by Eloisa James
Elias took a breath. “Right. Well, she isn’t mad, and you couldn’t do better, Reggie.”
“Couldn’t do better?” Reggie’s voice started rising. “Don’t you remember how she beat me about the head, that first day we met? If you hadn’t pulled her off me, I’d probably have ended up with a concussion.”
“Nonsense! For God’s sake, you were both eight years old.”
“She knocked me to the ground,” Reggie said flatly. “There’s no man who wants to marry an Amazon who has thrown him arse over teakettle. It ain’t natural.”
“Perhaps she’ll change her mind and refuse you.”
“I doubt it. She told me that my hair was the right color, and if she couldn’t marry Prince Charming, she might as well buy herself a yellow-haired future viscount instead. I didn’t care for that innuendo. I’ll inherit a perfectly snug estate, even if it ain’t a monstrosity like hers.”
Elias smiled wryly. “That’s Penny. You know her—”
“I do know her!” Reggie cut off him. “That’s the bloody problem, isn’t it? We spent our childhood racketing around the woods with her. If that father of hers had an ounce of sense, he’d have shipped her off to one of those lady’s finishing schools, but no. He left her in the estate next to mine so she could plague us every school holiday. There’s no mystery. I feel as if I’m marrying my sister.”
“You’re being absurd.”
“Oh? So who played all those practical jokes on you? What about the time she bribed a footman to replace your prayer book with that . . . that book of naughty etchings? She’s no lady. I should tell my mother about that.”
“I thought it was funny.”
“You didn’t think so when Father thought you were really reading that instead of Psalms. Damn it, I wish he’d straighten Mother out. He always said that you would marry Penny.”
“So I could regain Leyton House,” Elias said, his voice darkening. “Do you know how many people have implied as much since we arrived here two days ago, Reggie? Ten. No, eleven, because Lady Wells said so, and then her husband came along and said the same, two minutes later.”
“You should marry her,” Reggie said. “I’ve said it over and over. You’d have your estate back, and she’d have your title. It’s obviously fate that we spent so much of our childhood with the girl whose land rightfully belongs to you.”
Elias stood up and walked to the window.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have feelings for her,” Reggie said from behind his back.
Feelings didn’t explain the storm that caught him when he saw Penny. A gentleman wasn’t supposed to be prey to raging lust and admiration and affection—all at once. One moment he’d be laughing at one of her jokes, and the next he’d be consumed by her long, silky lashes, or the curve of her hip, ready to fall on his knees before her, or better, snatch her up and head for the nearest bed.
“She’d take you. Never beat you up, did she? You were always her favorite.”
“You’re an ass, Reggie.”
That was precisely the problem: Penny would never say no to him. They’d been friends since childhood. If he showed the faintest inclination, she would say yes, because she felt guilty about owning his lands. What’s more, she liked him. But he didn’t want Penny to like him. He wanted her to love him, to lust for him, to feel a kind of madness that she clearly didn’t feel.
So he always—always—pretended that he couldn’t wait to leave England and head for Tyndrum, in Scotland. As if counting sheep was the summit of his ambitions.
“Do something about it!” Reggie said.
Elias swung about. “Would you want a wife who married you out of pity?”
“She already told she was marrying me out of pity so, yes, I guess I would. Or I wouldn’t. Because I don’t want her.”
Elias ignored that. “If she married me, all of London would say behind her back that her husband married her only to get his estate back. They’d pull me aside over and over to tell me that I’d made a devil’s bargain, but that it had to be done. For the name. For the title.”
“It wouldn’t be true,” Reggie argued.
“True!” Elias growled, his voice dropping again. “What would be true is that Penny could not deny my request.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Reggie snapped. “Why the hell shouldn’t you court an heiress, Elias? Does your father’s stupidity mean that you can’t ever marry?”
He shrugged. If he couldn’t marry Penny, why bother? She was . . . she was all there was. Everything. When he first met her, he decided her eyes were so green that they looked like spring leeks. Now he could think of more flattering comparisons, but he was still as fascinated as he had been years ago.
She had grown into a small but delightfully round woman, with hair that always fell from its pins. Her curves tormented him, as did her deep, rosy mouth and her naughty laugh.
Not that it mattered.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning for the Highlands,” he said, steeling his voice.
Reggie sighed. “Do you know that you’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met? With the exception of my mother. I say, shouldn’t you be in your costume by now? I fancy I make a very dashing playwright. Naturally, I’m playing Shakespeare in a moment when he was chitchatting with Queen Elizabeth rather than scribbling in a pub.” Reggie was kitted out in a magnificent damask coat, not to mention the mustache.
“I haven’t got a costume,” Elias said. “The butler will be giving out loo masks; that’s good enough.” He picked up his coat. It was his one good coat, even though it was getting a bit worn.
“That won’t do,” Reggie said, standing up and trotting over to the glass, where he poked at his curls until they were in perfect order. “It’s a masquerade, Elias. And Lady Pennyroyal went to all the trouble of asking everyone to wear Renaissance attire. You’re going to insult her. Here we are, staying in her house, at her house party, in her bedrooms . . .” He seemed to lose track of where he was going. “At any rate, she won’t like it.”
Elias ignored him. He loathed the idea of going down to the ballroom. He generally avoided this sort of affair altogether, but Reggie had talked him into coming . . . and frankly, he wanted to see Penny one last time.
All week, men had knowingly waggled their eyebrows at him, a couple even daring to ask whether it bothered him that Gordon White had purchased the estate that should have been his. “Must feel odd to rub elbows with Miss White,” they said, beady eyes fixed on his face. “You know what your father would want you to do, Leyton.”
He’d rather die than do what his father—his disreputable, wastrel father—might have wished him to do. He would never shame Penny or himself that way. Elias had only his pride, so he tended it fiercely. He had never danced with an heiress in his life, and no one could say he was a fortune hunter. He might be poor, but he had dignity.
“I notice you’re avoiding that White girl?” Lord Wells had said to him over breakfast. “Remarkably gracious of you, under the circumstances. I’d do the same.”
Penny had no idea how often he watched her from the side of the ballroom, terrified that she was falling in love with her partner. With whomever she was dancing with.
So far she hadn’t. But Reggie’s lands marched side by side with the Leyton estate, and Gordon White had no sons . . . Of course their parents thought they should marry. The thought made him want to leave for Scotland immediately.
Reggie walked over and began tweaking Elias’s coat.
“You’re like a bloody valet,” Elias said, pulling away.
“Lord knows you could use a valet under the age of eighty.” Reggie gave Elias’s left sleeve a sharp jerk.
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
“Trying to make you look like an earl. Where’s that ancient man of yours?”
“Probably asleep in the scullery.” He’d inherited Biggles from his father, and the man did little more than sleep these days.
“Your coat isn�
�t sitting properly in the shoulders,” Reggie muttered. “At least I’ve taught you how to tie a neck cloth.” He frowned, and then gave Elias’s sleeve such a hard pull that the sound of ripping cloth was almost like an afterthought.
Elias glanced down just in time to see the sleeve of his coat fall cleanly away.
“That’s odd,” Reggie said, staring at the sleeve in his hand.
“Well, that settles it. It’s the only coat I brought with me.” Elias hadn’t wanted to go downstairs anyway. He pulled off the destroyed garment and threw it on the bed.
“Nonsense,” Reggie said. “I brought two costumes because I wasn’t sure what I would feel like wearing. It’s a question, isn’t it? Does one feel like a monarch—because my other costume is supposed to be for King James—or a playwright? At any rate, I decided that I’m feeling remarkably creative, not to mention Machiavellian.”
“You don’t make much sense,” Elias observed.
“I’ll send my man over directly with the other costume,” Reggie continued blithely. “I have to find myself a mask. If I must propose at midnight, I’m going to have fun first.” He grinned. “To be utterly frank, I have the notion that Lady Wells would be grateful for some personal attention. She’ll appreciate my codpiece.”
He rolled his hips and Elias snorted. Reggie was wearing a bulging cup over his privates, adorned with red ribbons.
“I don’t believe that Shakespeare ever wore such a thing.”
“That portrait of him only goes to the waist, so I’m employing artistic license. Besides, I fancy this highlights my best feature.”
Reggie would be unfaithful to Penny. Elias knew it; hell, Penny probably knew it. Reggie was a gad-about. He would spend his life flirting and whispering behind fans with ladies who appreciated him for that same package he’d tied up in ribbons like a birthday present.
A few moments later Reggie’s valet showed up, bearing an armful of embroidered scarlet brocade. Elias looked at it in dismay.
“As you know, Lady Pennyroyal requested that all guests wear Renaissance costumes this evening,” the valet stated, laying garment after garment on the bed. “You shall play the part of King James. This costume was worn by his lordship the viscount’s ancestors, likely before the king himself.”
Elias swallowed a curse. It was his last night. He would go downstairs and dance with Penny because, damn it, what could anyone say? He’d be gone the next morning.
Then he put on a billowing linen shirt, followed by a velvet jerkin, and finally a coat adorned with gilt and pearls and a magnificent lace collar. He refused a codpiece, a leather cup with rather sprightly fur trim presumably meant to drawn attention to Reggie’s ancestors’ size. He was quite large enough on his own.
“Is this real?” he asked, staring down at a wide necklace set with ruby-colored stones as Reggie’s valet set it about his shoulders and clasped it in back.
The man pursed his mouth like a child tasting a persimmon for the first time. “It was worn by one of his lordship’s ancestors to a banquet at Windsor Castle.”
“Now your hat, my lord,” the valet said, handing him a cap lined with fur and set with a large ruby.
Elias placed it on his head.
“Your mask and your cape.”
The cape was black, lined with cream-colored silk and the mask, made of black silk, covered the upper half of his face. Elias turned to the glass and a feeling of utter freedom spread over him. No one could recognize him; no one could possibly think that the penniless Earl of Leyton was wandering the dance room blazing with rubies. Only his slightly battered shoes were his own.
He walked downstairs with the single-minded focus of a lion that knows exactly where a young deer grazed. At midnight, Reggie would ask Penny to be his, and she would agree. The time in between would be his. That time would sustain him from now to . . .
To the Highlands.
At the ballroom door, he waved away the butler who wished to announce him. Lady Pennyroyal’s house party had included twenty or so, but their ranks had swelled with the addition of neighboring gentry. There were young girls bouncing around the floor, trying their social wings in the relative anonymity of a masquerade. Excellent. Lady P’s neighbors would assume he was a rich man from London, and the Londoners would assume he was a rich man from the country.
He paced in a regal fashion around the edge of the dance floor, bowing to women who curtsied, their inquisitive eyes confirming his anonymity.
Penny was standing at the far end of the room, dressed as a Renaissance lady, with a small ruff and some sort of huge petticoats. She wore a mask too, but it didn’t fit half her face, as his did. It was merely a strip over the eyes.
He knew her instantly; he would always know her. It was as if she glowed, and all the other women paled to gray shadows. He bowed before her, reminded himself to deepen his voice to a (hopefully) unrecognizable sound, introduced himself as King James, and asked her to dance.
She smiled at him. “How could I refuse my own monarch?”
It was a waltz. They danced up the room and back down, moving together in perfect harmony. The large double doors to the gardens were open, the sky a pearly dark blue. He turned her in a breathless whirl, just to hear her laugh, and then he danced her out of the door, onto the stone pavement.
“Sir!” she cried, but there was no alarm in her voice.
“I mean you no harm,” he said, stopping and looking down at her.
She was so delectable, so perfect, that he could have wept. “Aye, sir,” she said, one dimple appearing in her cheek. “I can see for myself that you are a trustworthy monarch.”
“So you trust me?”
Her green eyes smiled. “Yes.”
“You shouldn’t,” he growled. “You have no idea who I am, after all.”
“You’re one of Lady Pennyroyal’s guests,” she responded, quite reasonably.
They couldn’t speak here: not where everyone could see them. By some miracle no one was outside but still . . . Without pausing for a second thought, he swung her up in his arms.
She gaze a startled squeak and her eyes widened behind her mask. Elias felt slightly dizzy at the pleasure of holding her. He tightened his arms and looked down. “Do you know of the old tradition of greenwood marriages, lass?”
She slung an arm around his neck. “I’m not planning on marrying anyone tonight, Your Majesty.”
He began walking briskly toward the wood that bordered Lady Pennyroyal’s lawns. “Tis merely a visit to the forest . . . a custom honored during the Middle Ages.”
“We are traveling through time, then?” The gurgle of laughter in her voice made desire shoot through his body. “I thought it was a Renaissance evening. I believe I’ve heard of the custom. A gentleman and his lady gather flowers, do they not?”
Now they were into the forest, through a row of fragrant lilacs and into the woods proper.
“In those days, they stayed in the forest til dawn, which we won’t do.” He put her on her feet. “We could honor the custom with a mere kiss.”
“I do not make a practice of kissing strangers,” she said, her tone comically severe. She was looking up at him, blushing, and there was nothing in her eyes that warned him away, so he pulled her into his arms. He’d wanted to do that all day . . . all year.
When his mouth came down on hers, he went slightly mad. He thought she was kissing him as wildly as he was, but he was dizzy with lust, light-headed with the taste of her, and the feeling of her small body in his arms. Her tongue slid past his, and pleasure stabbed him so acutely that he groaned, low in his throat, and pulled her closer, feeling her ruff crush against him.
She definitely wasn’t fighting to be free. Her breath was coming in little pants. His hat fell to the ground as her hands twined in his hair.
“Not my mask,” he said hoarsely.
“Nor mine,” she replied, and her smile was so luscious that he didn’t answer, just bent his head and took her mouth again, white-hot desire
flaring through his body. His hands slid down to her round bottom and he pulled her tight against him.
“This is only for a moment more,” he said some time later, his voice coming out in a low throb. “I cannot marry you, lass. Not because I am married, but my circumstances mean that I am unable to marry.”
“There’s no law that says you must marry after kissing,” she said impishly.
Elias instantly turned his back to a sturdy oak and pulled her into his arms. That was the last thing she said for a long time. He poured his heart into those kisses, though he didn’t allow his hands to stray again.
Kisses . . . only kisses.
For her part, she kept squirming closer to him, even rocking slightly. He curtailed his instincts with iron control. He would not behave like less than a gentleman. He would not.
He . . .
Penny pulled back and ran her hands down his chest, leaving a wake of burning skin. Then she leaned forward and kissed his neck. Dark pleasure shot through him and he longed to pull her legs around his hips and rock against her . . .
No.
“We should go back to the house,” he said, pulling away.
“I don’t want to,” she said, her voice husky. “I’m accepting a proposal of marriage at midnight. And not a greenwood marriage, either.”
He was silenced by that admission. He had never been a man fluent with words, not like Reggie. The only thing he could imagine doing was bellowing: No! He couldn’t do that.
“That proposal is coming from a man who doesn’t want me,” Penny said softly.
The words erupted instinctively, driven by a jolt of possessive feeling that couldn’t be stopped. “I want you.” His voice was dark with the truth of it. “God help me, I want you.”
“Then kiss me again,” she said, her hands tangling with his hair. “Your Highness.”
“Are you commanding me?” he said, his voice coming out with a wicked lilt that he’d never heard from his own lips.
“I am,” she said, her lips teasing his.
He snatched her up and kissed her hard, a wild, abandoned kiss. And this time his hands rounded her bottom and shaped it, tearing a groan from his throat.