She collected her courage. “Even if that is how it happened—a plan—my father was not involved.”
“Quite possibly not.”
“Assuredly not.”
He just looked at her.
She let the carriage put some miles between them and the row. Then she asked a question about Airymont, to change the subject. He answered at length.
They conversed about small, unimportant things for an hour, and she tried to ignore how the sore between had been poked so hard that it was bleeding.
Chapter Eighteen
Airymont’s house sat atop a rise of land, swept by sea winds from the Essex coast a mile away. Like the London house, it displayed the grand opulence of the last century’s great manors, with two wings embracing a grand courtyard and an elaborate staircase leading to the entry in the center of the main block of stone.
The servants greeted them like Sebastian was the master. They lined up to meet Audrianna. She was shown to her chambers, then the housekeeper gave her a tour while Sebastian met with the steward.
She returned to her rooms. A servant had been assigned to be her maid, and the woman was unpacking her baggage. Audrianna looked out the tall window onto the courtyard. Down below Sebastian was mounting a horse. He had changed into riding coat and boots, and another man already sat astride nearby.
A footman arrived at her door with an explanation. Lord Sebastian assumed that she would want to rest after the journey, and a matter on the estate required him to go out with the land steward. He would return in the evening for the dinner party that had been arranged.
“Will you be wanting this dress this evening, Madam?” The maid held up her rose satin dinner dress.
“No. The white one.”
She watched the two horses trot out of the courtyard. Her perspective dwarfed them, as did the massive wings of the house. No doubt there was a matter on the estate that required attention. On an estate this big there always would be. The carriage ride here had been full of brittle silences amid their small talk, however, and she suspected he had not been sorry to be called away.
Sebastian broke into a gallop once outside the courtyard. The speed did not ease his mood. It matched it.
He should have left her in London. He had been a fool to find reasons why he should not. He had to introduce her to the country at some point, but it did not have to be right now.
She addled his senses sometimes. That was his only excuse, and it was a damned sorry one.
Of course she would know where the royal gunpowder mills were located. Kelmsleigh probably spoke of such things in his home as casually as Wellington described warfare and other lords discussed horses and clubs.
Under the circumstances, it had been stupid to think she would let him go his own way in the morning the way she did all the time in London, and not quiz him about it. She would have ignored it if she thought he visited a lover, but she could not keep silent about her suspicions that he had gone to that gunpowder mill.
The temptation to lie to her had been strong. Not to avoid a row, but to avoid seeing the hurt in her eyes. If he had known she would so calmly name her insignificance, as if it were a truth generally accepted, he would have lied. If he guessed that she would say the rest of it—
“Sir!”
He reined in his horse abruptly and turned. His steward had hailed him, and now pointed to the left.
“You wanted to go to the Mulder farm, did you not, sir?”
Did he? He couldn’t remember. Addled, that was what he was for certain. All because a woman was unhappy.
He trotted back and turned his horse onto a forest path that would lead to the farm. There were tenants to talk to and improvements to inspect. He would fill his time and his mind with useful things, not the accusing green eyes of a woman who could never trust him.
The dinner party went well. It was not Audrianna’s triumph, however. The steward and housekeeper had planned it and Sebastian had invited the guests. Audrianna did not have to do anything except attend as hostess.
The guests were all new to her but close acquaintances of Sebastian and each other, as happens among country neighbors. The mood turned informal and gay. She received enough attention as the new wife to feel included, but not so much as to feel conspicuous.
Sebastian made an excellent host. Witty. Smooth. Warm. He was relaxed with these people he had known his whole life. The only awkwardness—and she did not think anyone else noticed—was between him and her.
The sore still bled. She tried to cover it, soothe it, but the implications of their row created soulful pains that she could not master.
She did not want this invisible rift that she felt between them. She did not want to lose the familiarity that had begun and that truly made life more than tolerable. And yet she also could not bury her fear that he was going to condemn her father to more disgrace yet, and that good man would not even be able to defend himself.
She looked down the table at him, while silver clinked on china. Ladies spoke of dresses bought for the season and men discussed hunting and politics. His gaze met hers briefly, and he smiled.
Not one of his winning smiles, designed to mesmerize her. Not even the smile of a friend. It was a reassuring one, that was all. An approving smile, which said the unsuitable bride was acquitting herself well enough tonight.
He did not come to her chamber that night. A moment arrived, a distinct moment, when she knew he would not.
That pained her. Frightened her. Her heart hollowed out, as if something vital had been removed.
She considered the little argument that had created this estrangement. For all its brevity it had produced a chaos of strong emotions. Anger and hurt and fear on her part. And on his?
Anger too, when she said he would see it through even if it hurt her. His reaction to that played on her mind now. His expression—not just anger. Also startled and . . . insulted? Dismayed?
Suddenly that row appeared very different to her. In this new perspective she was not the only one aggrieved. A little panic fluttered in the void, as she imagined how she had looked and sounded to him.
That meeting at the mill had troubled him. He had not wanted to speak of it. He had not wanted to tell her the direction it pointed. He had tried to spare her for a while at least. In return she had accused him of indifference to her happiness.
She found an undressing gown and slipped it on. She wrapped herself in a long shawl. She would go to him and apologize. Not for being hurt. Not for being afraid or angry. She would apologize for forgetting to wonder why he was angry and hurt too.
He was not in his chamber. She gazed around the room, disappointed. She had plucked up her bravery with every step here, and for naught.
Sounds in the dressing room advanced to the door. Her heart flipped while she watched the door open. Her reflective mood made her wonder at her reaction. Not fear. Not at all. Excitement and joy and anticipation of setting things to right. That was what she experienced.
It was not Sebastian. The old servant acting as his valet peered around the door at her.
“He has gone to the observatory,” he said. “There is no telling when he will return, Madam.”
“Where is this observatory?”
“It is not an observatory proper. It is a gardener’s hut. It is beyond the main garden and straight through the little woods there, in a clearing on the other side.”
She left and went down the stairs. The night was not too cold, and her shawl was warm. She would find him, say what she felt obligated to say, and leave. And perhaps in the morning they would no longer be strangers again.
The cosmos often calmed him. Its vastness absorbed whatever darkness he carried in his soul. A drop of poison has no potency when put in the ocean.
Tonight, as on some other nights long ago, it affected him differently. Its beauty moved him profoundly. He lost track of scientific facts, of astronomical concerns, and just looked until he floated up there. The telescope and the hut, the d
istance and his physicality, ceased to exist for a long moment.
Such sublime occurrences happened rarely now. He was grateful to experience it once again, like a vivid memory of a childhood friend.
The world always intruded, however. A breeze. The metal against his face. A sigh or breath. It did not take much to break the spell.
No sound did it this time. No touch. Just an awareness that he was no longer alone. He turned his head away from the stars.
Audrianna stood outside the open door, watching. She wore an undressing gown festooned with lace flounces that contrasted with the wool shawl that wrapped her. The moonlight picked out the fire hidden in her hair, but it also cast her face in shadow.
“Come in, Audrianna.”
She stepped up from the grass, onto the board floor. No lamps burned, so only the doorway and the roof’s hole let in the dim light of the half-moon.
She looked around the simple hut. Not even a cottage, it had served gardeners as a place of respite during long hours. Sebastian had put the telescope here ten years ago, when he realized that it was ideal with the height of the land and the break in the trees.
She ran her fingers along the shiny metal of the telescope. “Does it just stay here, poking toward that hole? What if it rains?”
Her practical concern charmed him. “I take it down when I leave, and cover the hole.” He grabbed a thin rope dangling from the roof. “It slides either way when I pull this.”
She admired the telescope, bending to see how it pointed at the patch of heaven. “It is very impressive.”
“Would you like to look through it?”
“Very much, if I may.”
“Come here, then.”
He pointed the lens toward Mars, then lifted her onto his lap. “Put your eye right there.”
She peered tentatively, as if she feared breaking something. Then she pressed her eye and gasped.
“It is amazing,” she whispered. “Glorious.”
He sensed it absorbing her as it did him. He slid his arm around her so she would not be distracted by balancing on his knees. Silken strands of her hair teased his face and the shawl’s wool nestled his hand against her body.
“Wait.” He eased her head to the side while he aimed the scope to another spot and checked the view. She spied again and gasped again.
The stars had gone far to dispersing his black mood. Holding her lessened it too. Not totally. Resentments that he did not want to name still rumbled deeply, lowly—incoherently—as they had for two years, but at least he could ignore them again.
“Do you ever get used to this?” she asked. “Does it become commonplace with repetition?”
“Never.” The response came quietly, low and male. Calm.
She understood now why none of the day’s turmoil had greeted her when she looked in the door. This hut offered a type of escape unknown to most people. He could look at the stars and every emotion would seem small in comparison.
She had interfered with that. She had intruded. It had been kind of him to allow it, and to show her what really lay within the glittering night sky.
She relinquished the glory. She slid off his lap. “Thank you. That was astonishing.”
“Someday I will take you to Greenwich, and sneak you into the observatory there, so you can look through a larger one.”
“I would like that. The looking. The sneaking might be fun too.”
She crossed the wooden floor and hopped down into the grass. She looked up at the sky, so different from what she had just seen.
“Audrianna, why did you come here?”
She turned. He had not returned to his escape. He stood at the hut’s door.
“You are not given to night walks,” he said. “Why did you take this one?”
“I was looking for you. I wanted to apologize. Not for how I felt, or for protecting my father’s name. Not even for fearing that you would not.”
“For what, then?”
“For only thinking about my own feelings and fears. And for not being kinder. I think that I said something that cut in ways I do not intend or comprehend. If so, I am sorry.”
He stepped down. “You cannot be blamed for seeing something quickly that it took me too long to recognize myself.”
“I do not even know what you mean. I think that you misunderstood me.”
“The life you must share with your brother. It was the reason you gave me for the investigation. You named an uncomfortable truth.”
“I did not mean that the two of you live one life.”
“Except we do.”
“I do not see—”
“Then look again. I wield his influence. I have his power. I play the lord on his estates and I sit at his place at tables. I have molded my life and myself to this duty of standing in for him, but not replacing him. Had he died in the war, it would have been a more tragic reason to take his place, but the duty and role would have been a natural inheritance.”
His tone grew harsher as he spoke. Not for her. The thoughts and words themselves angered him.
“You are not—You are admired in your own right, and any power comes from your own character and good judgment.”
“If true, that is worse. I live his life, I take his place, and he is still alive seeing me do it, damn it. If he thinks I live his life better than he could—Bloody hell, this joint existence causes moments of misery for me, but it must cause many more for him. I am the thief, after all. The loss is his.”
She did not know what to say. She understood his tenacity about the gunpowder now, however. She understood why he would not give it up. The half in the chair could not do it, so the half that walked in the world would. Out of love or out of debt, he would give his brother some kind of justice.
“You do what must be done. You steal nothing.”
“Whether I steal or he gives, we indeed share a life due to fate.” He reached through the night and touched her face. “We even share you.”
Her breath caught, and only partly owing to the charge that entered her with that touch. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
She feared that she did. A notion entered her head that had entered before. Only now it took on new meaning. “That day at your house—your brother’s good spirits in my company—is that why you proposed again? For him?”
“Perhaps, in part. I did not realize it. However, his delight in your company may have encouraged me to press you more than I might have.” He folded his arms and turned his gaze to the stars, as if seeking distraction. Or escape again. “Two halves of a whole. It has become so normal I do not even notice unless the truth cannot be avoided. Of course, I did not expect—well, I did not plan to share you quite so literally.”
Shock cleared her head to a state of precise clarity. Memories marched through, of comments and questions, of reactions and moods. She feared that she understood all too well what he implied.
“If you think that I hold romantic feelings for your brother, and deplore his infirmity for that reason, you are very wrong.”
He looked at her. Darkly. Tensely.
“He is a friend,” she said. “A dear friend. I do not love him except as a brother. Certainly not like a husband or lover. Whatever the two of you share, it does not include me.”
She embraced him, so he would perhaps believe her. His arms pulled her closer and he looked down as if he could see her thoughts in the dark. She reached up and cupped his face with her hands and guided him down so she could kiss him and maybe he would know that even when he was a stranger he had not only excited her body.
The result was inevitable. She knew that kiss would be like fire to oil tonight. Another escape perhaps, but it would bridge the awkward chasm forming today.
The moon provided just enough light to create a magical night. Dark trees draped the clearing, and with their first kiss it became a private, intimate chamber of nature. The stars hung low in a canopy of brilliant dots.
The passion bu
ilt in a rush of grasping embraces and furious kisses. She welcomed the assault, encouraged it. Within its power and hardness a sweet emotion flowed, born of his confidences, and now of her relief that this complicated day had not left her alone after all, watching him stepping back instead of forward.
His embrace clutched her, supported her, controlled her. He lowered to his knees and his kisses claimed her stomach and hips, her thighs and mound. They burned through her garments and into her blood until tongues of fiery pleasure licked her skin.
He pulled her shawl off and threw it down, then pulled her to it with him, until she lay atop him on the ground, entwined in an embrace so taut they might be trying to break into each other’s souls.
He set her up on her knees and caressed down the front of her gown. “Open it.”
She worked the buttons impatiently, rising up so she could reach them all. He unfastened his own garments. Her body quaked at what was coming. A deep, low pulse begged.
He pushed the fabric of her gown aside so it gaped wide, exposing her. The stars entered his eyes while his hands began their luscious caresses of her breasts. Soon she rocked to that lower throb of need as it became unbearable.
She pulled the fabric out from beneath her so that pulse could feel his hardness and warmth and promise. It was delicious kneeling up like this, straddling him, being teased in the most physical ways in the moonlight.
He drew her down toward him so his tongue could torture her breasts. He entered her just enough to taunt and make her crazed. Her breasts were so sensitive it seemed that every lick on them sent a jolt of pleasure down to where they joined.
She was almost weeping by the time he thrust into her fully. She threw back her head and opened her eyes and saw the stars falling and entering her. Then she collapsed into his embrace while he ravished her.
They slipped through the garden before dawn. Sated and dishabille, they stole into the house like two servants having a clandestine affair.
Ravishing in Red Page 20