Despite the desire that hardened him, lengthened him, his chest ached with the old anguish. He’d never had a chance. They’d danced and flirted and then between a house party in June and the beginning of the Brighton season in August, she’d married another man. No word, no warning. Even Julia had been taken by surprise.
Caroline tasted so sweet. She responded to his touch as if she had been made for him. As if all those years apart had meant nothing. Perhaps they had meant nothing, for he knew very well the match with the late Lord Ballister had been arranged.
Just as any of those young girls inside the ballroom would submit to his embrace at the demand of a parent. Even if she cared only for his title and wealth, or for the approbation of society.
He didn’t want one of those insipid, exchangeable girls.
He wanted Caro.
Who was making a mess of his waistcoat as her hands ran over his chest.
Now he had her.
Heat, satisfaction, surged within him and he tore his lips from hers, lost himself in the bare expanse of skin at her neck. He wanted to devour her.
“John.” The whisper of his given name, which he heard so rarely, felt so right, so perfectly intimate that his satisfaction deepened. He lifted her in his arms, his hands cupping her bottom through the frustrating layers of fine cloth. She wrapped her arms around him and her legs around his hips so that he nestled between her yielding thighs, so close to her heat but so tantalizingly far. But there was nothing but wind-rustled greenery around them, nothing for purchase so that he could free a hand and move back the fabric that separated him from his desires.
Which was just as well. Because as pleasurable as this was, as much as he didn’t want to let her go, they needed to talk.
“John,” she said again, and then gasped as his tongue flicked across her earlobe. He grazed the soft flesh with his teeth, wanting to hear that sound again. “My…” She was struggling to speak over the pleasure. He shifted his hands slightly, so that his fingers could caress her, even as his palms carried her weight.
“I’ll take you home with me.”
She held him tighter, fitting hollows to curves as she pressed her body closer to him, and then she found his neck with her mouth the way he had only a moment ago teased hers.
“But,” he continued, terrified even as he did so, “I want more than a tumble in someone else’s garden. I don’t want this to be an affair.”
He paused, let himself hope, and then repeated, “I need a legitimate heir.”
Her eyes opened, and he watched her slowly awaken out of the drugged languor of desire. Awaken to understanding of what he truly wanted from her. She pushed back and reluctantly he let her down, his body cold from the absence of hers.
“You yourself said that I abhor marriage,” she whispered.
“Perhaps it was not marriage but the man,” he suggested, his hand lingering on her wrist, trying to entice her with that continued touch. He could not let her go.
“What makes you think that you are any different than he?”
It should have been obvious to her. He was nothing like Ballister, and what lay between him and Caro had weathered all this time.
How could she not see what was so clear?
Fear, embarrassing as it was, pummeled through him, but he fought against it, seized the challenge. “You sought me out.”
She pushed his hand away, stepped back slightly.
“Women have needs.”
“So do men,” he agreed with a startled laugh. “But above all I need an heir.”
“So that is it?” She looked hurt, and it made him feel less of a man. Ridiculous that wanting to do the honorable thing should make him feel a cad. “We are at a stalemate? I thought men only lived for pleasure. My husband...”
“He had a mistress?”
“Two that I know of. Don't you? Your sister says—”
“My sister knows nothing of my life. When I take my vows I'll be faithful.”
“What if you can't satisfy me? Now that I have my freedom, why should I enter into any contract without knowing what I am getting? I want to test the wares.”
He laughed. It was so ridiculous, so unlike anything he had ever heard Caroline say before. He could hardly countenance the words as truth, and yet she was adamant in her resistance. He wasn’t prepared, had never imagined… With a steadying breath, Sutbridge fell back on manners, on everything about the world he did know to be true. “We'd best get back inside, before someone realizes we are out here and you are compromised beyond repair.”
“So friends, then?” she said with a sad smile. The smile aggravated. It seemed to him as if she already grieved, as if she knew friendship were impossible now.
But he couldn’t push her. The tension between them had dissipated and all that was left was to pick up the pieces of what they had broken.
He nodded tightly. Could it be worse than it had been the previous ten years? The result was the same—as yet, he could not have her.
• • •
The ballroom felt stiflingly loud and crowded. Overwhelming with the heat of pressed bodies and the stench of those bodies’ exertion. She eyed the couples that still danced and flirted, blithely unaware that something pivotal and monumental had just occurred outside in the garden.
A world-rattling event.
Caroline wanted to go home, but with a darkness coiled deep in her breast, she navigated the maze of too-friendly acquaintances and sought out Julia.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Caroline demanded in a quiet hiss once she had found her friend sitting at a card table in the adjoining room designated for such things.
Julia fluttered her hands. A servant brought a chair over and, with only a brief observation that the fruit and bird brocade-covered wooden chair was dismayingly frayed on the seat, Caroline sat down. The other three players barely raised their eyebrows at the side conversation, but she knew everyone strained their ears to hear. Gossip was paramount.
“Knew that he wants you?” Julia asked, smiling, her own voice pitched perfectly to blend into the atmospheric noise of the ball. “Of course. I’m his sister.”
Caroline leaned even closer. She wanted to rip the cards out of her friend’s hands, scatter them upon the floor, but that would be the height of bad manners. A far larger scandal than if someone heard she had propositioned Sutbridge.
“You knew that he wouldn’t settle for an affair.”
“Ah, I suspected.”
“Why do that to me? Push me into a situation where I was destined to fail?”
“But are you?” Julia teased, clearly still pleased with her efforts. “In whose bed will you spend this night?”
“My own!” Caroline returned hotly.
Julia’s levity vanished. She actually turned her attention away from the game, studied Caroline’s expression. The intensity of her gaze was so similar to her brother’s. Caroline flushed.
But she lifted her chin even as a strange trepidation sent a chill down her spine.
“You rejected him?”
Mutely, Caroline nodded.
“He laid his heart out for you, and you turned it down?” Julia’s voice was cold and dangerous, the way she sounded when she had the deepest scorn for someone. Caroline had witnessed Julia deliver a half-dozen sharp set downs but never before had she heard that frozen rage focused on her.
Heat flooded her cheeks and sound came to her thickly, the tinkling of glass against glass, the trilling of laughter, the low rumble of masculine conversation, all pressed against her ears. She struggled to focus, to shake off her embarrassment. And then, remembering her own anger, she drew on that indignation.
“His heart,” Caroline scoffed.
“If you didn’t care for him it would be one thing, Caro.”
“Care for––”
“Don’t even deny it!” Julia interrupted, her voice rising, no longer in that careful register that kept foreign ears from listening in. Caroline winced at the sound, before the
meaning of her friend’s words struck her. “All that bitterness you drip in conversation, as if it makes you more sophisticated, more witty. But you’ve been in love with my brother since our first season and don’t you deny it.”
The room was too hot and too small. Around them other people were attending to them now and as she glanced about, they averted their gazes all a moment too late.
“Love is a lie,” Caroline said shortly, between clenched teeth that struggled to hold the surging emotion back. She stood up, looked down at Julia, didn’t bother to quiet her next scolding words. “And you’d do well to tend to your own home rather than meddling in the lives of others.”
She left the house amid the whispers of rising gossip. Lady Ballister, in love with Lord Sutbridge, has been for years. Oh yes, it would be a nine days’ wonder, no one imagining that he might be the one in pursuit of her. No, it was yet another story about a sad, desperate woman.
Now denial would make her look even sadder.
Love aside, as she climbed into her lonely carriage, she was devastated. In one ridiculous evening, she’d lost her best friend. She’d lost, as well, the infatuation that had kept her going through all those years of miserable marriage. No longer could she enjoy the secret pleasure of watching Sutbridge, fantasizing about Sutbridge. No, she had given that all up.
He had gone from unattainable to unattainable for the completely opposite reason in the length of a breath.
Because she didn’t want what he wanted.
Caroline laughed, the bitter sound solitary and shocking in the confines of the carriage.
How ridiculous that he of all men would want something permanent when she was offering him what every other man desired most?
• • •
Under the brilliant blue sky of a rare December day, Sutbridge stepped out of his carriage and studied the innocuous façade of the modest town house before him. Somewhere behind that stone was Caroline. He’d given her up forever. Assumed she’d moved on from their brief flirtation all those years ago, from that one kiss he had imposed upon her. But his own admiration had never waned. Indeed, it had grown with the years, tortured as he was by her constant nearness, the way her friendship with Julia thrust her in his path at every turn. Those years had only refined her, sharpened the beauty of her features as well as her wit. No other woman in England could compare.
Thus, despite the building pressure from family and popular opinion, he had put his duty off.
Yet he had to marry.
When Caroline’s husband had died, his nascent hope had been tempered by the passion with which she had celebrated her sudden freedom. He hadn’t again dared to imagine...
Until she came to him.
Sutbridge lifted the heavy iron knocker. Let it fall.
Thud.
He could hear a carriage pass by behind him. Feel the vibrations of its progress through the ground beneath his feet. The wait was appalling. It gave him far too much time to think, to doubt the wisdom of coming here. But he’d spent ten years wishing for something he couldn’t have.
And now he could.
She’d offered herself to him. Perhaps not in the manner he wished, but restless reflection had convinced him it was stupid to refuse. He’d always be wanting, wondering what might have been. Furthermore, he had no intention of giving up his cause completely. He had been a patient man this far. He could wait till she grew more comfortable with the idea of being his wife.
The door opened. An aged butler showed him in, and with an economy of language took his card. Led him into the entry hall. Left him there. When he returned, the butler begged Sutbridge in creaking tones to follow him.
He followed. He had been here and the Ballisters’ London home a dozen times or more over the years, at a dinner party or calling in the company of his sister. The last had been in the first month after Lord Ballister’s death, when he had seen Caroline’s pale face for a mere fifteen minutes in the crowded parlor. Now, the house was no longer draped in black crepe, but there was a stillness to it, as if its mistress had never bothered to reclaim it. The boisterous presence of two young boys was equally absent and a brief inquiry to the butler revealed that they were in the country with His Lordship’s uncle, the late Lord Ballister’s younger brother, and were expected to arrive for the holidays.
He kept moving. Up the stairs to the first floor, across the hall to what he suspected was the master suite.
Odd.
Did she greet all visitors this way, or was he the exception?
The butler opened the door but backed away, let Sutbridge enter without announcing him. All of this a breach of good training and manners, but once he saw Caroline inside what was clearly her dressing room, lounging on a divan and clad in a thin robe that clung to every lovely curve of her body, he didn’t worry about it anymore. When she turned to him with a challenging glint in her eyes, he understood exactly why he was there in her inner sanctum, the door to her bedroom ajar.
“You won’t bore me today with a proposal, will you?” she asked, lifting one languid arm and resting it behind her head.
He shut the door behind him, carefully, gathering his thoughts away from the delicious sensations pooling in his groin. This chamber was the antithesis of the house, clearly, in every way, the heart of Caro’s life. Books, fresh flowers and other baubles littered each flat surface.
“No,” he said impulsively. “I'll give you what you want.” He strode toward her, pleased to see her expression change as he neared. He sat down beside her on the divan, rested his hand on her outstretched legs and watched as the cloth fell away as if a mere touch was enough of a suggestion. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the bare skin of her leg resting beneath his still hand.
He’d held her numerous times in the realm of the ballroom, or when helping her dismount from a horse or step out of a carriage. He’d tasted her lips only a week ago in that garden, dragged her close against his body. But this moment was different.
This moment was his bare skin against her bare skin. Against an expanse of her silken flesh that he’d never seen before.
He looked up, found her watching him, heavy-lidded.
“Why is it wrong that I love you?” His words surprised him, unbidden as they were.
Her expression froze. Then she made a disgusted little moue with her mouth. Inwardly he cursed at his stupidity. He had determined to say nothing of his larger desires, to stick only to the pleasures of the bed, as she had demanded.
“You may love me, John, as you wish. If it pleases you to think that is what you feel. I believe you want to trap me, to own me as you would a new carriage. Do you love your carriages?”
“Preposterous!” Sutbridge exploded, fury filling him as he leaned forward, moved his hand to the arm of the divan, outstretched beside her. “You think I am not bitter too? For the wasted years, for having to watch the only lady I have ever loved bear another man his sons?”
“Liar!” she cried out, surging up against him, her own anger matching his own. There was so little space between them now. If he leaned forward an inch he could kiss her instead of participate in this vehement exchange. He could forget words, forget truth, honor. Forget the hopes of a happy future. “If you had loved me then, you would have done more than flirt with me.”
The fury fled and in its place was the most overwhelming need to protect her, to make her believe in his love.
“I was but twenty, Caro.” He pulled his arm back, reached to take both her hands in his. She started to shake him away but he held tight. “I thought I had time. But two months and you were lost to me.”
“Why else does a girl come to London but to marry?” she asked, and he knew it was true. Especially a girl like Caroline, whose parents needed her to make a successful match. “At eighteen a woman is ready for marriage, but a man of a similar age has no fear of old age ruining his chances.”
“I would have been ready.” He relaxed his hold on her, caressed her wrists with the pads of his thumb
s, attempted to convince her of everything with that small touch.
“Then why haven’t you married these ten years?” she demanded.
Sutbridge bowed his head, looked down at her hands. He had said the reason already. Admitted it a hundred times, it seemed. But there was nothing weak in his declaration. Once more then.
“Because I only wanted you.”
She fell silent, retreating back against the arm of the divan, letting air rush into the space between them.
“Caro,” he continued, bringing his gaze back up to meet hers, gentling his tone. “Surely you care for me some small amount? Julia––”
“Julia should mind her own business,” Caro interrupted but she seemed tired, without that edge of bitterness that lined her words before.
“Yes, I did tell her that as well,” he admitted.
A small laugh escaped Caro and he found hope in that sound, in this moment of sharing amusement. But then the curve of her lips flattened.
“Truly, John, I do care for you, but how can I—?”
“Entrust yourself to me?” he finished when she broke off, looking heartbreakingly sad.
She nodded. “And even if I did. I am old.”
He laughed then, glancing down her body, which was far from any definition of old he had ever known. He felt light inside. Perhaps she hadn’t yet agreed, but she had just opened up space for the possibility.
“Compromise then?” he suggested, shifting his body forward until he lay on his side next to her, his head resting by hers on the gold-striped pillow. She turned her head, her lips again just inches from his. If she married him, this intimacy and quiet peace would fill his mornings.
“What sort of compromise?” she whispered, her eyes wide, her lips parted on an expectant breath. He needed to loosen his cravat so he could catch his own breath.
“As I said before, I shall give you what you want. And eventually,” he emphasized that word, “after you know I would do anything for you, am nothing like your late husband, you shall give me what I want.” He inched forward, intent on her lips, let the tension between build as he closed the space. “I’ll get you with child and then marry you.”
Caroline and the Duke: A Regency Short Story Page 2