Lord Ravenscar's Inconvenient Betrothal

by Lara Temple

  A muscle tightened in his cheek and she watched the telltale line beside his mouth curve. The memory of touching that line while he was ill tingled in her fingertips and she turned back to the ducks and willows. She shouldn’t enjoy teasing him out of his sullens and she shouldn’t be allowing herself to become all warm over thoughts of touching a man’s cheek.

  ‘Knee bending isn’t a strength of mine. I am afraid I’ve exhausted my chivalric impulses rescuing a very ungrateful damsel from her own folly.’

  ‘I wasn’t in distress. Besides, I did some rescuing of my own. You would most likely have fallen off your horse into a muddy ditch and drowned. All you did was complicate matters.’

  ‘Well, matters are about to be simplified. Marriage has a way of cutting things down to size.’

  ‘That need not be the case. Whatever your grandmother says, we may yet avoid a scandal. Neither of us wishes to be trapped in a marriage of form. You want your freedom and I want a family, which you admitted you have no interest in.’

  ‘You have been spending too much time with lawyers, Lily, you are beginning to sound like one. You can throw as many clauses and subclauses at this, but the basic facts cannot be avoided. We were two days together, alone. In my experience scandals of these proportions are impossible to bury and I won’t have the ruin of a young woman added to my list of sins. So I suggest you accept your fate with equanimity. You needn’t worry I will make any unpleasant demands on you or your fortune. I had never intended to marry, but if it can’t be helped, it can’t. At least you are an intelligent woman, and I think if we establish the ground rules, there is no reason we can’t make the best of this. Speaking of lawyers, I suggest you send for Mr Prosper and have him help you compose a marriage settlement you find adequate to your needs. He will probably explain to you that once you marry, your husband receives all your inheritance outright, barring any landed property for which he would receive only the income. Since I don’t want a penny of your money and I have no interest in your father’s mines, Prosper will have to be creative about creating a settlement that will provide you with an amount in pin money that would allow you to pursue whatever activities you wish, business or otherwise. I will sign whatever you want so you may do with it as you see fit.’

  It was a generous offer. It was certainly far more generous than Philip Marston’s, at least with regards to her inheritance and her personal freedom. In her discussions with Marston he had promised her a generous allowance in pin money as well as a substantial jointure, but she doubted he would let her dispose of her assets or decide how she would live her life. Philip Marston wanted a mother for his heirs and a socially adept wife to further his ambitions.

  But as generous as Alan’s offer was, it could not atone for what he wasn’t willing to offer her. She had never expected Marston to care for her, not in any deep way. She had come to accept the fact that she was not lovable, since none of the men who had wanted to marry her had seemed swayed by any strong emotion other than avarice and she certainly had never cared for any of them. But she knew she would love her children and hopefully they would love her, and that, Philip Marston was more than willing to give her. He clearly loved his daughter, but he wanted what his own wife had been unable to give him, a large family, preferably with a few sons, and in the end this was what Lily wanted as well. It didn’t matter that Alan had breached walls inside her she had not known existed and awakened needs she had not imagined could exist. In his own way he was generous and honest, but he wanted nothing to do with her dreams and she had no power to change him. To live in the expectation that she could would be to invite disaster.

  ‘Nothing to say, Lily? You were talkative enough before. I should be gratified you aren’t arguing, but I worry most when you are silent. It makes me want to check over my shoulder for the descending axe, or, in your case, a mace.’

  ‘When I do next wield a mace at your head, I won’t do it behind your back, Alan Rothwell.’

  He smiled suddenly, demolishing her defences further.

  ‘I almost hope you do. I would like the opportunity to disarm you. Disrobe you, too, but that will have to wait a few weeks, unfortunately.’

  She gasped. There was no other way to describe the sharp intake of air that her body forced upon her at his words. She should have just laughed at his absurd response to her absurd suggestion. After all, she had wanted to infuse a little humour into the impossibly difficult situation they were trapped in and she should be happy she made him and Lady Ravenscar smile. But his voice had lost the rasping edge of the fever and regained the sultry sensation of rough velvet dragging over her nerves. It shoved her back against a mental wall and stripped her.

  She stood abruptly. This marked the end of the unevenness in their power play his illness had introduced. He was no longer a patient but a clever, experienced rake; he was back in control of himself and she had better do the same if she was to remain in control of her fate.

  ‘Running away again, Lily?’

  ‘I’m standing, not running.’

  ‘You’re contemplating it.’

  His voice as smooth as heated syrup and his gaze black as burning coals and hot as Hades. She knew it was a taunt, aimed at the precise opposite result. He wanted her to take him up on his dare and she wanted to. Not because it was a dare, but because she wanted to stay right there and see what happened.

  ‘Are you daring me?’

  ‘You seem to thrive on dares; it’s hard to resist tossing them your way.’

  ‘You’re just doing this because you’re upset I saw you flat on your back and weak as a kitten. If this is an attempt to recapture your sense of manhood, it is rather puerile.’

  ‘You’re wrong. That’s not why I’m doing this.’

  ‘Then why? Because I witnessed that scene between you and your grandmother?’

  He shook his head and moved towards her.

  ‘Wrong again.’

  ‘Then because of Hollywell House. Is that it? Because I didn’t want to sell?’

  ‘No. That’s also not why and you know it.’

  She swallowed and stepped back, but he continued moving towards her.

  ‘That was three guesses, but I’m feeling generous, so you get one more. If you guess right, I’ll stop.’

  Oh, unfair. That was no incentive to guess right. But the words came anyway, because she needed to see if they were true.

  ‘Because you want to?’

  He stopped.

  ‘It is usually the simplest answer that’s the correct one, isn’t it? So what now, Lily? Shall I stop or do you forfeit your win?’

  It isn’t that simple, she wanted to say. Not at all simple.

  ‘Here?’

  The black fire flashed in his eyes again and he took her hand and pulled her into the shade of the willows. Nothing so tame and cosy as the tea and books she had imagined. Nothing so profound as the children playing, at least not profound for him, but she was afraid it might be for her. There was certainly nothing tame or cosy about the harsh handsome face looking down at her, scored by the lacy shadows of the willow branches that closed about them like a cage. She had stumbled into a wild animal’s lair, a panther, dark and sleek and stalking her. He raised his hand and very gently skimmed his knuckles down her cheek, coming to rest just below her mouth, his eyes following his movement with an intensity that burned the caressed skin as much as his touch. She could believe he had read her thoughts, that he knew precisely what she had wanted to do to him as she watched him on the bench and he was paying her back for her foolishness. But then his thumb gently settled on her lower lip, its pressure daring her to open her mouth, to signal that she was ready and waiting for something more.

  ‘Lily...’

  She needed to breathe. She couldn’t help it, her mouth opened, sucking in his scent, deeper and warmer than the green around them.

  ‘That’s righ
t,’ he murmured and bent to meet her invitation. ‘Open for me.’

  His lips brushed hers, gently shaping them, sliding between them only to slide away, lightly tugging and releasing. With each sweep, the urge to cling, to force him to press deeper, harder, grew.

  She knew he was playing with her, taunting her into reacting, into making a demand. There was something more, much more, and he was actively withholding it. She resisted, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of begging for what she needed, but it was wearing her down, the friction and his breath soothing and warming and promising.

  When he stepped back, she just stood there, disbelieving. Was he so unaffected? Was it only she who was thrumming, singed below the skin, needing...?

  ‘You can’t have something for nothing, Lily.’ His voice wasn’t as confident as his actions; it was rougher than usual, bordering on an accusation.

  I don’t want something. I want everything. You.

  He was right. She wanted to give, not just take. She might have said the words out loud if he hadn’t moved towards her again, but just as his fingertips brushed her shoulders he stopped, his gaze focusing on a point behind her.

  ‘Not here. Let’s go...somewhere else.’

  He grabbed her wrist, but her eyes had followed his and her haze of expectant heat was cleaved through with shock as she realised what he had been staring at while seated on the bench. How hadn’t she noticed the tombstone before? Perhaps it was because it was so modest and the same colour as the wall directly behind it. She moved towards it without thinking.

  ‘“Richard George Brisbane Rothwell. 1798–1802,”’ she read slowly. Eighteen years ago.

  Rickie. The echo of his fevered voice, tortured and foreign, sounded in her mind. She turned to him.

  ‘You had a brother as well. He died when your parents did.’

  ‘We don’t speak of him.’

  ‘I realise that. Why?’

  He was under control again; even the familiar mocking smile was back. Both passion and pain might never have been there at all.

  ‘House rules. Some people don’t like being reminded of their crimes. Certainly my grandparents didn’t. They hadn’t even known Rickie existed until my parents died; he was born after we came to Edinburgh. At least they had the decency to bring his body back, but not enough to bury him in the Chapel with my father. I used to resent that, but not any more. This is a better place. Someplace he might have played if he had lived here. My grandparents never came down to the lake, too frivolous. That’s why I like it here. I can meditate on my sins and my failure in quiet. Until you showed up.’

  ‘Sins plural and failure singular. Why?’

  ‘Must you pick at everything?’

  ‘It’s not a question of must. Who did you fail? Your brother?’

  ‘What a tortuous little brain you have.’ He smiled at her grimly. ‘There were other failures, but he was the most monumental. At least the men who died under my command were there by choice and they knew what might happen to them. Rickie was four years old.’

  ‘Catherine said your parents died of the fever. Didn’t he die of the same cause?’

  ‘Yes. Disease and carelessness. The disease wasn’t my fault, the carelessness was.’

  ‘You were just a child.’

  ‘So what? Do you know in the mill I won at cards five years ago half the workers were under ten years old? They and their families saw nothing peculiar about that. When I told the families we would no longer be employing children, we nearly had a riot on our hands until we found alternatives. I might have been twelve, but I was still responsible for him. My parents were ill, the whole city was in a panic at the epidemic, people closed down their houses and stores and ran for the hills. I was too ashamed to fetch the doctor again because we had nothing to give him. I actually thought I could care for him myself. My only consolation was that they died before they realised he was dead. Foolish, isn’t it? They would have died anyway. What difference would it make if they knew?’

  Lily remembered that night watching over the housekeeper’s tiny bloodstained baby on the island. Nothing anyone had said, could say, erased her guilt. But this had been his brother, in his care while his parents lay dying and his sister and nanny close to death themselves, caught in a city of chaos and without resources. She could imagine nothing more lonely, more terrifying. He was no fool, he probably knew his brother would have died anyway, but the doubt would never disappear.

  She crouched down and laid her hand flat on the cool stone, just below the name. How deep did his little skeleton lie?

  ‘It makes a difference to you,’ she answered. ‘One less burden for you to bear.’

  ‘A burden I will never willingly bear again.’

  She shivered and stood up. He had said as much before, but she hadn’t realised this wasn’t simply a preference for his chosen lifestyle, but a deep rejection of what she held dear. He would do what was proper, marry her, and then she would truly be alone.

  ‘That makes no sense,’ she protested, unwilling to accept the verdict. ‘What happened with Rickie wasn’t your fault. You cannot go through life blaming yourself for something you had no control over.’

  ‘This isn’t only about blame. I watched Rickie die. It took days, but I saw the precise moment. For four years he had been the most wonderful thing to enter our lives, the first thing to bring real joy to my parents’ lives for as long as I could remember, and he ceased to be in a second. I couldn’t even tell anyone because there was no one coherent enough to understand. I’ve watched quite a few men die since then, but by some mercy I’ve been spared watching another child die. If you think I am mad enough to risk that pain again... Just spare me your self-serving lectures, Lily, and disabuse yourself that either of us still has any choice in the matter—you are going to marry me, and if you want children, you will have to do what any other married woman in the ton does when she needs something from a man and her husband won’t oblige. I don’t know what fairy-tale idea you have of our society, but though we are unforgivingly brutal about young women’s reputations before they wed, and demand discretion of them once they do, the ton is littered with other men’s children—why should I be any different?’

  Her jaw ached with the weight of his loss, but the image of her future his last words conjured made her ill. She shook her head. She would never, ever go down that path, no matter how much she loved Alan and wanted to be with him. But the very fact that he could make such a suggestion dragged out the devil in her. She wanted to hurt him as much as he was hurting her.

  ‘So you would have no problem if I seduced another man and brought him to my bed, if I undressed for him...’

  ‘Damn you!’

  He was panther swift and just as frightening as he grabbed her, but she wasn’t scared he would hurt her, not in body. Part of her refused to believe he could really contemplate such a future, for her or for himself. She heard the pleading note in her voice as she tried to reach him.

  ‘But that is precisely what would happen if I accepted your generous offer, Alan. I would be damned to a life I would hate.’

  He let go and turned away, his breathing as tense as her body.

  ‘This is the way things are, Lily.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘You’ve a softer heart than you like to accept, don’t you, Lily? You absolve your parents, transform my grandmother into Lady Belle... Well, don’t strain it on my account.’

  She gathered herself up again at the cold warning in his voice. He was at least decent enough to point out her figurative petticoats were showing. What had she expected? That her emotion would trigger his? She wasn’t so naïve. But she wouldn’t stand down from her own truth either.

  ‘I’ll strain my heart over whatever I want, Lord Ravenscar.’ It was a challenge, not an admission. At least she hoped not.

  ‘You shoul
d watch that soft flank of yours, Lily. That is how battles are lost.’

  She shrugged and brushed her hands on her pelisse.

  ‘You may crow from your perch all you like, Raven. At least I know I am still warm and breathing.’

  ‘Do you find me cold, Lily? Even in light of our little interludes? I must have been doing something wrong.’

  ‘That’s not warmth.’

  ‘I agree. It was quite a few degrees hotter than warmth. Shall I remind you?’

  She stepped back but stopped. She would not run. She didn’t want to run. Oh, blast. She was asking for trouble. She was a fool, but at least she knew that now. At least the pain that was to come wouldn’t be a surprise.

  He smiled and touched her cheek.

  ‘Standing your ground can be as much an offensive move as an outright attack, you do know that, don’t you? Of course you do. This vixen is more accustomed to standing and fighting than she is to running after all.’

  ‘Careful you don’t get bitten, then.’

  ‘Right now I’m willing to risk it.’ His voice dropped and he closed the distance between them. ‘More than willing.’

  His hands could be so gentle. She could feel the tension in them, the leashed power, but they moved over her skin so lightly, drawing her towards him, skimming over her lower lip so that it shuddered against his fingers.

  ‘Are you willing, Lily?’ His voice was also gentle as he bent to replace his fingers with his mouth. The words moved over her, encompassing her with liquid heat. This was how it would feel if they were swimming together in the warm tropical waters of the bay in Isla Padrones. She was swimming with her own shark now. She was exposed and he was lethal. At least to her.

  Yes. With his lips just poised over hers, promising, she was willing to risk anything he asked.

  ‘Yes... Alan...’

  He drew away, his hand closed around her nape, his thumb pressing up against her chin. The lazy seduction in his eyes was gone. She wasn’t prepared for the blaze of fire in them now, or the surge of painful heat that echoed through her in response. He pressed her back against the trunk of the willow, sheathing them in the long green darts, a cocoon of shadow.