He stretched out casually across the length of the rug behind her, propping himself up on one elbow. He reached to pluck a grape from the cluster lying on a platter in front of them. “You always liked picnics, and I thought this might be a good way for us to catch up on what our lives have been like since we last spoke.”
Not wanting to reopen old wounds, she waved a hand toward the spread. “You spent your life lounging with Scheherazade by lantern light?”
“Actually, when I wasn’t being shot at, I spent my summers mostly laboring in the hot sun, the rainy seasons fighting off mosquitoes, and my nights sleeping in cramped barracks with thirty other men.” He blew out a long-suffering sigh and popped the grape into his mouth. “Every last one of whom snored loudly enough to shake the rafters.”
When she laughed, he plucked a second grape and held it up to her lips.
Her belly pinched. Fearing that he was offering far more than a mere grape, she raised her wineglass to her lips like a shield. “If you think a picnic can sway me, you’re mistaken.”
“Not a picnic. I told you. A chance to get to know each other again.”
In one last desperate attempt to cling to her pride, she sat up and busied herself with uncovering the dishes, each more exotic than the one before. Focusing all of her attention on a bowl of yellow rice, she mumbled, “I think we know each other well enough already.”
“Not nearly well enough.”
His low voice sent a warm tingle spiraling through her, which did nothing to put her at ease and everything to cause her hand to tremor as she lifted the lid on a plate of red chicken.
“I want you to know the man I’ve become, so you can understand why I’m set on opening the academy. Perhaps we can find common ground.”
She wasn’t certain she wanted to know him any better. “That depends.” She sat back, her fingers tightening around her wineglass. “What do you want to know about me?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” she squeaked out. That pricked at her pride.
Mischief sparkled in his eyes, as if he could see right through her and knew exactly how much his comment baited her. Then he took the glass out of her hand, set it aside, and raised the grape once more to her lips.
She hesitated, then opened her mouth to let him place it on her tongue. She simply couldn’t resist. Being with him like this felt too familiar to deny. Too right.
“I don’t need to know about you,” he explained, suddenly solemn, “because I made a point of always knowing what your life was like, what you were doing, all the charities you were involved with. No matter how far I traveled, I was never able to put you behind me.”
Instead of lowering his hand, he audaciously stroked his thumb over her bottom lip. She shivered, but she couldn’t tell which was making her head spin more—the deep, husky purr of his voice or the way he caressed her mouth, as if pondering whether he wanted to kiss her. Or devour her.
Then he dropped his hand so suddenly that she nearly whimpered at the loss of his touch. He reached for a plate and began to spoon out small bites of the various dishes. “But there is one thing I still need to know.”
She inhaled a deep breath to steady herself. “Which is?”
“Why are you so concerned about the pensioners?” He held out the plate to her, as casually as if they were friends lunching on the green in Hyde Park instead of adversaries on a secluded stretch of beach. “They’ll be taken care of, I promise you. They’ll have good homes, perhaps even in Chelsea or Greenwich.”
She took the plate and held it awkwardly. For one desperate moment, she wanted to tell him, in case it made a difference in keeping the men here in their home. But how could she share the awful truth? That it was the pensioners who comforted her and gave her strength and understanding when he’d abandoned her, choosing the army over her. That she was right here in Brighton when she received word that her father had died, helping in the hospital. Over the years, being a hospital patroness gave her a feeling of closeness to both of the men she’d lost, a connection she hadn’t yet been able to relinquish. The pensioners had helped her survive when the darkness had closed in upon her. Now it was her turn to protect them and help them survive, just as they’d helped her.
How could she ever make him understand all that? If he even deserved to know in the first place.
She set the plate down, untouched, and threw his question back at him. “Why are you so concerned about training cadets? Surely they can learn battle tactics and leadership better on the field than in classrooms and on parade grounds.”
His face hardened with a small deepening in the lines at the corners of his eyes. “Because I’m fed up with a system in which promising young men never have the chance to reach their full potential or demonstrate what they’re capable of becoming. If we can enroll more cadets, then we can train better officers, and everyone has the opportunity to rise in the ranks as high as their competence and skills allow.” He turned away from her, squinting into the sun that was sinking in a blood-red ball toward the horizon. “And perhaps more men can return alive from the battlefield.”
She bit her lip. All good points. But… “Once they return, don’t they deserve to be taken care of? To be given a permanent home and not be shuffled about from place to place whenever the army decides it no longer wants them around? What does that say to the men who risk their lives for England?”
“That once a soldier, always a soldier.”
She leaned toward him, unwilling to let him dismiss her concerns so easily. “They have every right—”
“The real question,” he interrupted, countering her offensive with one of his own, “is why you asked to meet me this afternoon.” He rested his forearm across his bent knee, his hand clenching lightly into a fist as if to keep himself from reaching for her. “Obviously, it wasn’t to tell me that you haven’t changed your mind.”
Guilt sparked inside her. When she’d schemed to avoid Pomperly, she’d still believed Maxwell to be the horrible, selfish blackguard who’d used her and cast her away, who deserved to be used in kind. But now, knowing how much it meant to him to have proper training for the soldiers, he seemed far less of a monster.
“Because I need you,” she answered grudgingly.
He chuckled, a low sound that rumbled into her. “Why do I think it’s not the way a man wants to be needed by a woman?”
Oh, that devil! Her face flushed hot. “That is not what I meant, and you know it!”
Without a repentant bone in his body, he stroked his knuckles across her cheek. “Pity.”
Stunned, she clutched at the rug beneath her, desperate to hold on to anything as the world rocked around her. He couldn’t possibly mean… could he?
Then the reality of their past crashed over her. What a fool she was! To let herself think it, even for a fleeting heartbeat—no. She doubted he held a single affection toward her. Even the trouble of this picnic wasn’t for her but to try to persuade her to his side.
She pushed his hand away to hide her mortification that the devil could affect her even now. And to quash an unexpected pang of sadness that she didn’t have the same effect on him. “There’s a dinner at the Pavilion with His Majesty.” She busied her empty hands by pulling at the yarns in the rug beneath her. “The Duke of Pomperly has invited me to be his guest. But I prefer not to attend with him.”
“Then refuse.” His blunt response startled her. So did the suddenly sharp edge to his voice. With any other man, she would have claimed he was jealous.
“I cannot refuse an invitation to dine with the king, even if it comes from a man whom I’d rather avoid.” Nor could she afford to offend a board member. “But I can refuse if I’m already attending the dinner with someone else.”
“Who?”
Guilt at using him to avoid Pomperly added to the knot sitting in her belly like a lead ball, and she bit her bottom lip. “You.”
“I see,” he drawled, his face inscrutable.
“You’r
e a brigadier, one of the highest-ranking officers in Brighton,” she rushed out. “Surely you’ll receive an invitation or can wrangle one. Or I can contact the Pavilion and request that you be put on the guest list. So I thought—I thought that you’d—” Now that the scheme was hatched, the words poured from her as she attempted to find purchase in her persuasion. And failing. Because he returned her gaze with an unreadable expression, with no indication if he were sympathetic to her situation. Or simply thought her mad.
She fell silent, realizing with embarrassment that her explanation was paltry justification for using him.
He covered her hand with his, stilling her nervous fingers against the rug. “I’ll accompany you.”
She blinked. “You will?”
“But not to spite Pomperly.” Masculine pride underpinned his voice. “I’ll do it on two conditions.”
She felt as if she were negotiating terms of surrender with the enemy. “Which are?”
“I’ll escort you to the dinner if you agree to accompany me to the barracks to meet the soldiers.”
Suspicion prickled at the backs of her knees. “Why?”
“Just to talk to them.” His deep voice curled softly around her, nearly lost beneath the sound of the rolling waves breaking against the shore. “To find out what their lives in the army have been like.”
Without agreeing, she asked a bit breathlessly, very aware of the warmth of his hand still covering hers, “And your second condition?”
“That you want to spend the evening with me because you want to be with me.”
Clinging to what little pride she had left, she lifted her chin with an imperious sniff, but succeeded only in drawing a grin from him. Oh, that infuriating devil!
“Why would I want to spend the evening with you?” she asked, determined to pretend that he wasn’t affecting her when he was actually shaking her to her core.
He smiled with arrogant charm. “Because you like me.”
“Ha!” Her indignation flared at that. But blast it, she couldn’t bring herself to pull her hand from his. “I don’t like you.”
His eyes gleamed. “A great deal.”
“A very little,” she shot back. Then she grumbled, “And less with each passing moment.”
With a quirk of his brow, he lifted her hand to his lips to place a kiss to her palm. She managed to fight down the tremble that threatened to sweep through her. But when he slid his mouth down to her wrist, her pulse spiked tellingly against his lips, and he smiled.
“A great deal,” he repeated in a rakish murmur.
He slipped a hand behind her nape and tugged her gently toward him before her confused mind had the chance to realize what was happening so she could stop him. Then his lips found hers, and stopping him was the very last thing she wanted to do.
Closing her eyes against the agonizing flood of bittersweet memories that his tender kiss unlocked, she placed her hand against his chest for something solid to cling to as the world around her fell away completely. His heart pounded beneath her fingertips, an echo to her own racing pulse, and she knew she was lost. The achingly sweet kiss tasted of the past, of love and promise… of home.
When he shifted back, breaking the kiss, the loss of contact was so powerful that a whimper rose on her lips.
He stared at her wide-eyed, as if he couldn’t believe that he’d kissed her, with a bewildered expression that she was certain mirrored her own. But for all the confusion that kiss created, the pull of it had been irresistible.
“Maxwell,” she whispered, her right hand rising to touch her lips. She could still feel the heat and strength of his kiss, like a shadow of the love they’d once shared. A ghost pain of the life together that fate denied them.
“Forgive me.” He reached to once again gently take her hand, this time covering it with both of his. And this time, she couldn’t hold back the trembling.
“Of course.” But her voice sounded strained, as if every lie she was telling herself was audible in it. “It was only a kiss.” Oh, it was so much more than that! “It was nothing.” It was simply breathtaking. “We both got caught up in old memories and feelings and…” And something inside her had desperately wanted that kiss. “It won’t happen again.” Even now she yearned to be taken back into his arms, kissed breathless, and told that everything was going to be all right, as if the past had never happened—
But the past couldn’t be changed. She was a fool to wish that it could.
“It was only a kiss... nothing,” she repeated. This time, she meant every word.
“No.” He gave her fingers a tender squeeze. “I meant about what happened ten years ago.”
That small touch of affection raced up her arm and landed warmly in her breast. Heavens, she desperately needed an anchor! But the soothing caress of his fingers over the backs of hers only increased the spinning inside her head. So did that stunning declaration.
“Forgive me, Belinda.” The hard set of his jaw told her how difficult this was for him. “I made what I thought was the best decision at the time.”
One that ended up nearly destroying her. She pulled her hand away and pressed her fist to her chest to physically hold back the pain of old wounds that were once more bleeding as if still fresh.
“Why should I forgive?” Somehow, she kept her voice even. She wanted to scream!
“Because I’m not the man I was before.”
Oh, that was certainly true. She could see the changes in him with her own eyes. Age had mellowed his brashness, and maturity had dulled the impulsive edge she so clearly remembered in the young man he’d once been.
But was he truly repentant for what he’d done, or was he simply playing her for a fool… again?
As if reading her doubts, he slowly pulled at her bonnet ribbons, untying them with a gentle tug. She inhaled sharply at the far-too familiar gesture but couldn’t find the resolve to push his hands away.
“Say that you’ll forgive me,” he cajoled, removing the bonnet and setting it aside.
Then he reached up to her hair and scandalously pulled loose the pins holding her chignon. Spurred on by the sea breeze, her hair spilled free, stirring in the wind around her shoulders.
He stilled as his eyes drank her in. Not moving, not touching, only looking… yet the heated intensity in him coiled a powerful longing deep inside her.
Somehow finding the strength to keep her wits about her, she rasped out in a breathless whisper, “I don’t want your apology.”
“Good. Because I’m not giving one.”
Surprise darted through her, and her lips parted. Taking her reaction as an invitation, he brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. His eyes softened as he focused on the caress, as if touching her like this was the most important thing in the world.
“I’ve made a lifetime of mistakes,” he admitted, remorse roughening his voice, “and I’ve learned that apologies are meaningless. I would never demean you by offering one.” She stiffened beneath his touch, so stunned that for a moment she forgot to breathe. “An apology, no matter how sincere, can never make up for the pain I caused you. And for that, I am truly sorry.”
Fresh anguish sliced into her heart, and she flinched at the pain, so fierce it was visceral. There was a time when she would have given anything to hear those words from him. But that was ten years ago—a different lifetime. Hearing them now brought only torment at the reminder of all they’d lost.
He stared at her so intensely that the little hairs on her arms stood on end. As if he had so much more he wanted to confess. But he said nothing and instead dared to comb his fingers through her hair.
Her heart skipped. In that missed beat, she saw everything her life could have been with him, the family and home they could have made, the dreams and hopes they could have shared—
Then it was gone in a flash of brutal reality.
The pain was vicious. Because her heart knew the truth… that Maxwell didn’t regret what he’d done. What he regretted was that fate ha
d brought them together again while she still blamed him, when he needed her on his side in the fight over the academy. When he once more needed her help to advance his career.
“I can’t forgive you.” She slowly pushed his hand down and moved away, unable to bear his touch a moment longer.
Wisely, he remained where he was, as if sensing that reaching for her again would be the worst mistake he could make. “Not now,” he asked solemnly, “or not ever?”
Unable to find the courage to put full voice to how much he’d wounded her, how the darkness of that time nearly destroyed her, she whispered instead, “I think… I think our picnic’s over.”
* * *
Richard Marbury, Duke of Pomperly, watched the two figures walking together up from the beach in twilight’s darkening shadows. He noted the way Belinda rested her hand on Thorpe’s arm, how his hand reached up to cover hers—only for a moment before dropping back to his side. A gesture of tenderness and affection. One she marked by stiffening ever so slightly, but in her connection to him not shifting away.
Then Pomperly turned away from his carriage window and signaled with a sharp rap of his cane to the roof for his driver to move on.
So the rumors he’d heard about the duchess’s youthful liaison with Maxwell Thorpe were true after all. And from the looks of things, the two were picking up right where they’d left off.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he grumbled.
Belinda was the perfect choice to become Duchess of Pomperly, and nothing was going to get in his way of making her his. Certainly not some upstart baron’s son turned army officer who didn’t have the good sense to realize when he was overstepping. Very much overstepping, in fact, to think that he could win himself a duchess.
Oh, she might find him pleasant enough as an old friend. Or attractive enough for an assignation or two, to take care of whatever physical needs hadn’t been satisfied since Winchester died. But certainly nothing beyond that.
A brigadier’s wife? He snorted. Even Belinda wasn’t reformer enough for that.
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