“Did you hear what I said, Nick? I am soon to be a married
man.”
The earl turned to stare at him. “I heard you,” he said nonchalantly. “I will believe it when I see it. I doubt the lady in question will be so easily fooled as the first time, however.”
His cousin’s stunned reaction to this challenge was everything Nicholas could have wished. Matt’s mouth actually dropped open, and his eyes flashed murderously before he could veil diem.
After a considerable pause, Farnaby found his voice. “So you know about Sylvia’s little indiscretion?”
“Yes,” was all the response Nicholas allowed himself.
“And may I know how you came upon this information?”
For the first time during the interview, Nicholas smiled faintly. “The lady herself told me,” he said coolly. Which at least was partially true.
“That I will not believe,” the baronet replied angrily. “If I know anything about the lady—and you can trust me on this—it is a downright lie.”
Nicholas shrugged and turned back to the dance floor, where the country dance was coming to an end. “Suit yourself. Perhaps you do not know the lady as well as you imagined. Now, if you will excuse me, 1 have a dance to claim.”
Without a backward glance, Nicholas stepped down on the dance floor and made his way to where Jason had just returned his partner to her aunt.
The brilliant smile Lady Sylvia bestowed upon him as he joined them went a long way to restoring the earl’s spirits.
He hoped that smile had not been lost on Sir Matthew Farnaby.
When Captain Ransome led her back to her aunt after the country dance, Lady Sylvia was relieved to see that Sir Matthew was no longer in sight. She devoutly hoped that he would not approach her again, but set no store on his discretion. He had never been known for caution, she recalled, and the knowing look he had given her when their eyes first met suggested that he had been serious about renewing their betrothal.
She smiled up at the captain, who had just carried her gloved fingers to his lips in a gallant gesture. “You have given the he to that old adage about sailors being unstable dancers, Captain,” she teased. “I did not detect a single instance of tottering, swaying, or stumbling. You have restored my faith in seafaring men, let me tell you.”
The captain laughed at her, his white teeth flashing in his tanned face. “I am relieved to hear it, my lady. Of course, I was on my best behavior. I doubt I could acquit myself so well had our dance been a waltz.”
“Fiddle!” Sylvia exclaimed. “You are teasing me again, sir.” And in truth, she loved him for it. The captain’s easy laugh and friendly banter had steadied her nerves after that first encounter with Sir Matthew.
Ransome let out a crack of laughter that made several heads turn in their direction. Sylvia relaxed and flashed him a brilliant smile in return.
“Now, I wonder what idle flattery you are pouring into the lady’s lovely ears to win such a charming smile from her.”
Sylvia had not noticed the earl’s approach, but the sound of his voice flushed all thoughts of other suitors from her mind. She met his dark eyes over the captain’s shoulder, and her heart lifted at the sight of him.
“You are off the mark, Nicholas,” the captain replied dryly. “I have just been called a heartless rogue, so you have nothing to fear on that score.”
It seemed to Sylvia that the two men had just exchanged some secret message, but before she could demand an explanation, the orchestra struck up a waltz, and the earl led her onto the floor.
Sylvia sighed softly. The moment she had anticipated all week had finally arrived. Here she was in his arms again, her body attuned to every movement of his, responsive to his slightest touch, melting in the warmth of his hand on her waist. If only his eyes had not appeared so withdrawn when she glanced up into them, she would have been ecstatic.
The earl was clearly uneasy, and Sylvia suspected it was directly related to the return of his cousin. His first remark, after they had circled the room twice in complete silence, confirmed her suspicions.
“I trust Farnaby is not making a nuisance of himself.”
Sylvia looked up and found herself being scrutinized by those dark eyes that seemed to see into her very soul. She felt a wild urge to tell this man the truth, to seek his advice and protection. Yes, she would admit, Farnaby was being a nuisance, frighteningly so. His letter proposing they resume their betrothal had been couched in vaguely threatening terms, but Sylvia was at a loss to understand why an offer of marriage could be a threat.
“I can see that he has,” the earl said tersely when Sylvia did not respond immediately. “I should have known it.” He smiled grimly. “Only say the word, my dear, and I shall send him away.”
Sylvia was so surprised by this offer that she stumbled. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed, alarmed at what Sir Matthew might do if he learned she was in any way responsible for a second banishment. “That is to say,” she added hastily when his expression darkened, “I d-do not b-believe that will b-be necessary, my lord.”
She could say no more, for the music had stopped and guests moved towards the open doors to enjoy the cooler air. Several couples went out onto the broad balcony and wandered down the stone stairs to the garden below, brilliantly illuminated and dotted with chairs. The illuminated garden was one of Lady Huntsville’s hobbies, which she delighted in throwing open to her guests when the occasion arose.
Sylvia found her fingers tucked into the crook of the earl’s arm as he steered her onto the balcony.
“Allow me to take you strolling in the gardens,” the earl murmured in her ear, causing Sylvia to feel a sudden tremor of excitement at the implications of such an invitation. “We must talk, Sylvia, and there is no privacy here.”
As they reached the bottom of the stairs and the earl guided her along one of the many lighted paths that followed the flower beds and branched off under the trees, Sylvia glanced back and caught sight of Sir Matthew leaning over the balustrade watching them closely. She shuddered.
“Cold?” the earl inquired solicitously, pausing beside a laburnum bush heavy with blooms. “Shall 1 send for your shawl?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Tell me what you wish to talk about, my lord,” she urged, her curiosity thoroughly piqued.
The earl did not answer until they reached a cluster of rosebushes arching over a stone bench half-hidden from the path. He led her into the small clearing, but when Sylvia attempted to sit, he turned her around to face him, both hands firmly clasping her arms.
He drew a deep, shuddering breath.
Sylvia stood passively in his embrace, her thoughts riotous with conflicting emotions. From such an intimate situation something definitive had to emerge. If it turned out to be only an offer of carte blanche, at least she would know that he did not care for her enough to make her happy. She could put all romantic notions regarding Nicholas Morley out of her head and carry on with her life. “My cousin tells me he is about to be married.”
Sylvia had expected anything but this. She answered before considering the consequences:
“Yes, that is what he says.”
“And the name of this unfortunate lady is?”
Sylvia gasped in surprise and annoyance. Were they to waste these precious moments of privacy in discussing Matthew’s ill- conceived plans for forcing her into a second betrothal?
“I fail to see what concern this lady is of yours, my lord,” she said stiffly.
In the faint light from one of the lanterns on the path, Sylvia saw the earl’s lips twitch into a smile.
“She is very much my concern, my dear Sylvia.”
“I do not understand—”
“Here,” he said, his voice suddenly gruff with emotion, “let me show you.”
Before Sylvia could divine his intentions, he had pulled her unceremoniously into his arms and covered her mouth with his in a kiss that even in her most erotic fantasies—and there had been many of them of late�
��she had not imagined possible.
With a small sigh she surrendered, feeling her knees give way as she leaned against his chest, held firmly upright by two arms whose comforting strength she had felt before.
If this was the way a gentleman went about making an offer of carte blanche, she thought dizzily, there was no reason why she should not derive as much pleasure from him as possible. There was no telling when she would be kissed like this again. Perhaps never. The depressing thought caused her to press herself more urgently against the male form already plastered intimately to her own. The earl’s response was a deep groan and a tightening of his already vice-like hold on her person.
Casting aside all pretense of decorum, Sylvia opened her mouth and traced his lips with her tongue.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Debt
Nicholas stood on the steps of Huntsville Hall, watching the Sutherland carriage disappear into the night. The swaying light of the carriage lantern became an intermittent flicker in the darkness, then disappeared entirely round the bend in the driveway. After the sounds of the chaise had died away, the earl turned to mount the stairs in search of his own party.
Sir Matthew Farnaby stood at the top of the steps, a singularly unpleasant smirk on his face.
Nicholas hesitated briefly. He would have preferred to avoid a confrontation with his cousin, but after what had occurred in the illuminated garden with Sylvia, he knew this to be impossible. That smirk told its own story. Nicholas had seen it often in the past, always as a harbinger of one of his cousin’s vicious tantrums.
Even as a child Matt had been subject to uncontrollable rages when he was crossed. The earl could remember countless instances of unpleasantness and violent outbursts orchestrated— Nicholas did not doubt it—to ensure that his cousin got what he wanted. On those occasions when tantrums did not work, the object Matt had coveted invariably turned up broken. Not merely broken, but shattered into a thousand pieces, as if it had been hurled with deliberate force and malice.
Or it turned up dead.
In a vivid flash from the past, Nicholas remembered the first puppy his father had given him. There were plenty of other dogs on the estate, but they had belonged to his father: a noisy hunting pack, shaggy sheepdogs, and a testy old wolfhound called Nestor.
Major had been special, his own personal puppy. Brought down from Scotland after one of the former earl’s fishing holidays with an old Oxford crony, the young mastiff had appealed to Nicholas’s sense of adventure. Here was a dog worthy of a medieval knight. A dog who would wear a spiked collar and run beside his master’s destrier when he rode into battle.
Only Major never lived long enough to do any of these things.
As the earl trod up the stone steps, his eyes riveted on his cousin’s smirking face, he remembered with a pang of bitterness that the puppy had been found one morning floating in an abandoned well. That was the first time Nicholas recalled noticing Matt’s smirk.
Deliberately, he put the memory aside. If he remembered too many of those apparent accidents that seemed to follow Matt around, Nicholas thought, he would give in to rage and do something he would regret.
If the earl had hoped to avoid unpleasantness, his cousin’s first words dispelled any such hope.
“Well, well,” the baronet sneered, his voice harsh and flat. “I never thought to see the high and mighty Earl of Longueville sniffing around the skirts of one of my castoffs. I wonder what Mrs. Rawson would make of that tasty piece of information.” He snickered as though he had uttered a witticism.
Nicholas muttered an oath and clenched his fists, his resolution to avoid a dust-up with his cousin evaporating at this insult. Before he could carry out his intention, Sir Matthew stepped back, one hand raised in protest.
“Always ready to salvage a maiden’s honor, I see.” His cynical laugh grated on the earl’s ears. “In this case you have arrived too late, old man. I shall be the one to rescue Sylvia from the consequences of her own folly. And when we are wed, she will no longer be anybody’s castoff, now, will she? And you had better not lay a hand on her, my dear fellow. This woman is mine. You may consider yourself fortunate that I do not call you out for dragging the poor lass into the garden tonight. What did you do to her? Steal a kiss or two? There was hardly time for anything more ... shall we say, incriminating. I trust she slapped your face for you, Cousin.”
Rigid with rage, the earl listened to Farnaby’s litany of insults and falsehoods with growing consternation. These were the wild ramblings of a madman, he thought. Could it be that his cousin’s long-standing envy of everyone more fortunate than himself had affected his mind?
“What? The cat got your tongue, Cousin?” Matthew jeered. “Or your courage fail you, is that it?”
Before Nicholas could reply, he heard voices and saw his mother and Mrs. Hargate descending from the first floor, accompanied by Ransome. His Aunt Lydia stopped to take leave of her son, who had—the earl had witnessed it himself—spent a part of the evening charming his mother out of what little funds she carried in her reticule. The dowager swept past her disgraced nephew without so much as a glance, attaching herself imperiously to her son’s arm.
As the Longueville carriage drew away from the Hall, the earl glanced back and saw his cousin still standing at the top of the stairs, feet apart, arms akimbo, defiance in every line of his body.
There was something openly threatening about Farnaby’s posture that caused a tingle of apprehension to run down the earl’s spine.
Nothing good would come out of tonight’s tangled events. Of that he had no doubt at all.
Although she had not retired until very late the previous evening, Sylvia awoke at her usual early hour the day after the Huntsvilles’ Ball. Her sleep had not been peaceful, and she detected the beginnings of a megrim as her abigail plumped the pillows and fussed over arranging the covers.
“Here is yer chocolate, milady. Nice and hot just as ye like it.”
Sylvia watched as Molly poured the steaming liquid from the silver pot into the thick blue Staffordshire cup she had used every morning since she came to stay at Whitecliffs. It was a ritual of sorts, and unlike her aunt, who was a creature of impulse, Sylvia felt comfortable with rituals. They provided a sense of continuity, a pattern for living, the kind of predictable events out of which traditions were bom.
She sipped the rich chocolate and debated the wisdom of attempting to get a few more hours of sleep.
“What is the weather like, Molly?” she demanded at length, knowing that if the sun was shining, she could not lie abed like some pampered London matron after an evening at the opera.
The abigail tugged on the thick velvet curtains. They parted in a soft rush to reveal the kind of cloudless blue sky that made
Sylvia’s fingers itch to be at her palette. Discarding any further thoughts of sleep, she slid out of bed and sat down at her dressing table. Her jewelry box was still sitting there, and she lifted the nacre-encrusted lid. Her brother’s pink diamonds lay on top where she had put them last night after the ball.
It dawned on her that John’s imminent visit and her birthday had been relegated to the back of her mind by the excitement of last night’s events. The shock of seeing her former betrothed and hearing his cajoling voice insisting that they might—if she were willing—relive that happiest period of her young life had left her unsettled and confused rather than overjoyed, as Sir Matthew seemed to expect. He had not been pleased at her refusal to grant him the dance he had requested, and the predatory look in his eyes had frightened her.
On the other hand, the earl’s kiss had delighted her, reminding her of the joys of intimacy with a gentleman that had been denied her all these years. The memory of her immodest response to that embrace brought a tinge of color to her cheeks, and she shuddered.
“Not taking a chill, are ye, milady?” Molly demanded, a worried frown on her rosy face. “We cannot have ye taking sick, now, can we? Not with the viscount, yer brother, arriving
any day now.”
“Of course I am not sick, Molly, so do not go alarming the whole household with your silly rumors.”
This was patently untrue, of course, Sylvia admitted reluctantly. She was sick, as sick as any moonstruck schoolroom chit over her first infatuation with some unattainable gentleman glimpsed tooling his sporting curricle in Hyde Park. But she would get over it, she told herself prosaically. She had got over Sir Matthew, had she not? And things had not gone nearly that far with the earl as they had with Matthew. At least not yet.
Sylvia suddenly wished they had. Then she would know, she told herself with unaccustomed recklessness. She would know again the dizzy delight of a man’s intimate touch, of Nicholas’s touch. She felt herself grow warm at the thought. Last night among the roses he had revealed a side of himself that had surprised and thrilled her. He had always been so reserved towards her, so cautious, as though he disapproved of displays of emotion. As cautious as that first tender kiss he had given her in the folly. But now she knew that beneath that enigmatic exterior lurked a man who could—and doubtless would if she gave him the slightest encouragement—delight her with a passion that matched her own.
Sylvia sighed and reached for her hairbrush. She had taken but two or three strokes when she heard a scratching at the door.
“Hobson heard you were up and about, milady. He thought you would wish to have these two letters, both delivered early this morning, he says.”
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