his face redden at the memory. Luckily for him, the offended lady had merely slapped his face and sent him on his way with the tongue-lashing he deserved. Had she revealed his dishonourable proposal to her brother, he probably would have been shot before ever making it to his regiment.
Mary Ellington had gone on to make a good match to a viscount’s son with political aspirations, and, by Jane’s account, was now a happily married wife with a quiverful of children.
He’d neither spoken to nor seen her since that disgraceful afternoon. Why would she invite him to tea?
He debated sending a polite refusal, but given the colossal insult to which he’d subjected her on their last meeting, decided that he owed it to the lady to appear in her drawing room long enough to apologise.
Hopefully, Jane’s assessment was accurate, and she wasn’t now a bored wife, looking to take him up on that long-ago offer. Though if she were, he could sidestep it, a manoeuvre with which he’d had a fair amount of practice.
One didn’t earn a reputation as a man who disdained marriage and preferred pleasant, short-term liaisons without attracting the interest of Society matrons long on available time and short on commitment to their marriage vows. Particularly, he thought cynically, when the potential lover possessed a deep purse she might try slipping a hand into.
With Diana waiting for him, he certainly wasn’t interested in another mistress.
But Mary Ellington had also been Diana’s closest female friend. Might she have some insight into what had happened to the girl he’d once loved?
With a sigh, he tossed the card back on the tray and rang for another cup of coffee. It appeared he was going to have tea with the chaste virgin he’d once propositioned.
* * *
More anxious than he’d like to be, Alastair presented himself at the appointed hour at another elegant townhouse on the Circus. Shown by the butler into a salon, he had only a few moments to wait until his hostess arrived.
‘Mr Ransleigh, thank you for coming to see me on such little notice,’ she said, nodding to his bow. ‘Let me pour you some tea.’
Seating himself where she indicated, Alastair held on to his patience over the next few minutes as they exchanged the conventional cordialities.
Finally, he said, ‘If you intend to take me to task over my inexcusable behaviour the last time we met, let me relieve you of the obligation. I behaved despicably, for which I am truly sorry. I do hope you’ve forgiven me.’
She looked startled for a moment, then laughed. ‘Oh, that! No, your, ah, regrettable behaviour then has nothing to do with my reasons for asking you to come today. Or at least, not directly. Besides, we all knew that you weren’t yourself, that soon after the...break with Diana.’
That being unanswerable, he merely nodded. ‘What did you want with me, then?’
She sighed. ‘I’m not quite sure how to begin. Let’s just say that I’m...aware you have recently seen Diana.’
Inwardly cursing, Alastair struggled to keep a smile on his lips. Blast! Did everyone in Bath know he’d encountered Diana?
When he said nothing, she continued. ‘Please hear me out, for what I’m about to say, you could with justification point out, is none of my b
usiness. But knowing Diana so well years ago, I felt it important that you know it.’
Hoping what she revealed might shed light on Diana’s situation, but wanting to say nothing that might hint of the renewed relationship between them, he’d not decided what to reply when his hostess forged on.
‘I know how deeply Diana wounded you. It would be entirely understandable if you wished to seek some sort of...retribution, especially as she is now in the city without benefit of husband or anyone else to protect her.’
Nettled, he rose. ‘Are you suggesting, madam, that I would seek to harm her?’
‘No! Not at all!’ she protested, waving him back to his seat. ‘Only asking, if you should be required to have any dealings with her, that you...treat her gently.’
At his raised eyebrow, she rushed on. ‘The manner in which she jilted you was inexcusable, but though she may have captured a duke, save for the son finally granted her, it appears she had little joy of her prize. You may have heard that after her marriage, Diana ignored all those who knew her before she became a duchess.’
‘Jane told me as much.’
‘So it appeared, but it wasn’t true. I was as aghast as anyone after she broke your engagement—and in so shocking a fashion! Though normally, one could believe that a duke’s offer of marriage would be preferred over one from a mere mister, Diana had never been interested in social advancement. I truly believed she was as besotted by you as you appeared to be by her. After the hasty marriage, I was curious, of course, but also worried about her happiness. The Duke of Graveston was known to be a cold, forbidding, unapproachable man. So I called on her...and was told the Duchess did not wish to receive me. Then, or at any time in future. I was shocked, and hurt, of course.’
‘I can imagine.’ Having received just the same treatment.
‘As I was walking back to my carriage—I’d told the coachman to circle the square, as I didn’t intend to remain long—Diana ran up to me. Speaking all in a rush, she told me she’d seen my arrival from a window, slipped out the kitchen door and come through the mews to catch me. The Duke had decreed that since her former friends were not of suitable rank—I’d not yet married Randolph—she was no longer permitted to associate with them. Saying she must return before her absence was discovered, she gave me her love and said goodbye. I—I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but I do know she never received any of her other friends, either.’
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