The Lady’s Sinful Secret

by Kelly Boyce

  Fool. Years had passed. An entire lifetime. She had borne children who had grown. They had both married others and watched as their respective spouses passed on to leave them alone once more. Did she miss Blackbourne upon his passing? Had she mourned the earl? Had she loved him in the end?

  His heart withered at the idea of it. He ought to let it go. He needed to let it go. Yet three days had passed since seeing her at the dress shop and still each morning he rode out to this very spot where he first saw her once again, hoping…

  For what?

  A second chance.

  No. He did not believe in second chances. He’d learned during his years in the war the finality of things. Second chances were rarely ever granted, whether deserved or not.

  Did he deserve one? Did she?

  A twig snapped and he glanced toward the copse of woods to his left. A moment later, Glory rode out from the shadows, oblivious to his presence. He sat still in the saddle and watched her, a vision of loveliness defined by the autumn colors that surrounded her and the pale sunlight that lit her ivory skin. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to greet it. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed it in and a small smile touched the corners of her mouth. He nudged his horse and rode down to greet her before his better sense could counsel him to leave, return to the manor. Forget he had ever seen her.

  She turned upon his approach and for a brief second her smile faltered. Perhaps his better sense had been correct. He should have been content to simply gaze upon her. But the rest of him, the parts that had longed for her year after year—longed for her still—continued to ignore any sense at all.

  “Good morning, Glory.” Glory. He smiled at the name. She had never cared for the one given her at birth, but he had loved it. It was more than fitting, as he had never met a woman more glorious than she. And so he had shortened it, telling her that to him, she was a glory.

  Her smile resurrected itself and with it a glint of hope in her eyes, which sent his heart soaring. He treaded dangerous ground riddled with traps and pitfalls. If he’d been on the battlefield, he’d be a goner for certain. His heart pumped with desire and yet cringed with fear. He had not given his heart since the last time it had been broken. Did he even remember how? Did it matter?

  Glory broke the pregnant silence between them. “Were you waiting for me?”

  “No.” He hadn’t been waiting, he’d simply been hoping.

  “I see.” She stared at him and her gaze seeped through to where his heart cowered in his chest and wrapped around it, enveloping it with a gentle touch. He let out a slow breath. “Shall I carry on then?”

  He nodded but his words contradicted him. “No.”

  She rested her hands and the reins in her lap and looked at him with expectation, as if they were playing a game of chess and the next move was his. He’d never been a very good chess player. Subterfuge and strategy were all well and good on the battlefield of war, but this was a different arena altogether, and not one he excelled at. He had waded out of his depth and lost sight of the shore.

  Again, she proved braver than he. “Would you care to walk with me for a bit?”

  He had stacks of work awaiting him back at his study. Convoluted piles of ledgers that Judith had done her best to keep up during her father’s long illness that needed his attention. None of which appealed to him at the moment. In this moment, he wanted only to gaze upon Glory’s beauty, swim through the memories of their past and reach for her like a lifeline thrown to a drowning sailor.

  “I think I would like that very much.”

  Arran dismounted and hobbled his horse near a thick patch of grass that had not yet browned from the cooler temperatures, then returned to assist Glory down from her mare, lifting her from the sidesaddle and slowly lowering her to the ground. The skirts of her riding habit did little to tamp down the riot created inside of him as her body brushed against his.

  Aside from their encounter at the Assembly, this was the closest he had been to her since sneaking into her room at Sheridan Park all those years ago. How reckless they had been then. How reckless he felt now with her soft curves molded against his hands and his body demanding he pull her against him and hold her close until everything wrong was put right again. As if that was all it took. Just holding her. He closed his eyes. Maybe instinct had the right of it. Maybe that was all it took. If he simply let go. Gave in.

  He took a breath. She smelled of freshly bloomed daisies. She always had.

  Her gloved hand touched his face and he opened his eyes to find her peering up at him with those damnable silvery eyes, a slightly darker shade than her son’s, warmer and completely unforgettable. How they had haunted his dreams. Continued to still.

  She did not move away and he lacked the ability to do so himself.

  “I don’t know why I came here today,” he said. A lie. He’d come for the same reason he’d come here every day since first seeing her again. At first, he’d told himself it was to remind him of all the reasons he had to despise her, but his reasoning failed when each time he saw her, or each time someone mentioned her name and sang her praises he was reminded all over again why he had loved her so deeply.

  He’d painted her the villain in his mind, but the more he tried to focus on the picture now, the more incomplete it became. Edges were smudged and blurry, the colors wrong, the dimensions distorted.

  “I’m glad you came.” She smiled and his insides did that thing where they took flight like a hundred pairs of wings flitting around in his belly. “I am always happy to see you.”

  Her words struck him. Confused him. “You are?”

  “You have been gone much too long. I have missed you horribly.” The words whispered from her and brushed against his skin like a caress, but they did nothing to settle his confusion. She had sent him away. Threw him over for another. Even when he came back, determined to convince her to leave her husband and run off with him, she had accepted him into her bed but then banished him from her life.

  Had she regretted her decision? Wished she’d chosen differently?

  “But you—”

  She shook her head and slid her hand over his jaw until the tips of her fingers covered his mouth. “I don’t want to talk about the past. It is too painful and we have both suffered enough for it, have we not? I know you have only just returned and that in the years past you have married and now mourn your wife, who I am certain must have been a lovely woman, but I—”

  She stopped and her eyes glistened with unshed tears, mesmerizing him. He had pictured this moment repeatedly. Day in and day out. Year upon year, decade over decade. Yet in his scenario, she begged his forgiveness, pleaded with him to take her back, to rescue her from the bitterness of marriage to a man that would never be his equal. A part of him still wanted that. Needed to hear it.

  Ego.

  He wrapped his fingers around her narrow wrist and freed his mouth. “What do you want from me?” Did she expect them to pick up where they had left off? Pretend as if nothing had happened?

  She gave him a tentative smile, like the one he remembered so fondly from their first meeting. “I think I would very much like you to kiss me.”

  Her boldness startled him and he did not respond. Did not know how. There was nothing he wanted more. Nothing he feared more, because one kiss would never be enough. It never was where she was concerned. It had been his downfall, his Waterloo.

  Color bloomed in her cheeks and she dropped her gaze. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “How inappropriate of me. I should never have made such a—”

  He didn’t let her finish. He tilted her chin and captured her mouth with his before he had time to think beyond what he did. What he wanted. Needed. And oh yes, he needed this. With everything inside of him, he needed this. Her mouth, soft and pliable, against his. Hungry, searching. Desperate. As if she could not get enough of him. Or he, her. Nothing had changed.

  Everything has changed.

  He didn’t care. Not now. Not in this moment.
In this moment, he only needed her. Her taste, her tongue, her lips. The scent of daisies swirling around them like an aphrodisiac he could never resist. He pulled her closer. Held her tighter. Kissed her harder.

  Behind her, her mare neighed and snorted, a shot of reality into a delightful fantasy where she belonged to him once again. But he did not live in dreams. He could not afford to. He broke the kiss and took a step back, her mouth, red and swollen enticing him to return. He averted his gaze to the tree standing tall in the distance behind her.

  “Forgive me.” He cleared his throat, collected his rattled senses. “I took liberties I should not have.”

  “You did nothing I did not ask you to.” Her words were breathless, the color in her cheeks burned now from a different source. Passion. Desire. How he had forgotten the feeling. The way those emotions looked upon her features. The destruction they employed.

  “This was a mistake.” He shook his head and took another step back, needing distance to clear his head. And his heart. “I will assist you in mounting your horse then I must be on my way.”

  He could not stay. He could not resist her and he could not be responsible for what he would do if he did not send her away.

  “Arran?” She said his name and a question lingered behind it, yet he had no answers to give her. No way to frame what the devastation of losing her had done to him. Would do to him again. And even if he did, he would not tell her. He didn’t want to give her that kind of power.

  No. It wasn’t that. She already had the power. He simply did not want her to know she did. One did not give the enemy the upper hand. But was she the enemy? The question lingered and taunted no matter how hard he tried to banish it.

  “This will never work.” His hand moved back and forth between them. “Our time is over.” It should not hurt so much to say these words. Yet it did. Deep and cleaving as if he had carved out a piece of his heart only to watch it die.

  She stood firm, though her voice wavered and it was the latter that nearly proved his undoing. He hated to see her pain. Even now. Even after all she had done to destroy him. “Why can it not be again? Would it not be worth exploring? Do we not owe each other at least that?”

  Her words took him aback, reminded him of why this could never be. “Owe each other?” What did he owe her? She had tossed him aside the minute someone with a lofty title and deep pockets came along. She had traded him in as if he meant nothing in exchange for pomp and circumstance and got exactly what she wanted. What she deserved. He owed her nothing!

  “We loved each other once,” she said.

  “Once.” He held his anger in front of him like a shield. “But once was a long time ago. Forgive me, my lady, but I really cannot tarry here any longer. If you will allow me to assist you onto your mount, I will bid you adieu. And I believe, in future, we should refrain from such meetings, inadvertent or otherwise.”

  He did not meet her gaze direct, but he could sense her searching for it. After a long, silent moment, she stopped and he reached out to lift her back onto her mare, careful to keep her away from him as much as possible. Once she was upon the saddle, he waited until she adjusted her leg over the pommel then handed her the reins.

  “Arran,” she tried again, but he shook his head, cutting her off. He balanced on a thin thread tangled between what he knew and what he wanted. He could not allow her to dissuade him, to snap the thread and leave him dangling from its frayed ends.

  “Good day, Lady Blackbourne.”

  He gave her a brief nod and turned his back, each step he took away from her an agony he would not soon forget.

  Chapter Seven

  Arran rode back to the house in a daze. The lovely autumn colors surrounding him, the beauty of the ivy where it climbed up the front of the manor house, wasted on him. He sought refuge in his study and stayed there for the better part of the day, burying himself in ledgers and reports and a proposal that had arrived earlier from none other than the new Earl of Blackbourne. It appeared he wished to know more of Arran’s plans for expanding into horse breeding, a field Arran excelled at and which he had built upon during his time in Dumfries.

  He set the request aside and pushed away from his desk to pour himself a drink. The fire burned low in the hearth and he stoked it well and added another log before taking a seat in front of it. The fire warmed him and cast an amber glow against the brandy in his hand. At his feet, his dog, Fergus, lay curled near the hearth, sleeping contentedly, his long, golden fur burnished rust by the fire.

  His meeting with Glory had left him out of sorts.

  A gross understatement if ever there was one.

  Devastated would be a more apt description. He had kissed her. It had been a mistake. But the harder he tried to regret it, the more he remembered the feel of her soft lips against his. The sigh of her breath mingling with his own. The curves of her body as he held her in his arms. Even now, more than three decades past, her ability to tantalize him, body and soul, went unabated.

  She wanted to try again.

  He shook his head. Unreal.

  Did she not understand the depth of the hurt she had caused him? Even now, the memory of her betrayal cut into his heart and made it bleed anew. She hadn’t even had the courage to tell him herself. Instead, her husband had penned the letter for her, informing him in stark language that she eagerly awaited the arrival of their heir and had no interest in conversing with him further. His repeated attempts to insert himself back into her affections were both foolish and embarrassingly naïve and if they did not stop, his family would pay the price.

  Arran wished he could say it was the threat to his family that had stopped him from sending her any further correspondence. It had not been. Rather it was the idea of being a fool, of loving a woman so passionately he had become blind to the fact she no longer returned his feelings. Had she ever? Her rejection had not only broken his heart but also grievously injured his pride. Even now, he could not say which caused the worse pain. A truth that gave him pause and made him wonder—had he justified his wounded ego by claiming it as a broken heart?

  If so, he was every bit the fool the late Blackbourne had claimed him to be.

  And worse, a coward.

  He straightened in his chair, the room suddenly cold around him. Fergus lifted his head at the motion before settling back down with a contented sigh. If only contentedness came so easily to him. But it didn’t. Not as he looked back at the choices he had made over the years since and wondered what kind of man he had become. When had he turned his back on the fight and decided it was not worth the effort? How committed had he been that one letter from the great Earl of Blackbourne had been enough to make him turn away? To decide the earl’s words echoed Glory’s heart and that it was not worth the risk to hear her say so herself?

  Because she had always been worth the risk, hadn’t she? Once upon a time he had jeopardized everything for her. For them. His family name, his future, his heart. The risk had been for naught. She hadn’t loved him enough.

  Yet she still wore the locket. Why? Why hang onto an item when you rejected the one who gave it to you? Even her own son claimed she rarely wore any other piece of jewelry with the frequency she did the locket.

  Arran leaned back against the cushioned back of the chair and let his gaze crawl up the spines of the books lining the shelves until they reached the exposed beams above.

  What did it mean? What was he missing?

  “Would it not be worth exploring? Do we not owe each other at least that?”

  Was she right? Did they owe each other another chance? And if so, did he possess the courage to try, or was he still a coward, too afraid to risk his heart a second time? He took a deep pull on his drink and closed his eyes, digging deep to find the answers as the brandy warmed a path downward to his heart.

  * * *

  “I am ten times the fool, Louise. Why, I practically threw myself at him!” Gloria paced her bedchamber, too mortified and heartsick to face her children at dinner, afr
aid they would see her humiliation, her heartbreak, written into everything she did. Instead, she sent for Louise, needing to speak to someone she trusted, someone who would not judge her harshly for the things she had done.

  “I’m certain it isn’t as bad as you believe,” Louise said. “Come sit by the fire and drink some tea.”

  Gloria fell into the chair near the low-burning fire with a groan and dropped her face into her hands. “It’s worse. I kissed him.”

  Surprise filled Louise’s voice and her tea cup clattered against the saucer. “You did?”

  Was that glee she heard? Gloria looked up. Yes. Glee had emblazoned itself all over Louise’s face. For heavens’ sake! “Louise, this is not a happy story! It is the story of the total and utter demise of every last ounce of pride I had left. I didn’t simply kiss him. I asked him to kiss me!”

  “I see.” Louise leaned forward. “And how was it, this kiss?”

  Gloria whimpered and dropped her head into her hands once again. “Glorious.”

  “Well, I hardly think being on the receiving end of a glorious kiss is anything one should regret. There are not enough glorious kisses in the world, by my estimation. Though one would not know it living in this house. Heavens, I can’t turn a corner without finding my daughter and your son locked in an embrace. Or Huntsleigh and Caelie slipping off to heaven knows where. And do not even get me started on Marcus and Rebecca!”

  Gloria looked up and blinked at her friend. It was clear she was not taking this situation seriously. “You don’t understand. After the kiss, he turned away from me. He does not share my feelings in the least. How am I to face this man? He is coming to my party in two days hence and, short of rescinding his invitation, I will have no other recourse but to play the happy hostess as if nothing occurred between us!”

  “And what did occur between you?”