At least Christa was unlikely to meet Alex, or to see him with his wife. It might be years before he was in England again; if he was unlucky, perhaps he would never return, a thought that produced such a wrench that she forced her mind into a marginally less depressing direction. If their paths crossed ten years from now, perhaps she wouldn’t care anymore. Ha! She smiled faintly as her fingers stroked the slow finale of the sonata. It was quite simply impossible to believe that she would ever cease to be affected by Alex. If they met at some dim time in the future, would he recognize her? And could she bear it if he didn’t?
As she gazed unseeing at the ivory keys, a man’s footsteps sounded behind her. It must be Charles; grateful for the interruption, Christa turned to greet him, then froze.
The sudden appearance of the object of her reverie was too great a shock for her to deal with, and she was immobilized by a combination of joy and horror. Looking at the tall figure, she gasped, “Alex!” Even though Christa had seen his face in her mind for weeks, the reality of him was overpowering. She tried to absorb every detail—the vitality, the broad-shouldered strength, the thick golden hair refusing to stay quite as it ought—and feared that her face must show her naked longing.
Alex’s expression blazed with happiness as he exclaimed, “Christa!” and closed the distance between them, reaching down to catch her hands and pull her to her feet. His touch sent sparks running through her and she jerked free of his grasp, sidestepping away from the piano bench.
Alex stood stock-still, the happiness leaching out of his face as he watched her efforts to escape. The amber eyes lost their warmth and his voice was flat as he asked quietly, “What are you doing here?”
Christa gave a brittle laugh as she vainly attempted to pretend this was a simple social call. “Why, I live here, of course. My circumstances have obviously changed for the better.” She smiled distractedly in his general direction and edged toward the door.
As Alex stared at the smoky-quartz eyes, now wide and drained of laughter, the realization exploded in his mind. Charles, Lord Radcliffe. Both times when he had heard Christa call out the name, it was the soft French “Sharl,” and he had assumed her lover was a Frenchman.
Charles Radleigh, missing and presumed dead in France for two years, was the man who had come to reclaim his sweetheart. The Earl of Radcliffe, who was courting Annabelle, and who was almost certainly the missing lord that Sybil Debenham had broken her betrothal for. The insane idea flashed through Alex’s mind that someone was trying to strike at him through the women around him. What in the name of God had he ever done to the Earl of Radcliffe?
Alex thrust the thought out of his mind to deal with the incontrovertible, agonizing fact in front of him. He said harshly, “Of course. Stupid of me not to guess.”
Christa gasped at his expression, unable to understand. To her horror, she found herself near tears under the angry gaze. She had no idea why Alex was so furious, but knew that if she didn’t get out of the room right now, she was going to disgrace herself, either by throwing herself into his arms or by bursting into tears, or quite possibly both at the same time. She made a dash for the music room door, only to find it wouldn’t open.
Christa twisted the knob frantically, escape the only thought in her mind, while Alex followed, his clipped words coming with icy precision.
“So you are Lord Radcliffe’s mistress. I have absolutely no right to criticize you. But I find it appalling that you are living in the same house as his mother, and as he entertains a woman he claims to want for a wife.” His eyes raked her, hard with anger and contempt. “Charles Radleigh is said to be an honorable man. I would have expected better of him.”
Christa shook her head dazedly, too stunned to refute the charges. “No … no, you don’t understand.”
“That is obvious,” he said, his full bitterness erupting. “I had thought you were a woman who could not be bought. Or are you living in this gilded cage for love alone?”
He reached out and lifted the opal pendant around her neck, the brush of his fingers scalding her. “A pretty bauble. Was that your price? Would you have accepted me had I offered a dozen such?”
Alex looked down into the shocked elfin face, the gray eyes wide and staring. It was unbearable to think that all her honesty and warmth would be wasted on a man who kept her as a toy for idle hours. In a voice laced with anguish he asked, “Is it so much better to be his whore than my wife?”
As Christa stared at Alex in horrified paralysis, he turned away, saying with tightly controlled violence, “He may have you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let him have my sister too.”
He brushed her aside to test the knob, but could see the heavy metal bolt bridging the crack between the doors. A quick walk to the salon confirmed that the other door was locked too. Someone was playing games, and it was the last fuel needed to create a murderous rage. Alex considered kicking the door open, but the thickness of the oak and the width of the bolt made that more likely to break his foot than to free him from this intolerable captivity.
He was in no mood for anticlimax, so he grabbed a heavy upholstered chair and hurled it into the lock. The bolt shattered free of the wood as the doors flew open and the chair tumbled into the foyer. Alex was almost out the door when he heard a sound that stopped him dead in his tracks. Christa was laughing.
He could not force her to love him, but it was unbearable that she mocked his agony. With the compressed violence of a tiger ready to spring, he stalked toward Christa. Her back was to the window so he could not see her face clearly, but her brittle laughter cut to the bone.
Alex stopped at a safe distance, afraid that if he came any closer he would be tempted to wring her neck. “You think it is funny, madam?” he said in a dangerously soft tone. “Shall I cut my heart out for an encore? You should find that really amusing.”
“Oh, it is already unbelievably droll,” she said as anger began to overcome pain. “You come into my home, you insult me and my entire family, and after you have destroyed some of Adams’s finest work, you have the audacity to condemn me. And all because I am living in my brother’s house. You should be grateful that I am laughing. If Charles were here, he would call you out. I should myself.”
Alex was paralyzed with the same kind of shock he had felt when an almost spent musketball had slammed into his midriff. He stammered, “Your … your brother?”
Her voice was icy. “My half-brother. Charles Radleigh.”
Unconsciously imitating his sister’s confusion of several weeks before, he said, “But Lord Radcliffe is surely English?”
“He is half French. His father was the Earl of Radcliffe, mine the Comte d’Estelle.”
Alex shook his head, trying to make sense of what Christa was saying. Since she was French … “Then you are a countess in your own right?”
She shrugged. “The Assembly abolished aristocratic titles several years ago, so there are no more French countesses. Now, if you will excuse me, I think it is time I left.”
As Christa brushed past him toward the door, the sun fell full on her and he saw the tears coursing down her face. Racked by the recognition of a pain as great as his own, Alex reached out to her in a despairing attempt to make amends. “God in heaven, Christa, forgive me.”
As his arm blocked her path, Christa turned into his embrace, blindly burying her face against his chest while she sobbed as if she would never stop. Alex’s own control shattered as he enfolded her in his arms, vainly attempting to still her frantic tears.
“Oh, Christa, Christa,” Alex said despairingly as he used physical touch to heal the mental wounds he had inflicted on her. “I would give my life to save you from pain, and yet I have hurt you again from my own stupid jealousy and misunderstanding.”
Christa shook uncontrollably, unable to walk away even if she had wished. Scooping her up in his arms, Alex carried her to a sofa and sat with her on his lap, stroking and comforting her as if she were a child. As he rocked her gently, her sob
s abated but she kept her face buried away from him.
“It is too much to hope that you will forgive me,” he said quietly when her tears were finally stilled. “My anger came from grief, but what I said was still inexcusable.”
She wouldn’t look at him. Her voice raw, she asked, “Why were you so sure that Charles was my lover? You only heard me say his name once.”
Alex massaged her back gently, feeling the tightness of her body gradually diminish. “When you left the Orchard, I followed as soon as I could and went to Suzanne’s, hoping to find you. What I saw was your reunion with your brother.”
Christa lifted her head in surprise. “I see. If you were there, it would not have been difficult to reach the wrong conclusion.” She stopped a moment. “You should not have been traveling so soon. You had very nearly died the week before. You might have made yourself very ill again.”
“I did.”
She attempted a watery smile. “You appear recovered now.”
Alex was looking puzzled. “I am still trying to put the pieces together, Christa. How did you come to be a lady’s maid? Surely your family did not leave you destitute.”
She sighed and laid her head back against his chest. “It was very complicated. Charles’s uncle, who succeeded him, did not know how my fortune was tied up and told me I was penniless. He also offered for me in a manner I found … alarming, so I ran away. I felt alone and defenseless, and perhaps I also felt a need to start a new life. It made a great deal of sense at the time.
“Since I could not find a situation as governess, I became Lady Pomfret’s abigail. Even former countesses must eat, after all. You know the rest.” Christa knew that she should move, but the comfort of his arms and the emotional storms of the last half-hour created a lassitude that made action impossible.
Alex ran his fingers through her hair, delicately stroking her ear in a way that caused shivers throughout her body. As her head lay against his chest, Christa could feel the vibrations of his deep voice as he asked softly, “Why did you run away from me?”
“Because it seemed there was no future and no comfort in staying. I had no desire to witness your wedding to Miss Debenham.”
“I asked you to marry me. Surely that deserved an answer?”
Her laughter was forced. “It was very honorable of you to offer your good name for having ruined me, but I did not want you to marry me from duty, or from pity.”
“Will you please look at me?” As she raised her head, Alex’s amber eyes darkened with the struggle to find the words he needed. “Christa, I am not very good at saying what is most important to me. But you overrate my sense of duty if you can believe that I wished to marry you from any sense of obligation. I would have thought you had some idea of how I felt about you.”
Her heart started hammering. “You had wanted me to be your mistress. The circumstances of your marriage offer made it seem that it came from your remorse for what had happened.”
He said mildly, “Surely you noticed that my mood at the time was happiness, not guilt.”
Christa shrugged. “You looked pleased enough, but my mother once told me never to hold a man to anything said just before or after making love. She said men are incapable of logic then, and it would be unsporting to take advantage of that fact.”
Alex gave her a small exasperated shake. “I have had quite enough of your French cynicism, young lady. I may be slow to find the right words, but I meant exactly what I said then, as I do now.” He lifted her chin with one finger and looked deep into the clear gray eyes.
Speaking with deliberation, he said, “I have never been in love before, and I didn’t recognize the symptoms. I enjoyed your bright spirit, your intelligence, your joie de vivre, and I certainly wanted to make love to you. But through a combination of obtuseness and class prejudice, it simply didn’t occur to me that I could marry you until Stornaway.
“After that”—the amber eyes searched hers—“the unthinkable became the inevitable. I loved you when I thought you were a maid, and I love you now. More than anything on earth I want to marry you. I should have said that in Stornaway, but it was all so new, and I was hardly at my best.”
He stopped, then finished in a low voice, “Perhaps I thought there was so much love between us that morning that you must feel it too.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I did, but I thought all the love was all on my side.”
Alex bent his head to hers, tasting the salt of tears on her lips. After a long wordless interval he drew back enough to say, “I am asking you again, will you marry me? Or are you holding out for a rank more suitable to a countess?”
Ignoring the thrust, Christa asked warily, “What about Miss Debenham?”
He unexpectedly laughed. “Yesterday she informed me that her heart belonged to another, and terminated our engagement. It seems that she was in love with a lord who was given up for dead two years ago, only to miraculously return recently.”
“What!” Christa jerked upright on his lap.
“Yes, quite,” Alex said with amusement. “I am developing a passionate desire to meet the mysterious Lord Radcliffe. He seems to have been very busy with my sister, my former fiancée”—he placed a quick kiss on her forehead—“and my beloved.”
Her lips parted with a small exclamation of happiness as she raised them to his. Eventually she sat up in a doomed attempt at dignity and said regretfully, “You are going away to sea next month.”
Alex grinned. “I have just changed my mind. Admiral Hutchinson can make some other post captain wildly happy by giving him the Invicta. I prefer to serve the Navy ashore and sail only for pleasure.”
“Oh, Alex!” Christa wrapped her arms around his neck, and for quite some time they both forgot to breathe.
Charles and Annabelle waited in the reception room opposite the salon, hovering near the door as they wondered how their experiment in matchmaking would be resolved. The earl was pacing anxiously, until Annabelle finally laid a hand on his arm and said, “We have done the best we could. Now it is up to them.”
Charles ran his fingers through his thick blond hair and smiled at her ruefully. “I know you are right, but the waiting is hard to take.” He sighed. “At first, our conspiracy seemed like a good sort of game, but now all I can think of is how much it might mean to the happiness of Christa and your brother. When we began, I didn’t really appreciate quite what love meant. Now …” He gave one of the Gallic shrugs that made him look so much like Christa. Annabelle stared at him, wondering if she dared guess what he was implying.
They both jumped when the heavy chair crashed through the double doors of the salon and spun across the polished marble floor until it banged to a stop against the opposite wall. “Does your brother throw things often?” Charles inquired. “I assume that wasn’t Christa.”
Annabelle watched as the broken door swung shut, cutting off the brief sound of raised voices. “I never saw Alex do anything like that. Perhaps we had better go in.” She started forward but Charles stopped her.
“As long as he is just breaking the furniture, Christa is safe enough. My sister has occasionally made me want to smash a few things myself; she has no talent for obeying orders. We needn’t worry unless we hear screams—either hers or his,” Charles added with a faint smile.
Annabelle sighed. “You are right. Alex would never hurt her, no matter how angry he was. But what is going on?”
They waited with increasing impatience until Charles finally said, “I think it is time to face the consequences of our actions,” and marched across the foyer to the salon, Annabelle a step behind him.
The sight that met their eyes had nothing to do with violence. Christa was in Alex’s lap, her arms entwined around his neck, both of them oblivious of the world.
“Ahem!” Charles repeated himself twice before he was noticed. They both looked up; Christa tried to assume a more proper sitting position, but Alex held her firmly in his lap.
“I hope you will excuse me f
or not rising, Radleigh, but I’m afraid that if I let go of your sister she might run away again. She seems to have a habit of doing that.”
While Christa blushed, the earl said, “I trust your intentions to my sister are honorable.”
“Oh, quite,” Alex assured him. “I am not yet sure if hers are to me.”
“Alex!” Christa cried indignantly as Charles and Annabelle laughed.
“You still haven’t answered my question, chérie,” he said, ignoring their audience.
Her eyes locked with his. “Of course I will marry you, Alex.” She flashed her gamin grin. “Do I have a choice?”
“There is always a choice. You can either marry me voluntarily or I will abduct you. Would you prefer being carried off to Scotland, or shall I get one of my sea captain friends to perform the office?”
This romantic speech threatened to make the happy couple forget anyone else was present, so Charles cleared his throat again. “If I have any vote in the matter, I should prefer to give her away in a suitably ostentatious ceremony in London. After all, she is my only sister, and I shouldn’t want anyone to think I’m ashamed of the connection.”
That caught Christa’s attention enough for her to snort and toss a comment in French that was too quick and colloquial for either of the Kingsleys to understand. Charles laughed aloud. “And the same to you, little sister.” He reached out a hand to Alex. “I expect it is time we became better acquainted.”
Alex deposited Christa on her feet and stood, keeping an arm around her waist as he took Charles’s hand. The earl’s gaze was almost level with Alex’s own, and his eyes were irresistibly gray and mischievous like Christa’s. Alex looked at him measuringly as they tested each other’s grips, then drawled, “You appear to have been involving yourself in my affairs to an alarming degree, but I really can’t fault the results. Besides, I expect my scamp of a sister may have put you up to it.”
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